In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

This line is so familiar and iconic, that you probably didn’t even notice when your own chumash said something else entirely. If you’re using the Hertz chumash, you’re excused; that’s precisely how it begins. Whereas:-

Artscroll says:

In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth – when the earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness upon the surface of the deep…

NJPS says:

When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep…

They both understand the opening verse in agreement with Rashi and Ibn Ezra, who both contend that here the word בראשית means “the beginning of”, not just “the beginning”. Still, these medieval commentators were potentially influenced by the science of their day, and certainly by the vowels on the Torah text, which were first written down only a few centuries before them. (Had the Masoretic scribes written בָראשית, the reading “In the beginning, God created…” would be clear. Instead, the Masoretic vowels seem to indicate “in the beginning of” or “in a beginning”, as the LXX translates.) Yet, it makes sense that the translation בראשית ברא אלהים is introducing the Bible’s whole first chapter, which concludes with ויכולו השמים והארץ (“the heaven and the earth were finished”).

We already see from this that a good translation takes account of fiddly grammar, textual context, and cultural context. Seeing as none of us are native speakers of Biblical Hebrew, translations are a very important part of how we understand the bible, among other essential Jewish texts.

Never mind tricky words like תהו and בהו and תהום (which are tricky because they are rare nouns from rare roots, with abstract meanings). Instead, take the common, simpler words שמים “heaven” and ארץ “earth”.
If we instead say “God created the sky and the land”, it means something subtly different. Through the word heaven, the reader views the action from a distance, either a transcendent heaven, an abode of gods; or what Jenny described as “a sort of cosmological David Attenborough, sunrise breaking over the globe viewed from a spaceship”. But with “sky and land”, the reader is firmly planted in the middle of the action of creation.

Not only is “sky” a plausible translation; Ibn Ezra – mediaeval grammarian par excellence – states “השמים: בה”א הידיעה להורות כי על אלה הנראים ידבר” (i.e. the definite article “the” indicates the visible shamayim); but also, the word sky didn’t mean “sky” when it first arrived in English. It came from Old Norse round-about the 13th century and meant “cloud”, and slowly took the place of the native word heofon. The word “heaven” and its ancestors have been used in all English translations of the first verse that I could put my hands on; but even as late as the famous King James Version in the first decade of the 17th century, the word didn’t necessarily imply the transcendence we now associate with “heaven”.

At least as problematic is the word “firmament” still used by the Artscroll Chumash. Who here has used the word “firmament” in conversation? In legal proceedings? In academic papers (excluding those about cosmology)? Who here knows what it means? The Hebrew word רקיע, which it translates, comes from a root meaning to beat metal, or to tread, or to spread out. The (not-so-new) New JPS translation gives the word “expanse”, but it was probably once understood as an arched physical surface, a curved metal sheet bearing the upper waters, on which stars would appear.

In reality, translators try to write translations that are accurate and readable. (Translation theory describes a readable translation as transparent, in that there should be no clue that a text was written in a foreign language.) While it is certainly possible to create translations that are neither faithful to the original nor pleasant to read – and some have placed Artscroll’s earlier works in that bucket – the two are usually in a trade-off.

Seeking to translate a text very literally will often produce something barely readable. However, when it comes to bible translations, some popular literal translations have instead just introduced new terms and turns of phrase into English, like passover and scapegoat from William Tyndale’s 16th century translation.

On the other hand, I thank Wikipedia for the following rather poncey quote from John Dryden (1631-1700):

When [words] appear … literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since… what is beautiful in one [language] is often barbarous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author’s words: (’tis enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate [devalue] the sense).

When I think of translations that sacrifice accuracy for – in this case – singability, I think of the Barry Sisters.
For those unaware of two of the most celebrated klezmer singers of the 20th century, Merna and Claire Bagelman became Minnie and Clara Barry on the stages of New York, singing Kosher classics like:

tzeina tzeina tzeina tzeina
habenaut ureina chayaleem bemowshava

But they liked to add another verse for their audience without a working knowledge of Hebrew. However, instead of a literal translation like:

Go out, go out, go out, go out
Go out all the girls
and see the soldiers in the town.
Do not, do not, do not, do not,
do not hide away from a son of valour,
an army man!

No; instead they offer the following reinterpretation of the song:

tzena tzena tzena tzena
sing a happy song and celebrate this happy day
tzena tzena tzena tzena
come and join us; sing a hora
dance- the night away (whoop up)

Perhaps already by their rendition’s release in 1961, the original lyric wasn’t so politically correct. Or perhaps they deemed it unpoetic.

To that extent, when considering the art of translation, we should also factor in its purpose. For example, bible translations benefit from familiarity; after all, the congregation needs to know what’s being referred to in a sermon. This may result in large slabs of King James Version’s fossilised translations being pulled into new editions of the bible text, despite the fact that the language used in that version no longer means the same thing.

We have already mentioned “firmament”. Another important case is Kohelet’s “vanity of vanities! all is vanity!”. The word “vanity” only recently lost its primary meaning of worthlessness and futility, and now it is mostly used for self-regard. The Hebrew word הבל means “vapour”, which is not the same as the “futility” Artscroll uses. Rather, vapour carries the sense of something insubstantial and fleeting, impossible to grasp. Perhaps for ease and perhaps for familiarity, the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation simply adopted “vanity” and other fossilised King James translations.

Another concern is acceptability: a certain bible translation might need to be socially acceptable, and theologically acceptable. The Aramaic targum of Onqelos, for instance, is famous for trying to lessen the anthropomorphism of God found in the Hebrew text. If you’re watching closely next week you will notice that in investigating the Tower of Babel the Hebrew states וַיֵּרֶד ה (Gn 11:5), literally “God descended”; but Onqelos renders it ואתגלי ה (“God was revealed” or “God appeared”).

Social acceptability might mean euphemism is used instead of literal translation. It is hard to know whether bible texts still use the phrase “Lord of Hosts” because it is the familiar fossilised translation of King James, or because it is now more socially acceptable than “Lord of Armies”.

In other cases, the bible text and its masoretic notes already provide the euphemism,
so much so that when in chapter 4 in this week’s parasha, the text states, האדם ידע את חוה אשתו, most English editions copy it literally: “Adam [or the man] knew his wife” [or, perhaps, “his woman”]… In the words of Monty Python, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?

Nowadays, some bibles are getting with the times and the changing ideas of social acceptability, and offer less prudish alternatives: now, Adam alternately “had relations” (NASB), “had sexual relations” (NLT), “lay” (NIV), or “made love to” (GOD’S WORD) his wife Eve. I can’t help but mention the so-called Bible in Basic English, which says “And the man had connection with Eve his wife” [wtf?] which is arguably far from being either readable or accurate, but is certainly not basic English! It certainly seems to be an example of going too far in making the translation socially acceptable.

The idea of accuracy or faithfulness to the original is also complicated because a single expression might have multiple meanings. The translator might choose to convey one meaning clearly, or they might try to retain the range of ambiguities in the original word.

If you reopen your Artscroll siddurim to page 12, you’ll find a prominent word that is difficult to translate. In Biblical Hebrew, עולם apparently always indicates “remote time” or “ages” or perhaps “eternity”. This allows for allows for expressions like לעולם (“forever”, or “for an age”, or “until a remote time”), מן העולם ועד העולם (“from the remote past to the remote future”), לעולמים (perhaps “for many ages” or “for past and future ages”). [Other biblical expressions like עם עולם and חרבות עולם suggest that it is not strictly a reference to “eternal”.]

In later Hebrew, perhaps under the influence of Aramaic, עולם takes on the meaning “world” or “universe”; and the word תבל which once meant the same fades out of common usage. The poets who authored bits of our siddur could then play with the two shades of meaning, hovering between time and space. Is עולם הבא a “world to come”, or a “time to come”?

We should get back to page 12. Take a look at the first couple of lines: אדון עולם אשר מלך בטרם כל יציר נברא. If you had the choice to translate the first two words either as “Master of the world” or “Master of time”, which would you choose? The context seems to favour “time” in my opinion. Is there a translation that could get across both the sense of space and time? Perhaps that is why both the new siddurim we are considering (Koren/Sacks and Expanded Artscroll) use the same translation, “Master of the Universe”. So unfortunately, we can’t use that case to distinguish between them.

In short: Although some translations are certainly more accurate and more readable than others, ultimately, translations will change the way you understand a text. They are, effectively, interpretations, and one interpretation is never enough.

Going back to where we started, with בריאת עולם (whatever that might mean), if we refuse the common interpretation of “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”, we can understand that this description of creation is not necessarily the materialisation of everything that is and will come to be.

Once again I refer to Ibn Ezra, who says the root ברא, translated as “created”, need not mean להוציא יש מאין (creating something out of nothing). Each morning we cite Isaiah in calling God יוצר אור ובורא חושך (“fashioner of light and creator of darkness”), but if darkness is an absence of light, it cannot be created ex nihilo. Instead, Ibn Ezra suggests, the word ברא means to decree and to delineate.

The real creation is in what comes afterwards, the chain of events, מעולם ועד עתה, from ancient past to now. In our parasha, ברא is used in the past tense, but elsewhere, such as in this week’s haftara or in Psalm 146, God’s actions in creating the heaven/sky are described using what Biblical Hebrew grammarians call participles, but Modern Hebrew speakers think of as present tense. (This is in fact an interesting passage to compare between Artstroll (p. 71) and Sacks’ (p. 75) translations, but it is difficult to do so in a speech.) The tense of these words does not translate easily into English; it is not the same as present or progressive tense that we understand from modern Hebrew. Yet it could possibly be understood that God is maker of sky and land and sea, and continues to make them, as with guarding truth, doing justice for the oppressed, or feeding the hungry in Psalm 146.

Perhaps this chain of creation is also why the book of Genesis so frequently says “begat”, listing generation after generation, each person individuated by name (except, admittedly, for the women…). This idea of cycles and perpetual regeneration is borne out in the word תולדות (often translated as “generations”) used to introduce sections of Genesis, but also perhaps in the Hebrew conception of עולם, in contrast to the far-off, smooth and continuous sense of English eternity.

The Mishna in Sanhedrin (4:5) midrashically learns the value of an individual life from the story of Cain and Abel:

אינו אומר קול דם אחיך אלא “דמי אחיך” (בראשית ד:י), דמו ודם זרעייותיו… לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי בעולם, ללמד שכל המאבד נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו איבד עולם מלא; וכל המקיים נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו קיים עולם מלא.

It does not say “the voice of the blood of your brother”, rather “the voice of the bloods of your brother”, referring to his blood and the blood of his descendents… Therefore Adam was created alone in the world, to teach that each person that destroys one life, we consider it as if he destroyed a full world; and each person that sustains one life, we consider it as if he sustained a whole world.

It is interesting that in listing the children Cain, the torah specifies “Yaval was ancestor to those with tents and herds”, and “Yuval was ancestor to players of lyre and pipe” and “Tuval-cain forged instruments of iron and copper”. So despite the Rabbinic understanding that this entire family line was wiped out by the flood, still they may each leave a heritage. And as Nachmanides says many times when commenting on the stories of Genesis, מעשה אבות סימן לבנים, “the deeds of the fathers are a sign to the sons”; so the ages of the past are like the ages of the future.

So while we rest on delineations set out from the beginning of creation, we needn’t be restrained by them; we each have the opportunity to act in the image of God, and to create a world, an age, an eternity.

Shabbat shalom.

What has been is what will be, and what was done will be done again, for there is nothing new under the sun.

Though often deeply profound, the words of Kohelet can be depressing.

Some have said that’s precisely why Ecclesiastes is read on Sukkot; to temper its joy, and its famed frivolity the likes of which led to the institution of the mechitza in Second Temple times.

Others connect the book to the theme of transience and fragility we feel in our sukkah, not certain if we’ll be eating dinner with a garnish of rain; how we sit there despite the prefabricated hut convulsing around us, like it did during Thursday’s breakfast. We are vulnerable to the elements, and are forced to understand that the world is turning and life will pass quickly.

A poetic approach might say that the book was written in the autumn of Solomon’s life, and so its connection to sukkot is seasonal; a chassid could suggest a theme of letting the divine shine into the mundane.

I, a lover of words, will note that the common translation of Kohelet as “assembly” is a synonym for one translation of Shemini Atzeret, “the eighth, a day of assembly”. Now, the pedantic could point out that we read it on shabbat of Sukkot, not always Shemini Atzeret; I would point right back and say: that it’s always read on the eighth day by Yemenites, Italians, some Sefaradim and others.

The custom to read Ecclesiastes on this festival was a late one, first evidenced in the 12^th century Machzor Vitry. As well as being the last book to join our festival rite, it was apparently the last book to join the Bible. The Mishna in Yadayim makes clear that there was debate regarding whether Kohelet was to be canonised, but Beit Hillel essentially forced the Sanhedrin to include it, against the will of Beit Shammai.

What makes Kohelet so controversial?

The Babylonian Talmud in Shabbat relates that the Sages wanted to destroy Kohelet because of numerous internal contradictions, but did not, for its beginning and its end are words of Torah; which presumably justifies the 11 chapters in between.

The Midrash complains about its heretical advice: “Rejoice in your youth, … and walk in the ways of your heart” is the opposite of the shema‘s “do not turn after your heart and your eyes.” Once people are given free rein to follow their desires, the midrash claims, “לית דין ולית דיין”, there is no law and no lawmaker! But Kohelet completes its passage: “for all these things God will bring justice.” And once again, it is redeemed.

The Tosefta brings the argument of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasia, that Kohelet is the unholy word of man, in contrast with the almost-as-controversial Song of Songs which was divinely inspired (written with רוח הקודש).

But Ecclesiastes isn’t the only thing we read today that has been criticised for its unholy authorship.

We recited the prayer of Geshem by Eleazar ben Kalir, instead of simply declaring: God is the One who makes the wind blow and the rain descend. This piyyut begins by introducing an angel named Af-Bri whose role it is to bring the rain, and whose name is derived from a midrashic reading of a verse in Job.
The Artscroll Siddur cites Rashi for the midrash, which makes little sense as the piyyut‘s traditional attribution precedes Rashi by centuries. For all we know, Eleazar Kalir may have come up with this interpretation himself.

Modern readers of such a piyyut may be worried by the latent polytheism in seeking an angelic intercessor whilst otherwise acclaiming the One God in the opening of the Amida. Medieval Rabbis were concerned just the same. Certainly, it is hard to tell in such poetry: what is authentic doctrine, and what is newly introduced by the poet who, Maimonides exclaims, was often not a scholar?

Piyyut, a cousin of the English word poem, can broadly refer to all Hebrew poem-prayers. They are often given purpose-specific names such as selichot, yotzerot, hosha’not, kinot, zemirot; they count among their ranks such distinguished members as Yigdal, Adon Olam, El Adon, An’im Zemirot, Vechol Ma’aminim, etc.

Piyut is certainly a poetic art-form, though quite different from the proverbs of Kohelet. For example, Solomon’s words: “a name is better than scented oil, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth”. This mini-poem condenses deep meaning into a single line with beautiful chiastic structure and alliteration. Listen to it: טוֹב שֵׁם, מִשֶּׁמֶן טוֹב; וְיוֹם הַמָּוֶת, מִיּוֹם הִוָּלְדוֹ.

Though it retained some of these literary methods, the Kaliric piyut focused more on innovative allusions to text and tradition within witty patterns of rhyme, rhythm and acrostic, a little reminiscent of poetry in the Book of Psalms. In today’s Prayer for Rain, we asked to be blessed in the memory of each of our patriarchs, though none of them are named explicitly. Instead, the poet alludes to water in each of their lives, beginning each line with the next letter of the alphabet, and ending it with “מים”, water. The piyut was a new genre in which to transmit tradition, and a new form for Jewish poetic expression.

Yet this early genre of piyut came under fire, not only for its creation of divine intercessors; its out-dated world-view; and its anthropomorphism of God as is replete in An’im Zemirot, but also because its riddling language was often so obscure as to be unintelligible. Avraham Ibn Ezra was outspoken against Eleazar ben Kalir’s predilection toward rare words – even made-up words – and poor Hebrew grammar, which became the foundational prototype for many later paytanim. Admittedly, I do find Ibn Ezra’s poetry (e.g. Ki Eshmera Shabbat), much much easier to understand.

There are other reasons these poems were controversial; the Babylonian Geonim saw it as a custom of the Land of Israel, intruding into the space of the statutory, standardised prayer service.

Maimonides blames piyutim as “the major cause for the lack of devotion and for the lightheartedness of the masses which impels them to talk during prayer” (though I think the evidence disagrees with him). These additions to the prayer, coupled with a chazan basking in the spotlight, made the service unbearably long (much like my divrei torah). Kohelet was quoted at them: “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools!”

Yet these poems brought creativity into the prayer service. In fact, they only became popular once the regular prayers became more fixed. A curious example: it was once common to use the texts of related berakhot interchangeably. So in the Cairo Geniza we find a siddur where the blessing “ולירושלים עירך” in the Amida is replaced by “רחם נא ה’ אלהינו על ישראל עמך”, which we know from birkat hamazon; after all, both end by blessing God, “rebuilder of Jerusalem”.

But the Amida text was eventually fixed, and the piyutim began to appear. The piyut library soon also settled; very few great piyyutim were composed after the thirteenth century. With printing, congregations could select from a wider choice of poems, but eventually certain songs found permanent homes in the liturgy, and others disappeared.

To expand on the Artscroll Machzor:

A few piyutim that are omitted by the vast majority of congregations have been included in an appendix which can be read with a magnifying glass, a dictionary of obscure Hebrew words, a PhD in medieval Hebrew literature and a two-week speed-reading course we call sliches (סליחות).

We have seen that there was a time when the bible was in flux, with books like Kohelet in question; later it was the regular prayer service, and after that, its poetic supplements. So it may be no surprise that the waning of piyut in 19^th century Europe came with the flourishing of the cantorial and choral art in the synagogue, and the creation of a new song, vastly distinct from the previously chanted nusah. This change, too, has been hotly debated.

So history repeats itself. What will our next avenue of controversial creativity in public prayer be, when, somehow, the music stops?

Thus said Kohelet, “What has been is what will be, and what was done will be done again.”

Perhaps it’s not so depressing after all.

Of course (in my way of doing things), my idea was somewhat more ambitious. Which is why it never got done. I’d like to see:

• More annotation of the origin of lyrics and tunes
• Links between tunes which are applied to different prayers

Essentially this means that the tune and the words are separated, and each of them could be annotated with Hebrew, transcription, translation, authorship/variant notes… and somewhere in the intersection people would upload recordings. Maybe I can ask Mendy and Gabe to work on it. Or mabye it was just too much to ever make a site out of and they’ve got it right.

Either way, I’ll need to find some time to record some tunes. (Because most of their voices are terrible…)

Not only do I have to work out the tune, but there seem to be a variety of texts for the purpose. This chart compares a few samples. Any bits people particularly like or don’t like??

• Is God a dweller on high, or a father to orphans?
• Should God procure space upon or under the wings of His presence?
• Do we mourn “6 million Jews”, or “our brothers, Children of Israel”, or “multitudes of thousands of Israel”, or the “holy and pure”?
• Do we specify “men, women and children”?
• Do we state that their death was “in the sanctification of God’s Name”?
• What different means of death should we list?
• Do we name the holocaust, or list the camps, or mention Germans, or Nazis, or that their name should be erased?
• Do we give attribution to our prayer for them, or to our charity on their behalf?
• Do we mention that among them were the righteous and learned?
• And why is יום pluralised irregularly as ימין when it follows the word קץ?

Since the large Artscroll Siddur that we have at the pulpit doesn’t contain any of these prayers, and especially none specifically for Australia, I’ve put them together on a Letter-sized piece of paper, hopefully perfect to stick in on page 451 over the English translation of Yekum Purkan, which no one at the pulpit reads anyway. With the help of the Rabbinical Council Siddur, I have also attempted to translate the Prayer for Australia into Hebrew, as I have heard requests for that in the past when in other synagogues.

So here it is: Prayers for Australia, Israel and the IDF, ready for printing and pasting! (And hopefully without too many errors!)

Now I just have to remember to do that myself before the coming weekend.

ותערב לפניך עתירתנו כעולה וכקרבן. אנא, רחום, ברחמיך הרבים השב שכינתך לציון עירך, וסדר העבודה לירושלים. ותחזינה עינינו בשובך לציון ברחמים, ושם נעבדך ביראה כימי עולם וכשנים קדמוניות. ברוך אתה ה’ שאותך לבדך ביראה נעבוד.

May our petition be pleasing before you as a sacrificial offering. Please, the Merciful, in your great mercy, return your presence to Zion your city, and the temple service to Jerusalem. And may our eyes see your return to Zion with mercy, and there we shall serve you in awe as in ancient times and earlier years. Blessed be you, Lord, for you alone will we serve in awe.

As well as being a beautiful prayer and, it seems, having an interesting history, I was alerted a few days ago to a variation in the vowels of the first word. We find:

וְתֵעָרֵב – v^etēʿārēv

in Artscroll

וְתֶעֱרַב – v^eteʿĕrav

in “Adler”, “Birnbaum”, Hebrew Publishing Co. 1928, Koren, Meforash, Routledge, Shilo, “Singer”

The meaning is apparrently unaffected by the change of vowels. I have become used to the Artscroll version, and yet I prefer the alternative, and not just because it is much more popular. Rather, here’s why…

The root ערב means a number of probably related things: mixing, swarms of insects, taking a pledge, evening, crow, being sweet and pleasing. This meaning of being pleasant takes the adjectival form עָרֵב.

This vowel pattern of qamats then tsere is common for stative verbs in Biblical Hebrew. As opposed to fientive verbs (such as הָלַך, “went”), these describe a state of being for their subject, and include among them כָּבֵד (heavy), שָׂמֵחַ (joyous), יָכֹל (able), קָטֹן (small), חָכַם (wise), and many more. In Modern Hebrew these would rarely be used as verbs, but only as adjectives, much as in English, used with the prefix “to be”: הָיִיתָ כָּבֵד, not כָּבַדְתָּ. Contrastingly, in Biblical Hebrew, we have expressions like יִשְׂמַח, “he will be joyous”; קָטֹנְתִּי, “I was small”; וְעָרְבָה, “it will be pleasant”.

When a fientive, dynamic verb is used to describe a state, it needs to be put into a passive form. For instance, שָׁמַר means to guard or observe, but “to be on guard”, statically, one forms the passive: נִשְׁמַר. We are thus warned to be alert with passive forms הִזָּהֵר and הִשָּׁמֵר.

As such, I had thought that stative verbs should not need to be passivised, as Artscroll has done with וְתֵעָרֵב (where they got it from, I don’t know). Nonetheless we have a common enough case where they do: מָלֵא, “full” is regularly found in the passive נפעל form. While we have stative uses like “the earth is full (מָלְאָה) of Thy creatures”, we very often see the likes of יִמָּלֵא which we sing on festive dates after a meal.

But despite the fact that there may be exceptions, passivisation usually is not used with stative verbs (in qal at least), and is not needed to express “May our petition be pleasing”. Therefore I will suggest that וְתֶעֱרַב is more acceptable, and וְתֵעָרֵב even an error. It is a pity Artscroll has such a monopoly over the English-speaking Jewish world, so that when it errs (even against the majority), all err with it.

So when we get there this Thursday and Friday, I wish that our petitions be pleasing before the Almighty, and that one day Artscroll might be brought into line (at least on this one). Chag sameach!

((*pleasing:Pleasing like a sacrificial offering? As pleasing as a sacrificial offering? Pleasing as if it were a sacrificial offering? The ambiguity seems intentional and enhances the poetic effect.*))

((*noblessing:Some authorities forbid changing the concluding blessing to this variant, and transpose the line “ותחזנה עינינו…” with “ושם נעבדך…” before concluding with “המחזיר שכינתו לציון”. This is the custom of nusach Ashkenaz in Israel (as instructed in the Koren siddur) and was supported by Soloveitchik (or so I hear). While there is strong precedent to declaring earlier customs as faulted, I think that this adjustment loses much of the beauty of the varied blessing; it allows this vanishing prayer tradition to be lost even further (see the next footnote); and using the alternative blessing was clearly permitted by numerous generations before, so why suddenly become stubborn and correct history? Why, when the Ashkenazi tradition already seems too sterile and fixed, should we make it even more rigid?*))

((*history:Supposedly (read: hearsay), the Ashkenazim carried this portion from the nusach of the land of Israel which was rapidly replaced in the spread of Rav Amram Gaon’s siddur, utilising a Babylonian nusach. Consequently, “רצה ה’ אלקינו בעמך ישראל ובתפילתם” (“Have desire, Lord God, in your people Israel and in their prayers, and return service to your holy sanctuary and the people of Israel and their prayers accept with love, with desire, and may the service of Israel forever be desired… Blessed be you, Lord, who returns the service to Israel.”) spread throughout all versions of the prayer service, and ותערב is only resurrected for holidays and by Ashkenazim.*))

((*alecha:The second word also varies. Some have לפניך (before you) and some have עליך (upon you). In the latter camp lie Artscroll, Singer and Adler alone among those listed. The difference in meaning is again negligible.*))

((*aramaicparticiples:Not to be confused with Aramaic participles of a similar form, such as כָּתֵב, the equivalent of Hebrew כּוֹתֵב, following a pattern wherein Hebrew holam (אוֹ) becomes qamats (אָ) in Aramaic.*))

((*shirhamaalot:Although I quite often hear this word in “אָז יִמָּלֵא שְׂחוֹק פִּינוּ” (Ps. 126:2) of “shir hama’alot” being read יְמַלֵּא which means “he will fill” rather than “it will be filled”. Both readings would be valid grammatically (the former having God as the subject of a ditransitive verb, and the latter having “our mouths” as the subject of a passivised ditransitive, in both cases “laughter” being the other object), but our Masoretic tradition is not indicative of God doing the filling. Curiously, we find a remarkably similar passage in Job: עַד יְמַלֵּה שְׂחוֹק פִּיךָ, וּשְׂפָתֶיךָ תְרוּעָה (8:21), but with precisely that active פיעל form and God as the subject. It could equally well have been passive like that in Psalms; the Douay-Rheims Bible and Bible in Basic English translate it as if it were so. Going back briefly to the verse in Psalms: if the subject of the verb is פִּינוּ, “our mouths” (or possibly “our mouth”), shouldn’t we expect a plural verb, i.e. “אָז יִמָּלְאוּ שְׂחוֹק פִּינוּ”? Or maybe pointing it as an active verb יְמַלֵּא would be more accurate to the consonantal text?*))