Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith: Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Germany

Appendix D: Margaritha’s Prayer Book

147 Appendix D Margaritha’s Prayer Book Margaritha’s coupling of his ethnography with a translation of the prayer book was a logical outgrowth of his goal of explaining Judaism and its private and secret aspects to Christians. The prayer book was and is an essential element in Jewish religious life. In the sixteenth century, there was no secular Jewishness. Every Jew, even transients and the less observant, fell under the purview of the local kehillah. Each man participated to a lesser or greater degree in a daily life that stressed the requirement of praying three times. Prayer was not conceived of as a personal obligation only, but also as a communal duty, a necessary element of the service of God, which fell upon all males thirteen years old or older. Female members of the community were exempt from time-bound commandments, such as praying a specified number of times at certain times of the day; men were expected to attend synagogue prayer services each morning and each afternoonevening . A quorum of ten qualified males was necessary to perform all the prayers. This number was derived from Abraham’s negotiation with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; ten righteous men would have saved the cities. The number ten was reinforced in many texts, such as the Talmudic tractate Pirke Avoth 3:7, where Rabbi Chalafta states, “When ten 148 Appendix D sit together and occupy themselves with the Torah, the Shechinah [Divine Presence] abides among them.” I The prayer book and the synagogue were the essence of the portable religion and culture of a people landless for nearly 1,500 years at the time of Margaritha’s conversion. The synagogue dated from at least the Babylonian captivity, and its nascent prayers and rituals formed the basis of a liturgy that developed throughout the second temple period. The psalms, biblical passages , temple practices, and blessings developed for daily life were the materials from which the protorabbis, the scribes and Pharisees, created an order of prayer. The outlines of the prayer book existed when the Mishnah was written down under the direction of Rabbi Judah the Prince in the second century of the Common Era.1 In its final form the prayerbook consisted of: 1. Introductory blessings and meditations; 2. Chapters of psalms and scriptural passages; 3. The “Service” proper with the call to worship and the Shema and its blessings; 4. The Standing Prayer (amidah) with its nineteen blessings; 5. Final materials, including the prayer for mercy, the Aleinu, and psalms. In most cases, the end of the sections was marked by a doxology, the kaddish. The development of the prayer book’s specific blessings and meditations , which came to form the sections, can be traced in the Talmud.2 The sages of the Talmud formulated and discussed the meanings and contexts of blessings in a variety of passages in several tractates that dealt with varied aspects of Jewish law. Such diffuse analyses of liturgical requirements presuppose that the elements of the liturgy were known and accepted as normative. The Talmud presents a worship structure consisting of morning blessings, acknowledgments of the creator, the Shema (the credal statement of God’s unity), the amidah with its initial eighteen (and then nineteen) benedictions, and scripture study. The exact order of a service is not explicitly set forth, but extra-Talmudic tradition indicates that the order listed above has been used for centuries. The blessings that were said upon rising were first associated, understandably , with morning activities in the home. Later, they became part of a Margaritha’s Prayer Book 149 communal recitation. They included general thanks to God for life and specific statements concerning his powers and mercies. As the Talmud says: When he wakes he says: “My God, the soul which thou hast placed in me is pure. Thou hast fashioned it in me. Thou didst breathe it into me, and Thou preservest it within me and Thou wilt one day take it from me and restore it to me in the time to come. So long as the soul is within me I give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, my God, and the God of my fathers, Sovereign of all worlds, Lord of all souls. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest souls to dead corpses.” When he hears the cock crowing he should say: “Blessed is He who has given to the cock understanding to...