Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur

Introduction

introduction every year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in synagogues around the world, congregations recall the biblical sacrifice of purification and expiation that formed the basis for the original Yom Kippur. This recollection takes the form of a service known as the Avodah, designated by the Hebrew term for sacrificial worship. In this service, the prayer leader describes the sacrifice in detail, but not before recounting the history of the world from creation to the erection of the Tabernacle. The text of the service is a long liturgical poem. Within this poem the leader repeats a confession that, according to the ancient rabbis, was recited by the high priest in the sanctuary. When he does this, he and the congregation prostrate themselves to the floor, reciting a doxology that was to be recited on hearing the name of God. This service, with its unusual prostrations, its detailed discourse on sacrifice, and its historical sweep, is unique in the liturgy of the synagogue. To modern Jews, it has been the subject of attraction and consternation. The great twentieth-century Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig seems to have been so moved by the power of the Yom Kippur liturgy that he revoked his decision to convert to Christianity;1 yet the Reform movement found any mention of the sacrificial system in the synagogue liturgy deeply disturbing and controversial.2 Today, messianically oriented sects of Jews pay serious attention to its details, publishing High Holy Day prayer books that emphasize this aspect of the liturgy, illustrated with speculative renderings of the Temple and its service.3 The Avodah service goes back to the early days of the synagogue, to the first few centuries after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 c.e. It is an integral part of the lost literature of the ancient 1. Nahum N. Glatzer, “Franz Rosenzweig: The Story of a Conversion,” Judaism 1 (1952): 69‒79; see 73. 2. Cf. Abraham Geiger’s remarks quoted in Jakob J. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism (New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968), 166‒67. 3. Mahzor ha-Miqdash (Jerusalem: Temple Institute, 1995‒97).µ 2 avodah synagogue known as piyyut. This complex and fascinating poetry was once sung in synagogues in Palestine during the classical age of the Talmuds and Midrash, from the fourth and seventh centuries. Although it was often suppressed by generations of rabbis, its ornamental beauty and its deep exploration of sacred stories ensured its popularity for centuries. This literature, which produced dozens of poets and thousands of compositions before the rise of Islam, was barely known to us until the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, a treasury of discarded medieval Jewish manuscripts, at the end of the nineteenth century. It could be argued that the discovery of this literature is in fact second only in importance among discoveries of Hebrew literary texts to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls for our understanding of ancient Judaism, for it preserves linguistic forms, myths, and ways of thinking that we would not have known from Talmudic literature. In the Middle Ages, this type of liturgical poetry was not always received with enthusiasm. In the Talmudic academies of Babylonia in the eighth and ninth centuries, the rabbinic authorities Yehudai Gaon and Pirqoi ben Baboi attempted to legislate against the inclusion of piyyut in the liturgy, arguing that it was forbidden to add one word to the statutory service.4 Their efforts, however, met with limited success, and piyyut continued to flourish even in the Babylonian Jewish liturgy and its Middle Eastern and European successors. In the modern period as well, piyyut was criticized for its length and obscurity, and many piyyutim were expunged from daily services in most Western congregations.5 The Avodah poems, a complex genre that includes myth, ritual, and biblical exegesis, can teach us much about the ways ancient Jews understood sacrifice, sacred space, and sin. They are also yield a rich trove of myths and symbols not found in the conventional rabbinic sources such as the Talmuds and Midrash. They contain details about the ancient Temple known to ancient historians such as Josephus and to authors of the biblical Apocrypha but not to the Talmudic authorities. Moreover, they constitute important evidence for the social and cultural diversity of ancient Palestine, while reflecting the concerns of the priesthood in an age dominated by rabbis. They are also valuable as 4. For an overview, see Lawrence A...