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ICJS Scripture Forum, 2001
Session #4

Scripture Forum
Session #4
Chizuk Amuno Congregation
January 25, 2002

Topic of study: the dynamics of repentance situated liturgically
Text: "Unetaneh Tokef"

Background information:

The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Geoffrey Wigoder, editors in chief:

U-NETANNEH TOQEF (Let Us Evoke the Solemn Holiness of This Day), name and opening words of a piyyut recited during the repetition of the Musaf ‘Amidah on the Yamim Nora’im [Days of Awe]. Its central motifs are the day of judgment, when "the great shofar is sounded" and the fate of all of God's creatures is decreed each year in heaven, and the proclamation that "repentance, prayer, and charity" can mitigate an ordained punishment. Jewish folk tradition associated U-Netanneh Toqef with the payyetan Kalonimos and legendary martyr Amnon of Mainz, and with the horrors of the Crusades. Documentary evidence, however, points to a much earlier composition date, during the Byzantine period by a Jewish contemporary of the emperor Romulus.
It was adopted by the Ashkenazi and Italian rites. The prayer, which describes a day of awe and terror, in which
God decides "who shall live and who shall die . . . who shall perish by fire, who by water, why by the sword and who by wild beasts . . . , " was regarded with ambivalence in many modern non-Orthodox congregations, some of which omitted it.
Max Arzt, Justice and Mercy: Commentary on the Liturgy of the New Year and the Day of Atonement (New York, 1963), pp. 166-171. Ismar Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin (Philadelphia, 1993). Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer (Northvale, N.J., and London, 1993). --GABRIEL A. SIVAN

Introductory remarks:

• In principle there are no petitionary prayers said on Shabbat. The focus on Shabbat is celebration and doxology.
• Many Jews only attend services during the High Holidays, which gives them a skewed view of the Jewish liturgy, since the High Holiday liturgy focuses more on human frailty. The High Holidays are a more appropriate period for repentance, not because God is different at this time but because the people are different.
• "Unetaneh Tokef" is part of the Musaf ‘Amidah, the Musaf service being the liturgical highpoint of Rosh Hashanah.
• [Additional information on the ‘Amidah, from The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, p. 42: ‘Amidah, meaning "standing," is recited standing. "According to the rabbis, all of the prescribed synagogue services that were seen as replace-ments for former obligatory services in the Temple (Shaharit, Minhah, Ma‘ariv on weekdays, together with Musaf on Shabbat and festivals and Ne‘ilah on Yom Kippur; Ber. 26b) incorporate the ‘Amidah in one of its forms as their central feature. . . . The ‘Amidah is said silently by the private worshiper and, in the morning and afternoon congregational services (in the presence of a minyan), repeated aloud by the reader."]
• The "Unetaneh Tokef" could be as early as the fifth century C.E. and as late as the eighth century. It was certainly in existence by the eleventh century C.E.
• The translation used for this Scripture Forum modernizes the Hebrew. The poetry of the prayer is difficult in Hebrew and thus not easy to translate.
• The prayer captures resounding phrases from the Tanakh, the Mishnah, the midrashim, and folklore. In a sense there is here a cutting and pasting together of God's former communications. God's words in this prayer, then, are supposed to reverberate with the texts from which the words come, which makes this prayer very layered. The "Unetaneh Tokef" is a very emotional prayer, and the moment is highly charged because the liturgy builds toward this moment.
• The style of each of the three paragraphs of this prayer is different. Each paragraph could well have been written by three different people at three different times.

The prayer and discussion:

Paragraph 1:
We acclaim this day's pure sanctity, its awesome power. This day, Lord, Your dominion is deeply felt. Compassion and truth, its foundations, are perceived. In truth do You judge and prosecute, discern motives and bear witness, record and seal, count and measure, remem-bering all that we have forgotten. You open the Book of Remembrance and it speaks for itself, for every man has signed it with his deeds.

• "Your dominion is deeply felt": This prayer realizes and celebrates the idea that God's kingship, God's sovereignty is known on this day in a way unlike all other days because the purpose of His sovereignty on this day is judgment. The connection with God is different on this day because one is, in effect, filing the income tax of one's deeds.
• The people stand before the Judge, the book is open, God reads the record and judges the fate
  of each person for the year to come.
• "[E]very man has signed it [the Book of Remem-brance] with his deeds": There is a tension in the liturgy: God is sitting in judgment on this day, but everyone is his own judge in that he has decided his own fate by the deeds he has done. The thing that is new is the reminder of the things one has forgotten.
• One's deeds determine what will happen, but God's judgment seems to counter human freedom. This creates a terrible tension that has to be held in balance. If the tension is lost, the ritual becomes mechanistic and one's view of what is happening becomes skewed to the one extreme or to the other.
• God acts through dictate and commandment, but human freedom must apply God's commands for them to be fulfilled. This notion shows the same tension and balance between God's dominion and human freedom.
• During the ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the individual has time and oppor-tunity to change the outcome, and during this period he is supposed to be working to do that, asking forgiveness from the people against whom he has sinned. God has nothing to do with sins that one person has committed against another. (At the end of an Orthodox Jewish funeral people ask forgiveness of the deceased because this is the last chance they will have to do this. It is believed that following death a person's soul dallies for a time and others still have access to it.)
• There is an ambivalence surrounding the concept or metaphor of kingship in modern non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, but if the notion of God's kingship is muted, what effect would that have
  on the integrity of the liturgy?
• Nothing is available on Yom Kippur that is unavail-able on other days: Judgment, repentance, and forgiveness are available at all times. The differ-ence is in God's creation of the day. There is a concentration of sanctity in time in this prayer. It is a leap into some other kind of terrifying reality. This moment is a suspension of time on the theme of mortality.
• The community inaugurates the High Holidays. That is, Shabbat comes every week whether the people are aware of it or not, but Rosh Hashanah comes when the community declares that it comes (even if the community is wrong about the date). The calendar in Judaism is a present, powerful force.

Paragraph 2:
The great shofar is sounded. A still, small voice is heard. This day even angels are alarmed, seized with fear and trembling as they declare: "The day of judgment is here!" For even the hosts of heaven are judged. This day all who walk the earth pass before You as a flock of sheep. And like a shepherd who gathers his flock, bring-ing them under his staff, You bring everything that lives before You for review. You determine the life and decree the destiny of every creature.

• There are two images of God on Rosh Hashanah: as King and as Shepherd.
• The reference to the great Shofar not only recalls Sinai but is also messianic.
• The moment of judgment reverberates even into heaven, so even the angels, who are also to be judged, are alarmed.
• There is a notion in this prayer that everything is at this moment up for grabs, and that uncertainty permeates the entire creation.
• This prayer represents a confrontation with one's own mortality. Such a confrontation is counter-cultural in America, which makes the prayer all the more terrifying. Life and death hang in the balance.
• Through this portion of the prayer the word "din" (judgment) keeps repeating. "Din" is not a comforting word like "hesed."

Paragraph 3:
On Rosh Hashanah it is written
and on Yom Kippur it is sealed:

How many shall leave this world and how many shall be born into it, who shall live and who shall die, who shall live out the limit of his days and who shall not, who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by beast, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning, who shall rest and who shall wander, who shall be at peace and who shall be tormented, who shall be poor and who shall be rich, who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted.

BUT PENITENCE, PRAYER AND GOOD DEEDS
CAN ANNUL THE SEVERITY OF THE DECREE.

• This paragraph, like the preceding one, is not comforting. It lays out in pairs of opposites the things that will happen to people, the ways in which people will die (or not) in the year to come.
• Penitence, prayer, and good deeds diminish the evilness of the decree.
• This paragraph was written in a time when life was so much more fragile than it generally is today, so in the modern world it has to be preached from the standpoint that what happens on this day will have an effect on one's life every day through the coming year; one's fate is sealed by the decisions one makes about how he or she is going to live. (Orthodox Jews believe that everything will happen according to God's will.)
• "On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed": On Rosh Hashanah the judgment is written, as it were, in pencil. A person then has ten days in which to work to change that judg-ment. On Yom Kippur the judgment is written in ink, and the book is sealed.
• There is an understanding for the thirty seconds in which this portion of the prayer is being chanted that there is no happenstance because God is deciding what is going to happen to you.
• A Presbyterian interpretation: This prayer reorients people to a realization of the fact that God is in charge, which makes this paragraph sound almost doxological. Predestination is a thoroughgoing element of Calvinism, yet Calvin held fruits and destiny in tension: There is human freedom to repent, but salvation is by grace alone.
• The older understanding of this prayer was that
  if something bad happened to someone it was because he or she had done something wrong.
  The modern understanding is that what happens has been determined by God, period; what happens doesn't necessarily happen because a person did something wrong.
• The prayer is intended for attitude adjustment. The point of the prayer is that moral behavior is critical. One's morality is a sufficient but not necessary cause for God's making the decision that something bad will happen to you. The way one lives determine how one will live in the future.
• The prayer forces people to focus on their mortality. It reduces the absurdity of death; it eliminates caprice, but it does not give control to the individual. One cannot control one's destiny, but one can cope with it.
• Hearing this prayer is how many Jews get their theology (i.e., they don't get their theology in weekly doses), and this can be problematic because people can take the prayer literally. So, when something bad happens, the tendency is to ask, "What did you not repent for on Yom Kippur to cause this to happen?"

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