The text that serves as the grounding for my understanding of tefilah is a Gemara in Masechet Yoma about the four words at the center of the first beracha of the עמידה (Amida). In chapter ten of Devarim, Moshe Rabbeinu outlines what he thinks God asks of each of us. Moshe then presents some basic ideas about how God interacts with our world¹.The first beracha of the Amida quotes a small portion of this section and refers to God with the following four words:

The Lord who is great, mighty and awesome (Deut. 10:17)

The rabbis attend to this phrase and note that a similar version appears in other places in Tanakh. Jeremiah and Daniel each use three of these four words, which leads to a fascinating debate.

Bavli, Masechet Yoma page 69b (Link to complete original text, Vilna Shas)²

³Rebbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, “Why were they called the Men of the great⁴ assembly? Because they restored The Crown to its original greatness. Moshe came and said, the Lord who is great, mighty, and awesome… (Devarim 10:17)⁵

⁶Jerimiah came and said, ‘Non-Jews are dancing in the Temple, where is God’s awe?’ He did not say awesome. (Jeremiah 32:18).⁷

⁸Daniel came and said, ‘Non-Jews are persecuting His children, where is God’s might?’ He did not say mighty. (Daniel 9:4)

Before we continue to the insight of the Men of the Great Assembly, let us dwell on Jeremiah and Daniel for a moment. They lived in a world  fundamentally different from that of Moshe. Their theological reality did not align with the theology that Moshe articulated. For Jeremiah and Daniel words matter and their meaning is meant to reflect reality. This is an important reminder for each of us on our journey to prayer. The words of the siddur are meant to be studied carefully and analyzed with integrity.

The Talmud continues, demonstrating what it is that makes the Men of the Great Assembly “great”:

⁹They (The men of the great assembly) came and said, ‘You should view it from the opposite direction. This is the might-of-God’s-might, for He conquers his desire by granting forgiveness to the evil-ones. And this is the source of God’s awe, were it not for the awesome nature of the Holy Blessed One how could the one tiny nation survive among all the nations?”¹⁰

The Men of the Great Assembly take Moshe’s phrase so seriously that they feel compelled to re-read his words, displaying a deep fealty to Moshe’s formulation. However, it is important to note that this way of reading Moshe counter-intuitive. These Rabbis felt that they could not change the words themselves and so, instead, offer a creative re-reading of the phrase. Jeremiah and Daniel, when confronted with sufficient dissonance, felt that they had to tweak Moshe’s phrase. The Men of the Great Assembly instead chose a creative rabbinic reading to force the words to fit.

The debate between the Men and the Great of Assembly on one side and Jeremiah and Daniel on the other reflects two competing approaches to Jewish life and Jewish thought. Are we meant to change or edit the words of the masters who came before us – as Jeremiah and Daniel so brazenly did – or are we simply meant to reinterpret the words of those who came before us? To be clear, in most instances, the liturgy of the Siddur is quite beautiful. It may require work to understand its depth – but that can be done. I am talking about the instances in which the meaning of the text appears to no longer reflect our experience of God.

When we first sit down with the Siddur, we must aim to approximate the brilliance and creativity of the Men of the Great Assembly. This means doing our best to understand the content, form, structure, meaning, theology and Kabbalah that may be hiding behind the words of the liturgy. At some point, in some rare cases, we will do our best and still bump up against a wall. Then we are blessed to have a different model that allows, and even sometimes demands, that we change the text – Jeremiah and Daniel.

The sugya concludes with a healthy dose of Rabbinic skepticism and a deep commitment to honesty:

¹¹And these Rabbis (Jeremiah and Daniel) how could they have done this and uprooted an enactment of Moshe? Rebbi Elazar said, “Because they know that the Holy Blessed One is a God of truth, they could not falsely flatter Him.”

Indeed, the same can be said for the entire Halakhik system. Halakha is a positivist system of precedent that must be carefully charted and studied to be applied in our circumstances. That discipline takes time, resources, rigor, humility, commitment and yirat shammayim. When we first sit down with a Halakhik question, we must do our best to approximate the brilliance of the Men of the Great Assembly. Then, after we have drained all our resources, in some rare instances we may be forced to fall back on Jeremiah and Daniel.

My approach to prayer demands standing before God as your true self with honesty and integrity. Just as the Rabbis present Jeremiah and Daniel in an ongoing debate with the Men of the Great Assembly as to what four simple words might mean, it is our task to approach the siddur in its entirety, and the Halkhik system more broadly, with that same commitment. This demands that we analyze the parts of our mesorah that might challenge us. We can not afford to simply gloss over those aspects that make us feel uncomfortable. In fact, it is through careful analysis that we can reinvigorate commitment to Torah and Mitzvot.

This is not a simple task. Being honest with God requires being honest with our selves. It is only from a posture of radical honesty and integrity that we can stand before the Master of the World. May we all be blessed to know who we are and before whom we stand.

דע את עצמך ולפני מי אתה עומד

1. Chapter six of Devarim opens with the first chapter of the Shema and chapter eleven contains the second chapter, והיה אם שמוע. At some level, these six chapters represent an extended statement of faith and an elaboration on the first two of the ten commandments.
2. I feel blessed to have heard this text taught by Rabbi David Hartman z”l many years ago. He subsequently wrote what would become his final book entitled The God Who Hates Lies: Confronting & Rethinking Jewish Tradition together with Charlie Buckholtz. R. Hartman begins chapter one with this text (pages 32 – 34) and returns to this text in chapter five (pages 143 – 146). In that penultimate chapter he presents the debate between Jeremiah / Daniel and the Men of the Great Assembly as parallel to a famous debate between Rabbi Rackman and Rabbi Soloveitchik regarding the nature of Rabbinic Halakhik presumptions (חזקות) found in the Talmud. It is important to note that this book represents Rabbi Hartman’s harshest critique of the Orthodox community, for which he never ultimately offered a defense.
3. אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי, למה נקרא שמן אנשי כנסת הגדולה? שהחזירו עטרה ליושנה. אתא משה אמר (דברים י) הא-ל הגדל הגבר והנורא.
4. For an explanation as to why we refer to them as the Men of the Great Assembly and not the Mighty or Awesome Assembly, see Rabbi Zev Leff’s commentary on the amida called Shemoneh Esreh: The Depth and Beauty of Our Daily Tefillah Targum Press (2008).
5. See also Rav Yoel Bin Nun in the Alon of Yehivat Kibbutz ha-Dati Ein Tzurim, volume 37 (September, 2002 – אלול תשס”ב) pages 5 to 30 (Hebrew) where he does a detailed comparison of this passage as it appears in the Bavli to the parallel in the Yerushalmi Megila 3:6, 74c as well as an analysis of the nature of the prayers of Jeremiah and Daniel compared to Moshe. This article is the second in a series in which Rav Bin Nun is outlining his theory about the origins of the fixed text of tefilla.
6. אתא ירמיה ואמר: נכרים מקרקרין בהיכלו, איה נוראותיו? לא אמר נורא.
7. Rabbi Moshe Shapiro z”l is his Afikei Mayyim (Hebrew) on Beit ha-Mikdash Churban v’Nechama also relies heavily on this passage to deal with the theological problem of hester panim and divine silence in the face of Jewish suffering. From chapter two until chapter fourteen he returns to the absence of God’s awe time and again. His most complete treatments are quite radical. In chapter two he uses Rebbi Akiva’s laughter at the destruction (the end of Bavli Makkot 24a) as a springboard to imagine two different paths of feeling God’s presence – one through miracles and the other through absence. In chapter fourteen (pages 183 to 184, with footnote number 3) he unpacks the reality of the modern challenge that we simply do not have access to God in the same way any longer. He goes further to claim that the insight of the Men of the Great Assembly may have only been limited to the time of the second Temple. What that means for the 21st century can be deeply unsettling.
8. אתא דניאל, אמר: נכרים משתעבדים בבנין, איה גבורותיו? לא אמר גבור.
9. אתו אינהו ואמרו: אדרבה, זו היא גבורת גבורתו שכובש את יצרו, שנותן ארך אפים לרשעים. ואלו הן נוראותיו – שאלמלא מוראו של הקדוש ברוך הוא היאך אומה אחת יכולה להתקיים בין האומות?
10. Dr. Hilary Putnam, in the Helen and Martin Schwartz lectures in Jewish Studies at Indiana University 1999, subsequently published in Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosensweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein by the Indiana University Press, refers to our passage as well (page 57). He opens his chapter on Buber with reference to another book by R. David Hartman, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition to frame the question of evil within an “event-grounded theology”. He uses this midrash to show the Rabbinic move away from a guilt-ridden Biblical (Eicha 3:42-44, Tehilim 44:12-20) notion of Divine punishment. See the conclusion of R. Hartman’s The God Who Hates Lies (pages 176 – 177) for what appears to be R. Hartman’s understanding of this challenge and his Theology of Response.
11. ורבנן היכי עבדי הכי ועקרי תקנתא דתקין משה? אמר רבי אלעזר, מתוך שיודעין בהקדוש ברוך הוא שאמתי הוא, לפיכך לא כיזבו בו.