Rabbi Adam Rosenwasser

January 8, 2010

All About the Aleinu

This Shabbat, we begin reading from our 2nd book in Torah, Exodus. The central narrative recalls our liberation from Egyptian slavery. Led by Moses and God, our people leave behind their difficult lives as slaves to another people and begin the long, arduous march which will eventually bring first Torah and then a home of our own in Eretz Yisrael. According to Nahum Sarna in the introduction to his book, Exploring Exodus,

While the book is more or less a self-contained literary unit, it is incompressible except as a sequel to Genesis. The narratives in Genesis focus upon individuals and the fortunes of a single family; they center upon the divine promises of peoplehood and national territory that are vouchsafed to them. In the Book of Exodus, the process of fulfilling those promises is set in motion. God first reveals Himself to Moses as the God of the Patriarchs, and the phrase “the Israelite people” appears for the first time.

This last statement is crucial. No longer are we a clan of families travelling around together. We are a people who, according to the opening verses of Exodus, have multiplied and become numerous during our four hundred year long stint in Egypt.

This concept of peoplehood and what it means to be a people is perplexing, especially during the modern period. How do you define “a people?” How do you get your membership card? Who is in and who is out? These questions raise themselves during one of the most interesting and dare I say controversial prayers in our liturgy, the Aleinu. (show slide 1, mishkan tefila with its 3 different versions) This slide is pages 586 and 587 from Mishkan Tefilah, the new siddur of the reform movement which we are using Friday evenings once a month and will be using during our new weekly Torah minyan which begins tomorrow morning. It contains three different wordings of this one prayer! And there are many, many more. How did we get here? Let’s look a little at the history of the prayer, see what changes have been made and how this all relates to us and our personal relationships to prayer and God.

Where did the Aleinu come from? Who wrote it? Well, like most questions related to Judaism, the answer to this one is complicated and depending who you ask, different. The Rabbis in early rabbinic literature attributed the prayer to Joshua, the successor to Moses. In fact, the Kol Bo, a 14th century commentator, records a tradition that the Aleinu was first mentioned after Joshua conquered Jericho. The logic is a bit bizarre. The Kol Bo believes one can extract the word “Hoshia,” a variant of Joshua’s Hebrew name “Yehoshua,” meaning “the one who saves,” out of the prayer. I won’t get too far into the explanation as it is fascinating, but not exactly a concrete proof .

Conventional wisdom (aka modern scholars) now believe the aleinu was composed in the early rabbinic period, perhaps by the 4th century sage Rava, as a piece of liturgy originally to be recited during the Rosh Hashanah afternoon service. In fact, it is during the high holiday recitations of Aleinu that on the line “va’anachnu korim umishtachavim umodim,” we traditionally prostrate ourselves all the way down.

By the middle ages, the Aleinu was already causing trouble. The first few lines and a translation should help us to see why. You can open your prayerbook to follow along with me. Aleinu l’shabeach l’adon hakol. Later gedula l’yotzeir bereshit. We must praise the master of all and render greatness to the creator of the universe. No big problems there. She’lo asanu k’goyai ha’aratzot, v’lo samanu k’mishpachot ha’adamah. Shelo sam chelkaynu kahem, v’goralaynu k’chol hamonam. Literally, who did not make us like the nations of the lands, and did not place us like the families of the earth, who did not make our lot like theirs, or our destiny like all of them. Uh oh. You probably see the problem here. These verses of the Aleinu are rather particularistic. They proclaim our uniqueness as Jews. Without passing judgment, it is clear that theologically, according to this section of the Aleinu, we are different. Another line may follow. You are unlikely to come across it in a siddur, but it does exist in certain publications such as Rinat Yisrael, the official siddur of the State of Israel. The line to which I am referring goes like this, “sh’haym mishtachavim l’hevel varik umitpalilim el ail lo yoshia.” For they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who does not save. Although this line probably originated as a polemic against paganism, in the middle ages, both Christians and Muslims began to believe that these lines directly referred to Jesus and Mohammed as false gods. Needless to say, this prayer caused a lot of trouble between us and our neighbors, and certain siddurim began to omit it in order to please the majority communities in which we lived.

It’s too bad that some people look only at these first few lines and pass judgment, because the second and third sections of the prayer contain totally different and much more universalistic theological ideas. Taking verses from Psalms, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel, the text continues with the following, God spreads out the sky and establishes the earth, and God’s majestic abode is in the sky above and God’s mighty dwelling place in the lofty heights. God is our God, there is none else. God is truly our sovereign. None is like God, as it is written in God’s Torah, “Know this day and reflect on it, because Adonai is our God in the sky above and the earth below. There is none else.”

The final section builds upon this middle one, with a messianic vision of God’s total sovereignty and human unity: Adonai our God, we therefore hope soon to see your majestic glory; to remove idols from the earth, so that the false gods will be destroyed; to perfect the world (l’taken olam!) under the Almighty’s domain, so that all will call on your name; and to turn all the wicked of the earth toward you. Note here this is not about destroying the wicked, it includes a much more merciful idea that all are able to turn toward God. May all the inhabitants of the world realize and know that to You every knee must bow down, every tongue swear allegiance. Adonai our God, before You they will honor your glorious name, and they will all accept the yoke of your reign, that you might rule over them soon and forever; for everything is yours and to the ends of eternity You will rule in glory as is written in your Torah, “Adonai will rule forever.” And it has been said, “Adonai will become sovereign over the entire earth. On that day Adonai shall be One and God’s name shall be One.”

This is the complete and mostly literal translation of the prayer. So what did early reform Jews do with the aleinu? Some, like Rabbi David Einhorn in his 1856 prayerbook Olat Tamid, decided to get rid of the prayer all together, while others, like Abraham Geiger, changed the wording to make it more palatable to 19th century German Jewry who were trying to better integrate into the post-enlightenment world. (slide #2 UPB aleinu). Here is the Union Prayer Book, the central prayer book of the reform movement from the end of the 19th century until the creation of Gates of Prayer in the late 60s and early 70s. You may recognize the beginning, “Let us adore the everliving God and render praise unto Him.” The text continues in English with only the universalistic mentions. Nothing about comparing us to other people. The only Hebrew of the prayer are the lines “v’anachnu korim umishtachavim u’modim” along with “bayom hahu.” The next section of the UPB remains more or less true to the universalistic aspect of the prayer. May the time not be distant Oh God, when they name shall be worshipped in all the earth, when unbelief shall disappear and error be no more. If you want to hear this beautiful prose read in the comfort of your own home, you can listen online to Temple Emanu-El in New York City’s broadcast of Friday evening services at 2:30 pacific time. I doubt that’s what Isaac Meyer Wise imagined, but isn’t technology great?!

Anyway, Gates of Prayer takes the Aleinu and brings back the original prayer into our movement. The siddur itself was created after the six day war during a tremendous period of Jewish pride so it seems more comfortable with the particularistic ideas of the opening lines. (show slide #3, GOP p. 615) However, look closely at the English. Although it does remark that God has “Set us apart from the other families of the earth, giving us a destiny unique among nations,” it does not use the negative language of who has NOT made us like others and NOT set our destiny like theirs. So the Hebrew is traditional and the English is close, but not literally translated. Our Beth Am siddur’s rendering of the Aleinu is most similar to gates of prayer.

In Mishkan Tefilah, the new siddur of our movement, we have a few different versions of the prayer. (slide #4, MT) The traditional beginning of the aleinu is on the bottom, and on top we have a version which erases the particularistic lines and bumps up the beginning of the second paragraph, “shehu noteh shamayim v’yosed aretz.” On the facing page, we have a creative liturgical interpretation of the prayer, which proclaims “shehu sam chelkaynu l’yached et shemo, v’goralaynu l’hamlich malchuto.” Let us praise the Sovereign of the universe, and proclaim the greatness of the Creator whose unity we are charged to declare; whose realm it is our purpose to uphold.” Very nice!

And finally, my classmate Dan Medwin (slide 5) created an alternative “green” Aleinu during our year in Israel. Let’s take a quick look. Like many alternative aleinu prayers, Dan keeps the first two lines and changes the next few to the following, “shehu asanu k’shomrei ha’adamah, v’ha samanu kishlichai haTorah. Shehu sam chayeinu itam, v’goralainu im kol ha’olam.” God made us as guardians of the earth, and who placed us as messengers of Torah; who placed our lives with theirs, and our fate with all the world. So in a few short lines, Dan beautifully proclaims our responsibility as keepers of the earth and that we have a destiny as messengers charged to bring Torah to the entire world. All the while, he keeps the same phrasing and meter so that this aleinu could easily be substituted using the same nusach. Brilliant!

The story of Exodus documents our beginnings as a people, and the aleinu testifies to our struggle between identifying as a unique group and being part of the greater family of humanity. Throughout Jewish history, this prayer has been used to strengthen our identity, and it has also been used against us to demonstrate our perceived resentment toward others. In the past two centuries, our movement has wrestled with how to deal with this prayer, what to say, what not to say, and why. Personally, I struggle with the Aleinu every time I say it. I think as Jews we are different. We don’t eat pork. Well, some Jews don’t eat pork. We ask lots of questions. We are seemingly never satisfied with the world as it is. Yet I do not believe different has to imply superior, or even necessarily to set us apart. I believe that our differences and differences across the human spectrum strengthen and bring us together when they are celebrated. I like to focus on the end of the prayer, that vision of humanity getting along and living in peace even as we differ from one to another. The Aleinu for me takes the world as it is and forces me to think about the world as it could and I hope one day will be. As the union prayer book’s rendering so eloquently states, May the time not be distant. To this I say, Amen.