Liturgy: Daily Prayers: Aleynu

Text

Commentary

The first stanza of this liturgical poem is less a comment on the other nations, per se, than a paean to God for having made Israel distinctive. However, the poet elaborates on one concrete element of this distinctiveness: where Israel's worship of her majestic God truly benefits Israel, worship of the nations' gods is pointless because these gods nations are ultimately powerless (see the bold-faced verse). That the poet makes such a clear distinction between the Jewish God and the gods of the nations strongly suggests a pagan context. That the other gods "will not save" need not be read as a response to Christian (or other) claims that these gods are saving. Rather, it can be understood as coherent with the regular positive appeal throughout rabbinic liturgy to redemption as God's greatest and most needed power. The poet draws the language of this verse from Isaiah 30:7 (emptiness and nothingness) and 45:20 (and pray to a god that will not save), both biblical verses clearly referring to pagan gods.

Nonetheless, by the time this prayer entered the daily liturgy, Jews had come to recognize that the numerical value of the letters וריק ("and emptiness") was the same as the numerical value of the most common Hebrew form for Jesus, ישו. Especially in mystical traditions common in the high middle ages, this numerology suggested a real equivalence, and both Jews and Christians came to understand the line "For they bow down to nothingness and emptiness, and pray to a god that will not save" to be explicitly anti-Christian. Indeed, Rabbi Abraham ben Azriel, in Germany in the thirteenth century, broadens the meaning of the verse to include all the non-Jews of his known world, adding in his Arugat Habosem that להבל ("to nothingness") has a similar correspondence to Muhammed -- but he fails to explain how.

When the Catholic Church started censoring Jewish books in the mid-sixteenth century, this verse was one of the first liturgical elements to disappear -- totally in the Ashkenazi rite, partially in the Italian rites (one common version reads: "For they bow down and pray, and we bow down..." -- thus removing the sensitive elements), and for a while in the Sephardi rites (which were most common in Muslim lands and in Protestant Europe. Books printed outside Catholic jurisdiction reverted to the original text for this prayer). Only in the late twentieth century did some Ashkenazi Jews restore this verse, particularly in Israel, but also in some American orthodox circles. Others, though, and all liberal Jews, are grateful to the censors for removing what they consider an unnecessary denigration of their neighbors.

The second stanza presents an eschatological vision of a future in which God will be triumphant over all false gods, and all non-Jews will come to accept God as their sovereign. This is not the only possible messianic scenario in Jewish tradition; by no means do all expect the conversion of the gentiles, and it is not even certain that that is the intent here. However, essentially no other text of the statutory prayers makes an explicit statement about the active participation of non-Jews in the messianic scenario. Sheer repetition makes this conception deeply influential.

Liberal liturgies of the past two centuries have frequently eliminated the comparisons with other nations and the expressions of Jewish particularism, choosing to reformulate this prayer as simply a paean to the Divine sovereign of creation and a prayer for the coming of the brotherhood (in recent years: fellowship) of messianic redemption. These prayer books vary from complete revisions of the text to euphemistic interpretative translations, including, for instance, the American Reform Movement's 1975 Gates of Prayer (p. 616) which transforms the false gods of the gentiles into the false gods "of our hearts."

Bibliography:

See the relevant sections of the books listed here, according to their chapter titles and indices:

Elbogen, Ismar, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, trans. Raymond P. Scheindlin (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1993; original publication in German 1913; Hebrew, updated translation, 1972).

Friedland, Eric L. Were Our Mouths Filled With Song: Studies in Liberal Jewish Liturgy (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997)

Hoffman, Lawrence A., ed., My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 6 -- Tachanun and Concluding Prayers (Woodstock Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2002).

Petuchowski, Jakob J. Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The LIturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism (New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968).

Swartz, Michael D. “Alay Le-Shabbeah: A Liturgical Prayer in Ma’aseh Merkavah.” JQR 77 (1986–87): 179–90.

Ta-Shma, Israel M. The Early Ashkenazic Prayer: Literary and Historical Aspects [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003).

Ta-Shma, Israel M. "The Source and Place of Aleynu Leshabbeah in the Prayer Book..." [Hebrew] in the Frank Talmadge Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish (University of Haifa, 1993), 85-98.