Seyder Tkhines: The Forgotten Book of Common Prayer for Jewish Women

Chapter 8. SEYDER TKHINES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: THE MESSIANIC INHERITANCE

8 C H A P T E R Seyder Tkhines in the T wenty-first Century: The Messianic Inheritance Scarcely a trace of the tkhines that were an integral part ofAshkenazic prayer life three hundred and fifty years ago survives today in mainstream Judaism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, when the messianic movement had played itself out on center stage, all the things that the tkhines had come to represent were no longer relevant ,and the Seyder Tkhines were no longer a part of common prayer life. While orthodoxy resumed its status quo, conserving what had gone before, manifestations of the Seyder Tkhines lingered on and remain today in the twenty-first century prayers of two Jewish movements that are at opposite ends of the spectrum of orthodoxy:Reform Judaism and Hasidism. Both these movements had their roots in the second half of the eighteenth century. Reform Judaism sprang from the seeds of the Berlin Enlightenment (Haskole) in Western Europe, which expressed a fervent distaste for mysticism in an age of reason. The movement rejected a separate Jewish language and culture in its drive to foster the assimilation and acceptance of Jews into the wider community. This was the beginning of modern,secular Judaism. 113 Hasidism,in contrast,is a deeply mystical movement that has intensified traditional orthodoxy,while preserving the traditions of Eastern European Jewish culture. It originated in eighteenth-century Podolia, in the Ukraine, and thrives today in many parts of the world. A large proportion of its followers speak Yiddish as their everyday language, and since the foundation of their movement,Hasidim1 have composed a continual line of Yiddish prayer. Though appearing to have little in common, these two movements, Reform Judaism and Hasidism, share the legacy of the Seyder Tkhines and have common aspirations that were relevant to tkhines. Both sought a spiritual vitality and regeneration they could not find in mainstream Judaism, and both advocated vernacular prayers, comprehensible to everyone,which would be imbued with a deeper,inner meaning. VERNACULAR PRAYER Vernacular prayer is an important part of Reform liturgy and the Reform Movement has claimed that the tkhines were the forerunners of their vernacular of prayer. In one of the most comprehensive works ever written on tkhines,2 the Reform rabbi, Solomon B. Freehof, adopted tkhines as the nucleus of his research in order to justify Jewish vernacular prayer.3 Freehof quotes various authoritative sources that sanction certain prayers being said in the vernacular.4 According to Freehof, an important justification for the existence of vernacular prayer such as tkhines is the need for the individual to freely and spontaneously express his or her own particular concerns in prayer.5 But it is clear that the Seyder Tkhines, and other contemporary Yiddish prayers,were standard,formulated prayers that were neither individual nor spontaneous. Freehof’s assertion that tkhines serve as a prototype for Reform movement prayer, because they are composed in the vernacular, depends on how the term “vernacular” is defined. Vernacular prayer within Reform Judaism usually consists of newly composed works or those translated from Hebrew prayer,recited in the national spoken language .Until modern times,Polish Jews did not pray in Polish,nor Dutch Jews in Dutch. This would, however, be the case today in Reform Judaism . Meditative literary works appear in Reform prayer books, for example, poems by the twentieth-century American poet Allen 114 Commentary Ginsberg and excerpts from the works of Franz Kafka, which were never intended as prayers or targeted at any particular religion. All of these literary works and quotations are either composed in, or translated into,the national vernacular. Tkhines however,are composed in Yiddish,which is quite different in nature. Yiddish is a specifically Jewish language, written in the Hebrew alphabet, which was never confined to national boundaries. In fact, Reform Judaism is known for its fervent rejection of Yiddish in favor of the national language. Hasidism, on the other hand, has produced a continuous stream of mystically inspired Yiddish prayer that is specifically Jewish, some of which closely resembles tkhines. Of the various types of Hasidic prayer, tkhines seem to have most in common with those described as“intimate presence”prayers6 of the variety composed by Rabbi Levi Yitskhok of Berditchev. These Yiddish devotions, expressed simply and directly to God,may be recited by man,woman,or child,the educated or the uneducated. The worshipper praises and makes supplication to...