Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

Hebrew Voices #178 – Rapping Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Part 1

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Nehemia: Somebody obviously doesn’t know what they’re doing, let’s put it that way. Somebody may know what they’re doing…

Gabriel: I have met Judeo-Christians who did and then when I asked, “Why do you do that?” They said, “I don’t know.”

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m here today with Dr. Gabriel Wasserman, who got his PhD from Yeshiva University in New York and then did a post-doc at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shalom, Gabriel!

Gabriel: Hi!

Nehemia: So, here you are, what I would call a Rabbinical Jew, and we’ve spent all this time talking about Karaite literature. But actually, your main field of research is something called piyyut. What is piyyut? And why do you study it?

Gabriel: That's correct. Piyyut is Jewish liturgical poetry. So, the word actually is ultimately from the Greek poietes, “a maker”, from which we get the English word “poet.” And that, through the intermediary of the verb l’fayet, which we actually don’t see until hundreds of years later, but it ultimately does appear, which means “to make”, "to do this - making poetry", we get the abstract verbal noun piyyut, “making poetry”, and it becomes the word for “a liturgical poem”.

So, what is it? I’m going to start from the point of view of Rabbanite piyyut, because that’s primarily what I work on, and it’s also where piyyut starts. Ultimately, you see piyyut in the Karaite world as well.

Nehemia: For sure, yeah.

Gabriel: Starting much later. We can get to that. So, I’m going to have to start with, how does Rabbanite prayer work? The Torah gives stories. Prayer is what people do; it talks about people praying to God. There’s no specific verse that says, “You shall pray!” The verses that say, “Oh, you are in exile and you’re going to seek the Lord, your God,” which certainly imply a kind of prayer, but what that looks like the Torah doesn’t tell.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: We have the Book of Psalms, which again, contains all sorts of expressions of thanksgiving, and praise, and petition, but it doesn’t say, “You shall do these things.” So, Jews have got to pray, but there’s not really any guidance from the Bible. There’s maybe guidance, but there are no rules about what that's going to look like. So, in the earliest Rabbinic text, which is the Mishnah, there’s already this concept of a bracha, a “liturgical blessing”, where each blessing concludes with the words, “Baruch atah Hashem,” and then two more words.

Nehemia: Tell us what liturgy is because some of the audience might not know that word.

Gabriel: Okay.

Nehemia: You keep saying liturgical. What is the difference between liturgical and prayer?

Gabriel: Liturgy is formal prayer. Would you say that’s a good… Formalized prayer?

Nehemia: Yes. I would agree with that.

Gabriel: In a given religion or faith community.

Nehemia: So, in other words, prayer could be: It’s -20 degrees outside and I’m freezing. And I’m like, “Oh God, I’m cold. Please save me from this cold. I don’t want to die.” That could be prayer…

Gabriel: That’s not liturgy.

Nehemia: And liturgy would be, I get out of the cold, and I say the Shehecheyanu Blessing.

Gabriel: Sure.

Nehemia: Would that be liturgy?

Gabriel: It would be liturgical, yeah. You’re saying a liturgical blessing.

Nehemia: Okay. So, it’s a formalized form of prayer.

Gabriel: But in the example you just gave it was still very spontaneous.

Nehemia: You’re right!

Gabriel: It’s not that you said, “I went to the synagogue…” That’s why I said, "I don’t know." But you’re using a liturgical framework.

Nehemia: So liturgical, but not liturgy, okay.

Gabriel: As opposed to, if you go to the synagogue and they’re all saying the blessing, and it’s something they do every day, then that’s definitely liturgy.

Nehemia: So, I want to explain for the Christian audience, or people who came from a Christian background… And you may not know this terminology. I learned this myself interacting with Christians. They have a concept of what they call high church and low church.

Gabriel: Sure, yeah.

Nehemia: High church is where you go to the church and there’s these words that you recite at this time by this priest, or this pastor…

Gabriel: Who’s wearing specific things, and there’s a specific tune… yeah.

Nehemia: And here’s the surprising thing; I would say every Jewish sect or movement is high church.

Gabriel: Interesting! I think you’re right… but.

Nehemia: Even Reform Judaism is high church.

Gabriel: I think you’re right, with perhaps some exceptions in the very recent…

Nehemia: Like Renewal, or something like that?

Gabriel: Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Nehemia: Fair enough.

Gabriel: Like Renewal, or things like online Chavurah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Although some of them, I think, from a Christian point of view would still be high church. But I think some of them are not, some of them are really low church. But again, they’re outnumbered, by far, by high church. It’s funny you say this, because within Judaism you have certain groups who will call others or will call themselves high church, because within that…

Nehemia: Oh really? I haven’t heard that.

Gabriel: Oh, yes! And they use it somewhat ironically because it’s not church, because we don’t have churches.

Nehemia: Right, right.

Gabriel: I was just looking at a message yesterday, where it was saying, "Oh, this specific synagogue, they’re very careful about the cantor who’s leading the services, very careful on specific clothing, and on reciting them to very specific melodies that are fixed, and with a choir, and whatnot. It’s very high church," and he put it in quotation marks. He was not saying it derogatorily. He was saying, "I like it," as opposed to, there are informal, what we call a stiebel, coming from the Yiddish words for a “little house”. And it’s where a bunch of people get together, and the words might be very similar to what you’ll see in what we call high church synagogues, but the whole atmosphere is… there is a prayer leader, but nobody is actually following along, and each person is at his own pace.

Nehemia: But within the context of Judaism, with, let’s say, formal major movements within Judaism, you don’t really have a concept, which you do in the Tanakh, which is spontaneous prayer.

Gabriel: Well, no! There’s certainly spontaneous prayer. You don’t think so?

Nehemia: In the synagogue?

Gabriel: Okay, in the synagogue. Yes, for the most part not. I’m not saying people don’t pray. There are definitely people who come to the synagogue. Probably historically more women than men because of the lower literacy, because they haven’t had the same kind of educational opportunities that men had. Not that all the men were so educated, but they would come to synagogue, and they would come, and they would say, “I’m coming to synagogue. I’m going to pray so much that I’m going to…” whatever.

Nehemia: Ah! And there are examples like that. There’s a famous Chassidic story about the man who comes to the synagogue, and he’s reciting the Aleph-Bet in the back of the synagogue. That’s an exception to the rule. What’s so beautiful about this story…

Gabriel: Right! Right! So, it goes on, it definitely goes on, you’re saying.

Nehemia: And by the way, Karaites are more high church than even Rabbanites in their synagogues.

Gabriel: How so?

Nehemia: So, a typical Shabbat morning Karaite service will be around four hours in Israel.

Gabriel: In Israel? Interesting. Because in America it’s much, much shorter.

Nehemia: Yeah, because no one would stick around and pay attention for three or four hours. Let’s say, at certain times of the year, especially, it could easily be four to five hours, and that’s not unusual.

Gabriel: Those times would be like Bein Hametzarim?

Nehemia: Yeah, yeah, in Tammuz, for example.

Gabriel: Right, Bein Hametzarim, or how certain holidays…

Nehemia: And it’s all very formalized. The cantor reads a verse, the congregation responds. The cantor reads half a verse, the congregation responds. So, it’s very formalized, and that’s very much what Christians would call high church. And there’s actually a section called Tefillah b’Lachash, which is where you insert for 30 seconds a prayer in your own words.

Gabriel: That’s not high church.

Nehemia: In a sense it is! Because even that is formalized, “Right now, put in your own words!”

Gabriel: Because you’re told when! Aaah!

Nehemia: “Right now, put in your own words!”

Gabriel: Okay, because you’re saying in any synagogue even if we say, “Okay, now you have this time to pray in your own words,” we told you when to do it.

Nehemia: “We’ve just been here for four hours. Now 30 seconds to a minute to two minutes in your own words, silently.”

Gabriel: Hold on! So, tell me, what’s a church like?

Nehemia: What’s that?

Gabriel: What’s a church like, then? A low church.

Nehemia: I haven’t been to that many churches. I don’t really know.

Gabriel: I don’t know either.

Nehemia: So, maybe I’m misusing these terms!

Gabriel: I don’t actually know what goes on in low church!

Nehemia: No, what I think goes on in low church is, they say, “Oh! The band is going to play a song and people are going to be waving around their hands.” And I could be completely wrong because what do I know about church?

Gabriel: That’s Pentecostal.

Nehemia: So, for example, Pentecostal would be considered low church, absolutely.

Gabriel: Low church? Okay.

Nehemia: I believe so.

Gabriel: Do Pentecostal have any liturgy, or not?

Nehemia: I don’t know the answer to that.

Gabriel: Almost none? You don’t know?

Nehemia: I have no idea. I could be completely misusing the terms I have no idea!

Gabriel: We are two Jews talking to a largely Christian audience about how we’re not like you. Wait, we don’t know what you’re like.

Nehemia: Oh, no. I wasn’t to say we’re not like you. My whole point was to say, “What do we need all this piyyut for?” And we need the piyyut because we’re high church!

Gabriel: Ah! Right, okay.

Nehemia: Now, maybe I’m wrong about that, but that’s my understanding of piyyut.

Gabriel: You’re saying maybe you’re wrong about low church, but you’re explaining why we’ve got it. Got it.

Nehemia: Why do we need all these piyyutim? Because we come to shul, we come to the synagogue on Yom Kippur, and we’re there for ten hours! What are we doing for ten hours?

Gabriel: We’re not dancing and saying things that aren’t words.

Nehemia: No! In fact, the cantor is reciting liturgy the entire eight to ten hours.

Gabriel: Right.

Nehemia: And that’s literally eight to ten hours. I don’t think I’m exaggerating, right?

Gabriel: It’s 12 hours in my synagogue.

Nehemia: Okay, there you go.

Gabriel: Yeah.

Nehemia: I don’t think I’ve ever made it 12 hours, but yeah. Alright, so now that we understand the need for piyyut, and maybe I’m wrong about the historical need, is that the historical need for piyyut?

Gabriel: Let’s step back.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: Let’s step back. So, already in Mishnah, which reports traditions in the names of rabbis, an anachronistic term, but whatever, sages.

Nehemia: I want to stop you on that… they didn’t use the word rabbi?

Gabriel: Even when you see, like it says, “Rebbe Akiva omer,” that’s a title. If I said…

Nehemia: “Aseh lecha rav.”

Gabriel: I know that you’re now Dr. Gordon, but let’s say this was ten years ago.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: And I said, “Mr. Gordon and,” I also wasn’t a doctor ten years ago, “Mr. Wasserman were speaking, and they were giving a lecture.” And then somebody who knew nothing about the culture said, “Oh, I get it. People who are speaking at lectures are called Misters.”

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: What happens in the lecture is, we reported statements that Misters said. Misters are what you call people who speak, and it’s not.

Nehemia: So, what about “aseh lecha rav”?

Gabriel: What?

Nehemia: What about in Pirkei Avot, “Aseh lecha rav,” “Make for yourself a rabbi”?

Gabriel: That’s not… “give yourself a master”, a rav is a master, is adon.

Nehemia: But a master teacher, right? No? Okay, let's go back…

Gabriel: You wouldn’t say, “hu rav”, you would say, “That’s the…”

Nehemia: Ah-ha, I hear you. Okay.

Gabriel: “Hu rabo” you could say, “Rebbe Yehochanan hu rabo shel Rebbe Eliezer.”

Nehemia: Okay. “It’s his rabbi,” you could say.

Gabriel: No. “It’s his master.” The one over him.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Yes.

Nehemia: I don’t know if that’s any different. Meaning…

Gabriel: I think so. Because you know why?

Nehemia: Why?

Gabriel: But you find… and you do find stuff like this in Midrashim. Let’s say… I’m making up this example, but it would be something like, “Ma'aseh b’goy echad.” “There’s a story told about a certain Gentile,” “she’halach l’rabo b’medinat ha’yam,” “who went to his master who lived way out in the sea.”

Nehemia: No, rav also obviously has a secular sense. When it says, “Antigonus Ish Sokho said, 'be like someone who serves his rav.'”

Gabriel: So, there it means “master” as in a slaveholder.

Nehemia: Exactly. So, it has a secular sense as well.

Gabriel: No, but I’m saying in the example I gave, where it’s not a slave, not “Maseh b'eved echad,” but simply “Maseh b’goy echad,” who went to his master, meaning “teacher.” It does occur in secular topics.

Nehemia: So, it would mean “teacher” there too?

Gabriel: Yeah. And “rabo she’limado”, yes, here’s actually a real example. When it’s talking in tractate Pesachim, where it talks about reclining; reclining meaning lying down roughly in a 45 degree, if not 90 degree position.

Nehemia: During the Passover service.

Gabriel: During the Passover ritual, yes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: And the Talmud states two statements. One says that a disciple in the presence of his master does not recline because it’s not respectful. And the other says, “A student,” “Talmid bi’fnei rabo,” “A disciple in the presence of his master, does recline.” And how do they resolve the difference, the contradiction? They say, "In this one, where it says he does not recline, that’s his master who taught him Torah, and the other case, where it says he does recline, that’s his master who taught him carpentry, rabo.”

Nehemia: Interesting. So, it means teacher in that respect.

Gabriel: Yes, but it’s not a rabbi, a religious title, it's simply…

Nehemia: Oh, okay. That sounds like another topic for a podcast.

Gabriel: You could say, “the carpenter teachers were called rabbis.” That doesn’t translate, it's… one of the sages…

Nehemia: So, the teachers of the period of the Mishnah, you were talking about that.

Gabriel: Yes. And they already had this concept of brachot. So, there’s the Shema...

Nehemia: And what are brachot?

Gabriel: Let’s first say what the Shema is.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Because the Mishnah actually begins with the Shema. So, the Shema is probably one of the most famous things in Judaism. It’s a declaration of faith, basically, a declaration of God’s oneness, and some other things. In the Shema, there is a verse that says, "you should speak these words when you get up and when you lie down, and when you’re on the road, and when you’re at home". Now, regardless of what these words mean in context, it clearly was the practice, certainly by the time of the Misnah, and probably much earlier… I forget if Josephus alludes to something like this, that they were said formally in the morning and in the evening. Understanding that when you rise up and when you lie down as referring to meaning every day to specifically say these words.

There’s debate in the Talmud, and outside it, on whether the verses actually mean that, or whether these words refer to the whole Torah and it just means you should speak words of Torah and whether "when you get up and when you lie down" simply means at all times. That is immaterial, because the practice was clearly that the Shema was said in the morning and in the evening, and indeed, in all Jewish services.

Today, Rabbanite, Karaite, Reform… the Shema is part of the service in the morning and in the evening. I don’t even think that needs to be qualified. You know where we talked, we said maybe there’s some low church. I think you won’t find a Jewish service where there’s not some form of the Shema in the morning and in the evening.

But in the Mishnah, it talks about saying the Shema, and then it says that you say two brachot before, and then after. Or whatever; two before and one after in the morning and two before and two afterwards in the evening. It’s taking this Biblical passage, and it is putting it in a liturgical framework, which is basically declaring, "this is the liturgy." Because I could read a Biblical passage any time. What makes it the formal liturgy? Again, leaving aside the question of whether that’s what you need to do to fulfill the Biblical commandment of the Shema, whether it is a Biblical commandment of the Shema.

I would, by the way, be really interested, I have not researched this thing in seeing the various Karaite points of view about whether there indeed exists a commandment to say the Shema in the morning and in the evening.

Nehemia: Okay, we have to do more research. And my understanding is…

Gabriel: I get there are multiple opinions.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: But I would guess the majority opinion is that no, there isn’t, but we do it anyway because we’re Jews. You’ve got to say the Shema.

Nehemia: Pretty much, yeah. That’s my understanding, but I could be wrong.

Gabriel: Because if you don’t say the Shema in the morning and in the evening, you’re a goy. And maybe even if you’re a goy you say the Shema in the morning and in the evening. Sorry.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: In the sense of…

Nehemia: A non-Jew, yeah, I understand.

Gabriel: No, I meant it in the sense of a Jew who’s totally forgoyished.

Nehemia: Let’s move on.

Gabriel: Yeah. You understand what I meant, no?

Nehemia: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Gabriel: In the sense of…

Nehemia: Yeah, let’s move on.

Gabriel: So, that’s one of the major components of Rabbanite liturgy, parts of which actually get imitated in Karaite liturgy much later than when Aharon ben Yosef makes his Karaite Siddur. You have “Yotzer or u'voreh choshech” as part of the liturgy surrounding the Shema.

And then the other major Rabbanite prayer is called the Shemoneh Esreh Brachot, the “18 Blessings.” And let’s not get into details of exactly how many there are because that’s a whole other topic.

Nehemia: Here I will jump in.

Gabriel: It can vary depending on the region. It depends on the liturgical day of the week, they are various…

Nehemia: But here I will jump in. So, I’ve been to Messianic Jewish congregations where they recite the Shemoneh Esreh, the “18 Benedictions”, the Amidah, and they include Birkat ha’Minim!

Gabriel: Pfft! Your readers aren't going to know what that means, your listeners.

Nehemia: No.

Gabriel: Oh, you gave a lecture on this?

Nehemia: I’ve talked about Birkat ha’Minim...

Gabriel: Okay, you’ve given one already about this.

Nehemia: It’s the benediction that was added according to…

Gabriel: To get rid of the Jewish Christians.

Nehemia: To get them to leave the synagogue. So, it’s a curse of the Jewish Christians.

Gabriel: So why are they doing it? Do they know what they’re doing?

Nehemia: I don’t think they know what they’re doing.

Gabriel: Okay.

Nehemia: Somebody obviously doesn’t know what they’re doing, let’s put it that way. Somebody may know what they’re doing…

Gabriel: I have met Judeo-Christians who did and then when I asked, “Why do you do that?” They said, “I don’t know.” The people who knew that was the purpose of the bracha, and these were people who had been raised as Orthodox Jews.

Nehemia: Wait. They were raised as Orthodox Jews, and they became Christians or something?

Gabriel: Yeah, and they became, as you said, Messianic, Christian Jews.

Nehemia: And then they recited the Birkat ha’Minim?

Gabriel: Yeah. I said, “Are you saying it against yourselves?” And they’re like, “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Nehemia: Wait, in what context were they saying it?

Gabriel: They were very wedded to the… they couldn’t give up the practice. Maybe eventually they did.

Nehemia: Wait. So, in what context? In the context of a Messianic congregation?

Gabriel: No, at home.

Nehemia: Oh, just at home they were cursing themselves?

Gabriel: Yeah, at home.

Nehemia: That’s really interesting.

Gabriel: Meaning, they hadn’t given it up because they couldn’t give up the Siddur as they knew it.

Nehemia: That’s really interesting.

Gabriel: That was part of their… you get up in the morning and you read the Siddur.

Nehemia: Wow, okay. That’s amazing.

Gabriel: By the way, this just shows the power of…

Nehemia: Of liturgy.

Gabriel: Of formal liturgy in Judaism, and for Jews.

Nehemia: So, this is important to note. This is a place where, I think, the analogy of high church collapses. Because as far as I know, and here I don’t know what I’m talking about, but as far as I know, Christians don’t have a concept that if I’m sitting at home, I recite the liturgy by myself.

Gabriel: Books of hours.

Nehemia: Say it again. Ah, they do have it, okay.

Gabriel: Book of hours.

Nehemia: So, that’s monks in the Middle Ages who are doing it. Okay.

Gabriel: Not necessarily. You find… again, I don’t know about today, today it’s certainly possible, but in the past, in 18th century, 17th century, you find books for noble ladies and noble men, and they have these illustrated books of hours that they are saying, and at the given hour they’re saying… And these people are not monks, these are married people who are... Again, the very high church, the Catholic or Anglican.

Nehemia: So, the concept in Judaism is that the liturgy is carried out even if you’re by yourself, not in a congregation. I once had this from a Karaite, a Karaite rabbi, ironically, who said to me, “Did you pray this morning?” I said, “Absolutely.” He said, “What did you pray?” I said, “Well I just talked to God, and kind of kvetched.” He said, “That’s not prayer. For it to be prayer, you have to recite the actual prayer of the Siddur.” By which he meant the Siddur of…

Gabriel: By which he meant: that’s not liturgy.

Nehemia: Exactly.

Gabriel: What language was the conversation in?

Nehemia: In Hebrew.

Gabriel: So, he said, “Ain zot tefillah,” right?

Nehemia: Exactly.

Gabriel: But what he means is, you and he were using the word tefillah with very different meanings.

Nehemia: I knew exactly what he meant.

Gabriel: Because nobody would say what you did was not tefillah in the sense of “va’titpalel Chana,” “And Chana prayed.”

Nehemia: I'm going to disagree with you. I knew exactly what he meant, and he knew what I meant.

Gabriel: Of course, you knew. But you were using it in different ways, and you knew that. No?

Nehemia: And he knew I was using it in a different way. Here’s what he meant; there’s a duty to pray, in Karaite understanding, his Karaite understanding for sure, once in the morning and once in the evening in place of the daily sacrifices. And what he was asking me is, “Did you pray in place of this morning's daily sacrifice?” And I said, "Yes, I did." And when he heard I hadn’t prayed the prayers of Aharon ben Yosef’s Siddur, the prayer book of Aaron ben Josef from the 13th century, I believe, to him that wasn’t prayer.

Gabriel: He believed that doesn’t count as…

Nehemia: Absolutely, 100%. He said, “That doesn’t count as prayer in place of the daily sacrifice. You haven’t fulfilled your duty as a Jew.” That’s exactly what he meant.

Gabriel: Now, were you thinking of it as prayer in place of the daily sacrifice, to fulfill your duty as a Jew?

Nehemia: 100% I was.

Gabriel: You were.

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Gabriel: Because there’s also prayer that’s not, there’s also, as you said, when you’re cold.

Nehemia: For sure.

Gabriel: And you say, “Oh God, get me out of there.” You’re not doing that in place of the daily sacrifice.

Nehemia: No.

Gabriel: And then we would all be in agreement, no?

Nehemia: Yes, perhaps.

Gabriel: We would all agree the attempt was not to replace the daily sacrifice.

Nehemia: In that case, yes, for sure. Alright.

Gabriel: But you know what? He might not use the word tefillah there. He might use the word bakasha.

Nehemia: He might, or chanina or t'china.

Gabriel: T'china, or bakasha.

Nehemia: Alright, so in any event, we have this Jewish prayer going back to Mishnaic times, Tannaitic times. Does it go back to Temple times, do you believe?

Gabriel: The Shemoneh Esreh Brachot? I don’t think so.

Nehemia: The bottom of you is cut off.

Gabriel: There are those who think so. It doesn’t make sense with my read of the sources.

Nehemia: Okay. So, you have this Jewish liturgy…

Gabriel: But it’s really right after the Temple period. You’re dealing within 15 years.

Nehemia: Well, I mean the 19th was added, they say, at Yavneh, so around the year 90, right? Is that correct?

Gabriel: Ah! But what I think a lot of people think and they don’t get, they say, "Oh! There were the 18 that must have been around for hundreds of years, and then the 19th was added at Yavneh." No! It seems more like that maybe the 18 had only been around for three months, and then the 19th was added. Maybe the 18 had been around for three hours and the 19th was added in the context of writing the prayer.

Nehemia: So, why is it called Shemoneh Esreh?

Gabriel: Because there are some versions that combine two of the others, actually.

Nehemia: Ah! Interesting.

Gabriel: And maybe only much later to explain when they didn’t understand that. They went back, and they said, “Well, we have this tradition that the others were put together by Shimon HaPakoli, but this one was by Shmuel HaKatan, and so maybe Shmuel HaKatan added it later.”

But maybe the story is Rabban Gamaliel says, “Who can make a tefillah, a prayer, a liturgy?” And Shimon HaPakoli gets up and says, “18 Brachot.” And he says, “Okay, but you didn’t include anything about cursing the heretics. Who can write one about cursing the heretics?” And Shmuel HaKatan says, “Oh! I can.” I have no idea. It could have been that it was 10 years apart, it could have been 20 years apart.

Nehemia: I got you. Okay.

Gabriel: I don’t think it was more than that because it seems it was all taking place at Yavneh under the auspices of Rabban Gamaliel.

Nehemia: Okay. So how do we get from that to piyyut, to “liturgical poetry"?

Gabriel: So, it seems that at the beginning there were no real fixed words. As I said, each bracha is some kind of prayer that concludes with the words “Baruch atah HaShem,” “Blessed are you, our Lord,” and then a concluding sentence. That was, more or less, fixed very early. What about the rest of the prayer? Did rabbis declare how the rest of the prayer had to be said? Or was it that a bracha could be something in your own words and make sure to conclude with this, for example, “Baruch atah HaShem, chonen hada'at,” “who graciously gives knowledge?” But the words before it could be a prayer about knowledge in my own words.

So, Prof. Ezra Fleischer was a great scholar of piyyut and liturgy in the 20th century. He says, “No, it seems that originally,” and I’m quoting secondhand. I haven’t exactly seen where he’s written this. I've seen certainly about some things, so don’t take this as necessarily 100% accurate. He says, “Yes, at the time of Rabban Gamaliel in the last decade of the 1st century. Rabban Gamaliel said, ‘This is the text of the Shemoneh Esreh Brachot. This is how you have to say it.’” And all further elaborations, all, as we said, piyyutim, poetic versions of it, all changes, all had to do with later communities that branched out and changed things to make it more interesting.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: It sounds nice, right? Wait a minute.

Nehemia: I don’t have an opinion on if it’s nice or not, but it’s interesting. It’s a good theory.

Gabriel: Is it? So, Ezra Fleischer was born, raised, and came to adulthood, and lived his early adult years in Romania. First it was fascist Romania, and then it was communist Romania, and then he went to prison for Zionist activity in communist Romania.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Eventually he finally got out in the 1960’s and he got to Israel, but he was already in his mid to late 30’s by then. He grew up in 20th century oppressive regimes where they had tools like newspapers and radio. They said, “We’re going to make a new official anthem, and everybody has to sing it every day or you’re going to get reported to the police.” They could do that because you're going to know the words, because you’re going to learn the words from the newspaper, and everybody can read them. You can’t do that in the year 90 in the Galilee. Well, Yavneh is in Yehudah, in Judea. You can’t do that! There’s no newspapers, there’s no radio. How are you going to write a complicated prayer and expect everybody to say exactly the same words?

Nehemia: Okay. Do they expect everybody to say the same words? Wasn’t it just a sheliach tzibur, the cantor, who was reciting the words?

Gabriel: Well, there’s a double prayer. Everyone says them silently and then the cantor repeats them. And yes, if you’re unable to say them, then the cantor fulfills it for everybody.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: But even so, are you going to send cantors all around the Jewish communities of the world and teach them?

Nehemia: Maybe.

Gabriel: Maybe? But it’s much easier if you’re in communist Romania and you have the state power, and you could…

Nehemia: So, you’re saying his interpretation was an anachronism based on those times.

Gabriel: Well… Listen, if they were the ones in charge, if the rabbis were like the fascist or communist authorities, then they’d have much more ability to make royal proclamations. They weren’t. The Romans were. They were the equivalent of the illegal… and I know they were given some protection, but they were certainly in periods of persecution, which they just had the Temple destroyed… they were more like the anti-communist dissidents who are trying to spread something. And then, in a world with no internet, it’s very hard to spread such things.

Nehemia: So, here’s an interesting analogy. In communist China today you have the official government church, an official Protestant Church and an official Catholic Church.

Gabriel: There are five. There's Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Daoist, and Buddhist, I think, are the official religions that they recognize.

Nehemia: Wow. I’m not sure about the Daoist. I don’t know much about it.

Gabriel: I know there are five.

Nehemia: So, you have an official Protestant Church, and then you have what are called the house churches.

Gabriel: Which are illegal.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Gabriel: They’re illegal.

Nehemia: They’re illegal. And they also aren't centralized because they’re illegal.

Gabriel: Right.

Nehemia: So, if you’re in some house church in a little village, you have no idea what is being taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, and you have no idea what’s being taught at whatever the other seminaries are in other places. All you know is what your pastor taught you, and his pastor taught him, and his pastor taught him.

Gabriel: And that’s today, with the existence of the internet. Although China very often…

Nehemia: No, it’s censored.

Gabriel: There is internet in China, but it’s very limited. In a place like North Korea, where there is no internet, then you...

Nehemia: Even in communist China, with these house churches, you have what Christians are saying are very strange aberrations from mainstream Christianity.

Gabriel: Interesting.

Nehemia: For example, you have a sect called the Shouters. I won’t go into all of this; you have something called the Eastern Lightning.

Gabriel: Wow! What’s Eastern Lightning?

Nehemia: Google it. The only way these things could flourish, mainstream Christians say, is because there’s no communication between the individual house churches and the centralized body of teaching. They don’t have a pope, the Protestants, but they have a consensus of teachers on certain points. And the people in these house churches aren’t aware always of what the consensus even is on these different points of doctrine and theology. Sometimes they are, but a lot of times they’re not.

So, what they tried to do in Hong Kong, before the current regime, is they would bring people over from mainland China for seminars to say, “Here’s what you have to believe. Here are the things you have to do. Here’s what we believe about the Eucharist," and all the different doctrines. And when they don’t have that, you end up with generations of people who are reading their New Testament and they’re coming to their own conclusions. Or they’re seeing what’s done in the folk religion around them. So, you’re saying Rabbinical Judaism was like that in the late 1st century CE?

Gabriel: I don’t know. I’m raising questions about Fleischer’s narrative.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Is that fair?

Nehemia: It’s fair. So, here’s the question I have, and I don’t know the answer.

Gabriel: Yeah.

Nehemia: Who was in control of a synagogue in Peki’in in the Galilee in the year 100?

Gabriel: In the 1st century? I have no idea.

Nehemia: Was it a rabbi, or was it just some…

Gabriel: What’s a rabbi?

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: I’m serious.

Nehemia: Was it someone who looked to the authority of the Sanhedrin in Yavneh? That’s the question.

Gabriel: I have no idea.

Nehemia: Alright, fair enough. And do you think in Babylon it was different?

Gabriel: What?

Nehemia: In Babel, was it different? In Babylon.

Gabriel: The 1st century during Babylon, we know nothing!

Nehemia: Alright.

Gabriel: But later on, they’re definitely saying Shemoneh Esreh Brachot.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: 18 Benedictions. But the formulation of them, certainly in different communities, is different. Certainly, in Babylonia versus in Palestine, the texts are different even though the brachot are the same 18. Again, you have 19 in Babylonia, you have 18 in Palestine, but the liturgy, the structure is very, very similar.

Nehemia: So, how do we get from that to the piyyut? Let’s get to the piyyut.

Gabriel: Okay. So, at some point you start seeing where, instead of any kind of text resembling the fixed text we see otherwise, we see the texts of these brachot. You see just the chatimah, just the “seal”, the concluding doxology, “Baruch atah HaShem,” “Blessed are you, our Lord who grant’s knowledge,” or whatever. You’ll have this little poem that is the whole lead-up to that. And not just that, but let’s say you have 18 Brachot.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: You’ll have a poem that runs through them. How can you have a poem that runs through them? It’s broken up by doxologies. Well, you can make it clearly one, because let’s say maybe each stands as its own rhyme, which may or may not rhyme with the doxology. And I’m getting a little ahead of myself because the earliest piyyutim were actually before the existence of the phenomenon of rhyme.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Hebrew is one of the earliest languages where rhyme appears.

Nehemia: Really?

Gabriel: Syriac is probably a little earlier. Syriac being a Christian-Aramaic dialect during these centuries, during the late Roman Period.

Nehemia: Okay, I've got to ask a stupid question. What is a poem where there’s no rhyme? What makes it a poem?

Gabriel: A poem is something with regularity. So, if you have something like a fixed number of words per line, or a fixed number of syllables per line, or how short and long syllables or stressed and unstressed syllables interplay and it’s the same in each line, certainly classical Greek and Latin poetry is based on…

Nehemia: So, it’s like rhythm rather than poem?

Gabriel: What do you mean "rather than poem"? No, these are poems.

Nehemia: It’s rhythm rather than rhyme.

Gabriel: Right. You can have rhythm. You can have acrostic, which is where each line begins with the successive letter of the alphabet or of a name...

Nehemia: So, would you consider the Psalms to be poems?

Gabriel: Absolutely!

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: In Psalms, in Biblical poetry, the main aspect is parallelism. So, you have in the Psalms… let’s look at Psalm 147, “Hallelu Yah, ki tov zamerah eloheinu, ki na’im, navah tehilah,” “Halleluyah, for it is good to sing to our God,” that was clause A, “for praise is sweet, and beautiful.” “Boneh Yerushalayim, Adonai, nidechay Yisrael yechanes,” “God builds Jerusalem, He ingathers the dispersed of Israel.” “Gadol Adoneinu ve'rav ko'ach, ve'litvunato ein mispar,” “great is our God and great is His strength, and to His wisdom there is no reckoning.”

So, each line has parallelism. Now, parallelism can be many things. Parallelism can be synonymous, parallelism can be related things, like the first clause of the line we just quoted. The first line brings God strength, and the first half says God’s strength is great. The second half says God’s tevuna, God’s thought…

Nehemia: Discernment, wisdom.

Gabriel: Discernment is great, but they’re still parallel. Parallelism can be opposites. Parallelism can be, “The righteous rejoice in the light and the wicked cry in the dark.” Especially if it keeps going on, and then it says, “The righteous are successful with wealth and the wicked decay in poverty.” It's about regularity, that repetition of structure. It all boils down to structure.

Nehemia: The example I love is, “Ha'azinu ha’shamayim va’adaberah v’tishma ha’aretz imrei-fi.”

Gabriel: From this week’s Parashah, yes.

Nehemia: Well, it’s going to be broadcast later, but you have both. You have synonyms and you have antonyms, you have shamayim va'aretz, and you have…

Gabriel: Ha'azinu and tishma.

Nehemia: Exactly, which are synonyms. Va’adaberah and imrei-fi are also synonyms.

Gabriel: It’s synonyms, but it’s different parts of speech. One is “I speak” and the other is “words”.

Nehemia: And then you also have three items in each, you have A-B-C and A-B-C.

Gabriel: Right.

Nehemia: Hazinu ha’shamayim va’adaberah, va’tishma ha’aretz...”

Gabriel: Va’adaberah, yeah.

Nehemia: “...imrei-fi.”

Gabriel: Ada’berah.

Nehemia: Adaberah, okay.

Gabriel: Yeah.

Nehemia: You have three and three, so you have the structure there. Alright, so we’ve got poetry in the Bible which doesn’t have rhymes.

Gabriel: Correct.

Nehemia: It has more rhythm and structure.

Gabriel: And parallelism.

Nehemia: And parallelism, okay.

Gabriel: Parallelism is the defining feature in Biblical poetry.

Nehemia: But not always. For example, you have a Psalm that ends repeatedly “ki l’olam chasdo, ki l’olam chasdo”.

Gabriel: That’s not parallelism?

Nehemia: No.

Gabriel: Not in the line itself. You’re right, it’s not parallelism in the tikbolet in that sense that we…

Nehemia: It’s a refrain, right?

Gabriel: But it’s a refrain, yes.

Nehemia: Alright. So, now you jump forward to… what century are we in for the earliest piyyut that you’re dealing with?

Gabriel: The earliest? Again, it depends on what you define as a piyyut. Murky.

Nehemia: What do you define as a piyyut?

Gabriel: Let’s say we’re in the 4th century, the 5th century.

Nehemia: Okay. Who’s the earliest? Do we know a name of a paytan, of “a poet”?

Gabriel: The earliest piyyutim are anonymous.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Gabriel: The earliest piyyutim are anonymous. The last, we say, of the preclassical paytanim is a man named Yose ben Yose.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Preclassical paytanim do not have rhyme. Paytanim means “authors of piyyut”. Preclassical paytanim do not have rhyme and they do not sign their names. If there’s an acrostic, which there usually is, it’s going to be alphabetical, which is also what we find in the Bible. We don’t find any name acrostics in the Bible, we find alphabetical acrostics in the Bible.

Nehemia: Right.

Gabriel: Psalms and Proverbs. Is there one in one of the Prophets? I don’t think so. Maybe.

Nehemia: There’s Lamentations.

Gabriel: Yeah right, there’s Lamentations, which is all alphabetical. Even the last chapter, which is not alphabetical, has exactly 22 verses. Did you know that?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: There’s no way that’s a coincidence.

Nehemia: Okay, interesting.

Gabriel: So, you’ve got poets, and they’re saying, “I want to write my Shemoneh Esreh Brachot. I’m going to start the first bracha. I’m going to keep the themes that are the traditional themes of the bracha,” which you can see from the closing doxology, which is “Baruch atah haShem, magen Avraham.” “Blessed are you, our Lord, the shield of Abraham,” based on Genesis 15:1, “Anochi magen lach,” “I am a shield to you.”

Nehemia: So, by doxology you mean the benediction, the blessing at the end of…

Gabriel: Those three words, “Blessed are you our Lord," and…

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Doxology literally means “an expression of praise”.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: And… Do you mind if I eat this apple? I’m just getting really hungry.

Nehemia: Go ahead and eat the apple! We don’t need to edit it out.

Gabriel: We don’t need to edit it out?

Nehemia: Wait, are you going to make a bracha over the apple?

Gabriel: Sure!

Nehemia: Would you share that with people?

Gabriel: Baruch atah Adoni Elohenu Melech ha’olam boray pri ha’etz.

Nehemia: Amen! Tell us what you just said. Don’t swallow! I’m kidding!

Gabriel: I did swallow! You didn’t really want chunks of apple coming through the Zoom?

Nehemia: I’m kidding! But tell us what the bracha you just said is. The doxology.

Gabriel: “Blessed are you our Lord, King of the Universe,” or perhaps, “eternal King,” because olam is complicated in Hebrew, “creator of the fruit of the tree.” Now, that is a very simple bracha because it’s only one sentence. The kinds of brachot that we’re talking about, which leave room for poetry, are ones where there’s a whole couple of sentences or paragraphs, and then they conclude with the theme “Baruch atah ha’Shem”.

Nehemia: Okay. Alright, so we’ve got the preclassical poets. We end with Yose ben Yose and then we get to the Classical.

Gabriel: He doesn’t sign his name. The only reason we know his name is because on certain poems it says in manuscripts, “This is by Yose ben Yose.” Can you trust that?

Nehemia: Oh, okay. Maybe.

Gabriel: I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m saying… because once they start signing, then you know, but until then… But my point is, I want to explain the structure first, how you have the first bracha is “the shield of Abraham”. So, I’m going to write my piyyut and I’m going to start with Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet. And I'm going to have something, and let’s say it even has rhyme already. Let’s say we’re in the 6th century, and it’s going to be about Abraham and how God is the shield of Abraham, protector of the ancestors, the Patriarchs, and it’s going to end “Baruch atah haShem, magen Avraham”.

The second one, you’ll see I’m still continuing the same poem because I started the first one with Aleph, so I’m going to start the second one with Bet, the second letter of the alphabet. And then it might be the same structure. I might have something that’s called a milat keva, “a fixed word”, such that every second line in the stanza begins with a specific word. So, my first line might be, let’s say I’m writing it, and this is a piyyut to be said in the morning service on a fast day.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: So, I might say, Aleph, “You protected Abraham…” And then there’s going to be a fixed word. The second line is always going to begin with the word shachar, “morning”. But I would fit it somehow with the theme of Abraham, so I’d say, “In the morning, Abraham got up,” because it says a lot of times where it says, “Abraham got up in the morning.”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: And then maybe I'd allude somewhere to the concept of a fast, or I’d have a fixed word. I’d have the word ta’anit, “fast”, somewhere maybe in the third line or at the end, “Baruch atah haShem, magen Avraham.”

The second bracha will be the same structure except it will begin with Bet, the next letter. And then again, I’ll put “morning” in the beginning of the second line, and I’ll put ta’anit, “fast”, somewhere else, such that it’s basically reframing the brachot, restating them in a poetic language. But by adding these key words, it’s keying them to the occasion for which it’s written.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Now, eventually the poets get bored with sticking close to the themes of the brachot, especially for poems…

Nehemia: Yeah, I’m listening.

Gabriel: Let’s say you’re writing for the Sabbath. On the Sabbath, the Shemoneh Esreh Brachot, although colloquially people call it Shemoneh Esreh, we have seven Brachot in the basic prayer. And the first three and the last three are the same as always, and the middle one is about the sanctity of the Sabbath. So, if you want to write about the theme of that blessing and the theme of the Sabbath, you’ll just end up writing about the Sabbath every single week. Which is all fine and dandy, but eventually it’s going to get kind of boring.

So, in Judaism we read the Torah every Sabbath, and we divide it for simplicity’s sake because yes, in the past there were various ways of dividing it. But any traditional synagogue today will read one Parashah, one portion, each Sabbath such that they’ll finish the Torah in a year.

And so, poets start writing… so, you’d say I’m beginning at the beginning. So, the first bracha, as we said, is magen Avraham, so I’m going to start with Aleph. I’m going to have rhyme. I might have an acrostic of my name somewhere in there, but I don’t want to write it all about Abraham. Maybe when we’re dealing with the Torah portions that are about Abraham I’ll write about Abraham, but what if it’s the Torah portion that’s dealing with the crossing of the sea, the splitting of the sea? Abraham’s long dead by then. So then, I’m going to write about that and only at the very end of the blessing I’ll have some allusion to, “and You split the sea in the merit of Abraham, blessed are You, our Lord, the shield of Abraham.”

And then the next one is the resurrecting of the dead, the theme of the second blessing. And then maybe I’ll say, “And then they passed through the sea and the Egyptians were dying, and they were so evil, they’re not going to get resurrected again. Blessed are you, the Resurrector of the dead.” They’re not going to get resurrected by the Resurrector, like I threw in, and sometimes it’s quite thin, the reference to the blessing.

The point is, what they do is, effectively they take this fixed structure, which, as Nehemia said, if you go to any Jewish synagogue today, with the possible exception of some renewal groups, and you’ll find there’s high church. These are the blessings you say. And it’s totally… I don’t want to say subverting. In a way, you could say subverting, although I don’t think the authors would have viewed them as that. And certainly, the communities that used them didn’t. They viewed it as very much within the tradition because you have the structure, it’s not just chaos.

Nehemia: So, this has been amazing Gabriel. You’re a philologist who studies piyyut, liturgical poetry, and here we had a poem, that was Eleazar ben Kalir. Who wrote that poem?

Gabriel: 6th to 7th century, yes.

Nehemia: 6th to 7th century.

Gabriel: El'azar bi’Rebbe Kalir, El'azar son of Kalir.

Nehemia: So, it’s from around, let’s call it 1,300 years ago, 1,400 years ago actually.

Gabriel: Yes. We’re in the 21st century now.

Nehemia: 7th century would be the year 600. So, a 1,400-year-old liturgical poem, and you are not just researching it, and interpreting it, and deciphering it, you’re actually reciting it as part of an actual liturgical service. And you’re doing it in a modern way with rap. I think that’s a beautiful combination. I think if I had gone to a synagogue like this as a child I might not have been so bored out of my mind.

Gabriel: And maybe piyyut would have been your favorite part.

Nehemia: It might have been.

Gabriel: If it was done like this.

Nehemia: But instead, they literally had an opera singer who would come in, and I called it "the yodeling". Maybe it wasn’t yodeling technically, but he would do all these flourishes where it would take him three minutes to say one word. And I said to my mother, “I’m so bored.” And she said, “Well if God likes opera, we’re all going to have zchus. We’re all going to be blessed.”

Gabriel: Let’s just say that the cantorial style that you’re talking about was also something very powerful in the 19th, early 20th century. By the time we were kids it had become Rococo, and the practitioners… there were some people who could do it well. Most couldn’t.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: The congregations didn’t appreciate it anymore, because again, like rap, it all depends on the… what is the word? It’s a word with an “R,” I think it’s a French word, the interplay between the performer and, in this case the cantor and the congregation. Because again, I’m sure the one in your synagogue when you were growing up was probably not very good at it.

Nehemia: He was actually a very skilled opera singer, and he was literally an opera singer.

Gabriel: That’s what he did.

Nehemia: But he didn’t understand any of the words.

Gabriel: That’s the worst.

Nehemia: I’m sure he didn’t.

Gabriel: That’s the worst.

Nehemia: And we certainly didn’t understand as he was yodeling.

Gabriel: So, I actually go to Baltimore every two weeks, and I meet with an old cantor who’s 93 years old. And he’s really into preserving the lost tradition of Eastern Ashkenazic cantorial art. And he says the most important thing is, you understand the words, you interpret the words, and you have that feeling, that yirat shamayim, that fear of heaven, that when you’re saying them, you mean the words. You understand them, and literally what you’re doing is interpreting the words. And I think that’s also what I was doing in the rapping.

Nehemia: That’s beautiful.

Gabriel: And when you interpret them, the people don’t need to understand the meaning of every single word, because you’re communicating the…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: I’m just thinking, if that opera singer had been a rapper and didn’t understand the words of this piyyut… and by the way, the number of people who do understand the words of this piyyut in the world today is probably under 15, it would just be awful. I can just imagine having no idea. It’s not about the genre, it’s about knowing what you’re doing. No?

Nehemia: Right. This has been wonderful. Thanks so much, Gabriel, for joining us, and this has been a wonderful conversation. Not the kind of conversation the audience would normally have access to, so I really want to thank you.

Gabriel: Thanks.

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