467) Lechu Neranena on Wednesday

 

 Guest post by Moshe Tzvi Wieder

 

I thank Moshe Tzvi Wieder for sharing with us his research into the early Siddur (prayer book). Moshe Tzvi Wieder is the author of “The Siddur from Its Sources” (הסידור ממקורותיו) a unique Siddur which provides the earliest known sources for every part of the Siddur.  To learn more about הסידור ממקורותיו, see the site here.

 

Lechu Neranena on Wednesday

 

The Siddur from Its Sources, by Moshe Tzvi Wieder, Wieder Press, 2023.

The Mishna (Tamid 7:4) delineates which chapters of Tehillim the Leviim would say for each day of the week. While it does not explicitly state the ending of each section, both logic and early manuscript evidence bear out that the Leviim would stop at the end of each chapter.  

355) R. Moshe Ibn Gigatila: The Psalms are just prayers

Introduction

 

In the previous post, The Psalms are not prayers, we saw how Rav Saadia Gaon held the unusual view that psalms may not be used as prayers and that, like the Torah itself they are meant only to be studied but not prayed. Psalms are not liturgy. According to Rav Saadia, the psalms were used as a strictly controlled and regulated ritual during Temple times, but never as liturgy (supplications or prayers). On this view, the psalms were never an ‘early prayer book’ as was claimed by the Karaite Jews. It is believed that Rav Saadia formulated his unusual and limited view on the function of the psalms, in reaction to the Karaites, who had rejected the Rabbanite siddur and used the psalms as their prayer book instead.

In this article, however, based extensively on the work by Professor Uriel Simon[1], we explore another unusual view of the psalms. This is the view held by R. Moshe Ibn Gigatila, who believed that that the psalms are indeed prayers - but nothing more than prayers. And because they are just prayers, they are not profoundly holy nor do they carry any prophetic or spiritually subliminal innuendo.