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lethargic_manWhen the individual has completed reciting the Amidah, they then recite the meditation of Mar Rabina, following which traditional siddurim then have a further paragraph, commencing with יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אַבוֹתֵינוּ שֶׁיִבָּנֶה בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵינוּ, וְתֵן חֶלְקֵנוּ בְּתוֹרָתֶךָ "May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, that the Temple be built speedily in our days, and grant us a share in Your Torah" which seems to be the saying of Yehudah ben Tema in Mishna אבות ch. 5 mishna twenty-something (20 in the Hebrew University online Mishna, 24 in the ArtScroll and 23 in the Singer's Prayerbook).*
* Though curiously the Hebrew University site has him saying rather כן יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלוהינו שתיבנה עירך בימינו, ותיתן חלקנו בתורתך, ועם עושי רצונך—can anyone explain this discrepancy?
Longing for the Temple to be rebuilt is something that goes to the heart of traditional Judaism. The story is told of Napoleon going past a synagogue on Tisha BeAv and hearing the sound of weeping from within. Upon asking what was going on, he was told the Jews were mourning their Temple, which had been destroyed. Filled with anger, he demanded to know who had done this to subjects to his, so that he might right this wrong. "You misunderstand," he was told. "This happened seventeen hundred years ago."
I have no difficulty with praying for the Temple to be rebuilt, or for Jerusalem to be rebuilt speedily in our days. The problem I have is with praying for the Temple to be rebuilt speedily in our days, because the site it occupied is currently taken up by the Dome of the Rock.
There are those on the loony fringe who say this is not a problem, and have drawn up plans for the Third Temple to be built on stilts above the Dome of the Rock. Needless to say, I can't see the Moslem world being enthralled about this.
Traditional Judaism talks about מְחֶבְלֵי מָשִׁיחַ, the birth pangs of the Messiah, meaning that there will be a time of trouble and war when the Messiah first arises, before the Messianic Age of peace amongst mankind is ushered in. This is part of the reason Reform Judaism has switched from praying for a Messiah to praying for the Messianic Age written about by the literary prophets.
Personally, I can't see the opportunity for the Temple to be rebuilt in peace coming along until such time as traditional Islam is no longer a major force in the world, which will take centuries at least, possibly millennia. The best one can hope for is a commentator to arise of stature higher than al-Ṭabari, who would declare once and for all that the furthest mosque to which Muḥammad was transported in his night journey was not Jerusalem:
The connection between Islam and Jerusalem rests entirely upon an interpretation of Qur'ān 17:1:
Praise to Him who made His Servant to travel by night from the mosque of sanctuary to the furthest mosque, whose surroundings have We blessed to show him of our signs; indeed it is He who is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing. سُبْحَٰنَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَسْرَىٰ بِعَبْدِهِۦ لَيْلًۭا مِّنَ ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْحَرَامِ إِلَى ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْأَقْصَا ٱلَّذِى بَٰرَكْنَا حَوْلَهُۥ لِنُرِيَهُۥ مِنْ ءَايَٰتِنَآ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْبَصِيرُ
This text makes no reference to Jerusalem; however, al-Ṭabari, the most highly respected Islamic commentator, says (Jami 15:3):
They say: It has been recalled to us that the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, was at one nighttime caused to travel by night to the furthest mosque while he was sleeping in the house of 'Umm Hāni' the daughter of Abū Ṭālib. Those who recount this are: Ibn Ḥamīd told me, quoting Salma, quoting Muḥammad bin Iṣḥāq, quoting Muḥammad bin al Sā'ib, about Abū Ṣāliḥ bin Bādhām, about 'Umm Hāni' daughter of Abū Ṭālib in regard to the night journey of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, that she used to say: "The Prophet of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, was not caused to travel by night except while he was in my house sleeping at mine that night, so he prayed the final night prayer, then we slept, and when it was just before the dawn, the Prophet of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, awakened us, and when he had prayed the morning prayer and we had prayed with him, he said, "O 'Umm Hāni', I have prayed with you the last night prayer as you remember, then I came to the bayt al-maqdis and I have prayed in it, then I have prayed the daytime prayer with you now as you see."
بيت المقدش (bayt al-maqdis), like Hebrew בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ (both literally "holy house"), refers to the Temple in Jerusalem (or the site of it by the time of Muḥammad). Unfortunately, al-Ṭabari's commentary is venerated so highly that his interpretation cannot be overruled; I cannot see one of higher stature arising in Islam any time soon.
And that is why, when I daven the paragraph at the end of the Amida, I emend the words, taking two words from elsewhere in the liturgy, and say:
May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, that the Temple be built at a good time, speedily in our days, and grant us a share in Your Torah. יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אַבוֹתֵינוּ שֶׁיִבָּנֶה בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ בִּזְמַן טוֹב בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵינוּ, וְתֵן חֶלְקֵנוּ בְּתוֹרָתֶךָ ׃
—because, whilst I have no problems in praying for the Temple to be rebuilt as soon as possible, I do not want it rebuilt when doing so would cause darkness and suffering, and the birth pangs of the Messiah, rather than the light and tolerance of the Messianic Age.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-04 10:35 am (UTC)http://onthemainline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/on-napoleon-tisha-bav-legend-tracing-it.html
so, maybe it didn't happen at all. I particularly like the comment:
"S.5:03 PM, August 11, 2011
First of all, I think many people simply assume that it's true, and if it's true then it's true and it's a good story to repeat. Personally I don't know why Napoleon's opinion is supposed to matter. He was certainly wrong about other things, not to mention a nasty sort of monster. But it's a good foil. Clearly the people in Europe, the masses, thought he was very very impressive. Talk about a man who was able to get stuff done. So it's not surprising that he was thought of as a man with good judgment and perception, even if I would point out that he was a megalamaniacal dictator who ultimately grabbed too much and grabbed nothing.
I'm not sure why people like to hear that Important People agreed with them, but they surely do. In the 1830s Salomon Plessner, a young modern darshan/ rabbi in Posen decided to put together a compilation of praises of the Talmud from famous gentile scholars throughout the ages. It was aimed at a decree forbidding Talmud instruction in the schools, but its aim was also for Jews to read it and raise the prestige of the Talmud, to make people think "Gee, if Jerome and Buxtorf said that about the rabbis, maybe the Talmud is pretty good after all." Rabbi Akiva Eger thought it was a peachy idea too, and encouraged Plessner to publish this book, עדות לישראל. I'm sure not everyone falls for this kind of stuff (clearly you do not, as evidenced by your comment) but surely many people eat it up."
Oh well. Let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story.
2) As far as I can tell, our sources are vague, at best, as to the practicalities of what is supposed to occur between the present time and the messianic time.
3) Implicit in praying for the temple to be rebuilt, is the assumption that for this to come to fruition, various prerequisites would have to be fulfilled. However, it is not controversial at all to suggest that the messianic period would be ushered in by miraculous occurrences.
4) I therefore have no issue with praying for the literal interpretation of ushering in the messianic time as quickly as possible and assuming that one of the miraculous events which would have to occur would be dealing with world politics and the "rival" religion of Islam. I have no problem in wishing for the messianic time as soon as possible, whilst accepting that I have no prospect of understanding how, in the real world, this could come about. In the same way, when I pray for rain in the Amidah, I focus on general environmental balance; when I pray for our elders in the Amidah, I think of the concept of the wisdom the elderly accumulate from experience, and I do not focus instead on any of the crotchety miserable old codgers that I know; and when I hear the words of the prayer for the Royal family, I pray for good governance (and low taxes!), as I am no royalist.
5) If this doesn't fit, you could also hang your hat on the fact that the Dome of the Rock might be on the wrong hill anyway. No archeological evidence for the first temple has ever been found, and the statement of Yehuda ben Tema doesn't, in any case, specify the location of the temple, or even that the temple he wishes for should be "rebuilt", just "built".
6) The point is, our prayers are open for lots of interpretation. I would far prefer to engage in imaginative thought around the prayers, than arbitrarily alter a centuries old and ultimately relatively harmless mishnaic quote because I don't like it. I have always thought that one of the strengths of the jewish people is that the liturgy is same wherever you go. (I am intentionally ignoring sectarian and geography based splits here. Those splits are corporate rather than individual).
7) But then I guess that's why I would describe by views as being more sympathetic to traditional orthodoxy, and you are Masorti.
8) You might also be interested to know that there are those within the Talmud who are quoted as not being all that keen on the Messiah, for the same reasons you cite. However, this is also dealt with _within our ancient sources_. I don't have the references for either of these two statements, but if you read first couple of paragraphs of this, it will give you an idea at least: http://choshvei.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/protection-during-chevlei-mashiach-acts.html
9) Either way, thank you for an interesting post!
no subject
Date: 2012-07-04 09:20 pm (UTC)so, maybe it didn't happen at all.
Napoleon seems to be one of those historical figures whom stories accrete around. I'm sure he never said the palindrome "Able was I ere I saw Elba" (his English was execrable). And the story that pumpernickel was named after he was offered some on his conquest of Germany, and replied "Ça, c'est pain pour Nicole", i.e. his horse, is also myth, as the word existed before then.
If this doesn't fit, you could also hang your hat on the fact that the Dome of the Rock might be on the wrong hill anyway. No archeological evidence for the first temple has ever been found,
But plenty of archaeological evidence for the Second Temple is in existence, and don't you think the people who returned from Exile would have known which hill to build the new Temple on? (After all, many old people had seen the First Temple themselves.) I suspect the fact there's no evidence for the First Temple has to do with the fact (a) it's an extremely sensitive site, and you can't just go digging it up, and (b) the site of the First Temple would have been highly affected by Herod's extending the hilltop to build his temple.
and the statement of Yehuda ben Tema doesn't, in any case, specify the location of the temple, or even that the temple he wishes for should be "rebuilt", just "built".
It's true that the location of the Temple was not originally fixed: after all, the Sanctuary at Shiloh was a Temple building too (see 1 Sam. 1:9 for proof it wasn't just the מִשְׁכָּן of the wilderness years), though not generally referred to as such. However, the length of the Temple's existence in Jerusalem has hallowed the site through time; I can't see Judaism agreeing to change the site for the new one, even if the evidence comes up. (Compare the reaction of Judaism to the evidence that all Sifrei Torah today are laid out wrong and therefore פָּסוּל—it's gone into denial and tried to delegitimise said evidence.)
I have always thought that one of the strengths of the jewish people is that the liturgy is same wherever you go.
That's actually a comparatively recent thing, due to the existence of the printing press. Before the invention of this, there was a much wider variation in liturgy—everywhere had their own piyyutim—which the dispersal of centrally printed texts effectively suppressed. And five hundred years before that, there was a significantly different liturgy in the Land of Israel going back to Mishnaic times; that died because the community in Israel had to flee into exile in Egypt during the Crusades, and by the time they got to go back, decades later, they'd dropped their own nusach in favour of the Egyptian one.
It's also worth pointing out that the (early) history of Jewish prayer is one of each generation turning the previous generation's spontaneous pouring from the heart into a fixed liturgy, which really flies in the face of what the Mishna has to say about כַּווָנָה versus קֶבַע. In Mishnaic times, you could say what you wanted in a בְּרָכָה, provided you got the חֲתִימָה right. In some ways, it's a shame that the pendulum has swung so far in the one direction, and then stuck there; see my blog post on the subject here.
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Date: 2012-07-08 07:58 pm (UTC)