The earliest texts of the Birkat Haminim
The birkat haminim petitions God to doom groups of people deemed harmful to the Jewish community, both Jews and gentiles. The blessing's text consequently was often adapted to reflect new realities. Throughout its history, it has attracted attention from those, especially Christians, concerned...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
College
2005
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| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
Year: 2005, Volume: 76, Pages: 63-112 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Early Judaism
/ Primitive Christianity
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| IxTheo Classification: | BH Judaism KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity |
| Further subjects: | B
Rabbinic Judaism
B Prayer |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | The birkat haminim petitions God to doom groups of people deemed harmful to the Jewish community, both Jews and gentiles. The blessing's text consequently was often adapted to reflect new realities. Throughout its history, it has attracted attention from those, especially Christians, concerned about Jewish attitudes to them. This concern led to extensive censorship of the text. However, modern scholars pondering the early history of the blessing had only limited evidence for its actual formulations. This article presents a panoramic study of the text of the birkat haminim from the earliest preserved manuscripts (from the Cairo geniza) until official Catholic censorship began in the sixteenth century. The six centuries plus of texts presented here allows us to document the medieval development of the blessing. Across the regional variants, we find an extremely stable structure together with significant openness to addition, deletion, or rearrangement of the parts. This data and its analysis provide a firm basis for understanding the prayer's subsequent developments and a firmer basis than previously available for reconstructing its earlier history. This evidence will serve, we hope, as a resource for scholarly discussion about the place of the birkat haminim in the complex array of relationships between Jews and gentiles. |
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| ISSN: | 0360-9049 |
| Contains: | In: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
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