Harry and Gertrude Landy Study of Prayer, Prayer Books and Jewish Culture

About the Project 

This project demonstrates the commitment of Tel Aviv University in general, and the Diaspora Research Center in particular, to the innovative examination of traditional Jewish sources and customs and the ways in which they have significantly impacted later Jewish life. The project hopes to attract more researchers to the field of Jewish history and thereby lead to an expansion and deepening of Jewish self-understanding. One aspect of this project is a thorough study of the Jewish prayer book and its development in Europe during the Middle Ages – an exciting and varied history that has yet to be fully uncovered and explained. The goal of the project is to clarify the Jewish liturgical adjustments made in the Franco-German world on the one hand and in the Islamic world on the other, and ascertain whether the reasons for these have common historical elements and factors lying behind them. Towards this end, the researchers will analyze outstanding manuscripts and early printed editions that shed light on how the Jewish prayer book was evolving in Franco-Germany in the Middle Ages and how this laid the foundation for its later development. Particular attention will be paid to the common daily prayers, with the goal of identifying the factors that most influenced which kinds of texts and formulations were preferred. 

Another area of the project concentrates on mourning liturgy in the Ashkenazi communities of the medieval period. Based on liturgical poetry, statutory prayers, confessions, final testimonies, acts of charity, funeral and mourning rites, and evidence from tombstones, researchers examine the degree to which these communities were innovative in this area of communal activity and expanded the traditions inherited from the Talmudic and Geonic authorities. The treatment is interdisciplinary, ranging from the historical, sociological, economic and folkloristic to the linguistic, literary, and theological.

The study is headed by Professor Stefan Reif, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Hebrew and Fellow of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge. The research team also includes Dr. Tsur Shafir of Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Yaakov Teppler of Beit Berl College, who each concentrate on different aspects of the subject of the Jewish prayer book.

Corpus Christi Manuscript 133

Researcher: Dr. Tsur Shafir

A central question in researching liturgical texts of the early Middle Ages is the antecedence of the French liturgical rite and its relationship to that of Ashkenaz. One of the problems facing researchers in this field is the lack of early manuscripts, particularly those from before the thirteenth century. The primary source available to researchers is the Vitry Mahzor, however the wide dissemination of this text throughout the “Ashkenazi” region led to a situation in which the surviving manuscripts demonstrate Ashkenazi influences without providing an indication as to which rite came first. Of all the available manuscripts of the Vitry Mahzor, only a single example can be dated to the twelfth century.

The purpose of this research is the publication of a critical edition of Corpus Christi Manuscript 133 (Oxford Library Collections), with an extensive critical introduction.  This manuscript was a personal prayer book owned by one of England’s wealthy Jews, and it has been dated to the last quarter of the twelfth century. This manuscript, written in England – which during the period in question was part of the French cultural sphere – can greatly contribute to the inquiry regarding the relationship between the French and Ashkenazi regions, as well as add a significant new layer to our understanding of the history of prayers and prayer books.

Dr. Shafir is currently in the process of writing the lengthy critical introduction to the annotated edition of the manuscript, as well as a supplementary appendix with the French and Ashkenazic rites found in the Goldshmidt Edition.  Upon completion of the introduction, Dr. Shafir will submit his work to Prof. Reif for review and editing. 

The Origins and Historical Development of the Shemone Esre (Amidah) Prayer

Researcher: Dr. Yaakov Teppler

The main purpose of Dr. Teppler’s work is to shed light on the very beginning of the Shemone Esre prayer and its original form, as well as the question whether it was composed (or “fixed”) in the Yavneh period as a whole or if it was just a process of re-assurance of a structure that already existed.

The main source of his research is the Talmudic literature on its wide range of subjects, genres and compositions. This kind of research involves many difficulties when dealing with different sources from different places and times of composition and redaction, and dealing with those is the most significant challenge of this research.

The research of these questions consists of a deep investigation into other sources of the history of the time under discussion, such as Greek Jewish prayers, Judeo-Christian prayers, Early (pre-Nicenean) Church Fathers literature, prayers and benedictions in the New Testament,  Apocryphal and Pseudo-epigraphic literature, Philo of Alexandria and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Teppler has collected and analyzed this broad range of sources, upon which the work is based.  Though the initial intention of the project was to investigate the Shemone Esre prayer over a number of historical periods, his findings have led to a decision, approved by Prof. Stefan Reif, to narrow the period of investigation to the first and second centuries.

Dr. Teppler is currently in the process of writing up his findings and has completed the first four (of five) chapters of the book. He anticipates completing the volume by September 2019, at which time it will undergo academic and linguistic editing.