[opensiddur-talk] Historical Map of Jewish Liturgies v0.1

[Aharon Varady]

Hello friends,

I wanted to share some work I've done creating a historical tree tracing the development of Jewish liturgy. The tree is based on Joseph Heinemann's research and relies heavily on an illustration found on page 48 of Lawrence Hoffman's Beyond the Text (1989).

Please help me correct this tree and add to it. Also, if you can, help me determine which manuscripts and siddurim are good witnesses for each one of the muschaot shown. Thanks!

Shabbat shalom,
Aharon

p.s. the .vdx file is an xml drawing file.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "opensiddur-talk" group.
To post to this group, send email to opensid...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to opensiddur-ta...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/opensiddur-talk?hl=en.

[David A.M. Wilensky]

well, this is incredible work, aharon. well done.

it's unclear to me what's going on with the regions that are floating about, such as ethiopia, persia, etc.

also, i'd encourage a more complex rendering of the purple progressives at the bottom left of the chart. I'd say that there are currently two-way arrows between all three of those, with recon as an offshoot not of Frankfurt, but a combo offshoot of Reform and Conservative.

thoughts?

--
David A.M. Wilensky
--
Living the Reform Jewish life at The Reform Shuckle
http://davidsaysthings.wordpress.com
--
Discussing progressive Jewish culture and religion at Jewschool
http://jewschool.com
--
Tweeting Jewishly and daily @davidAMwilensky
--
Associate Editor,
The Acorn, Drew University's student paper since 1928
--

[Aharon Varady]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 7:56 PM, David A.M. Wilensky <d.pro...@gmail.com> wrote:

well, this is incredible work, aharon. well done.

Thanks!

 

it's unclear to me what's going on with the regions that are floating about, such as ethiopia, persia, etc.

Those are nuchashaot that I saw weren't included in Heinemann's original. An updated version should indicate where these should be located in relation ot the other liturgies.

 

also, i'd encourage a more complex rendering of the purple progressives at the bottom left of the chart. I'd say that there are currently two-way arrows between all three of those, with recon as an offshoot not of Frankfurt, but a combo offshoot of Reform and Conservative.

In a more detail rich map zooming in should show more complexity. I'd love us to get to a place where we could compare these traditions but it will be difficult so long as some of them are locked away by copyright. At least with the public domain nuschaot we can test our assumptions against the raw data.

 

thoughts?

I made some changes. Version 0.1.3 is now up on the Open Siddur blog: http://opensiddur.net/2010/05/a-historical-map-of-jewish-liturgies/

Aharon

[Efraim Feinstein]

On 05/08/2010 08:50 PM, Aharon Varady wrote:

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 7:56 PM, David A.M. Wilensky <d.pro...@gmail.com> wrote:

well, this is incredible work, aharon. well done.

Thanks!

This is a great chart.  The only free software I can find that can open it is dia <http://projects.gnome.org/dia/>, but it doesn't open it with full fidelity.  The biggest problem seems to be font sizes.  The spec is released, but it's not widely implemented.

We know very little about First Temple/pre-Temple liturgies.  We know a bit more about late Second Temple liturgy, although it's sometimes reconstructed.  We don't even know if a formal liturgy existed aside from sacrifice.  Perhaps the oldest liturgies we have are: Birkat Kohanim, the formula for bringing first fruits, and Psalms (composed between the monarchy and exile), which brings us to a big missing element at the top of the chart: the Bible!

A few questions:
- There was a large community outside of Israel during the Second Temple Period, so the Babylonian Rite was probably being developed concurrently with Second Temple and with Palestinian liturgy.  There was certainly communication between them.
- Why do you think the Rambam is unlinked to Saadia Gaon?  Any of the modern nuschaot are linked through one or both.  Saadiah was definitely not a historical "dead end."
- Others can probably speak better for Karaite tradition than I can, but I don't know that I would draw a line from the Sadducee to the Karaite liturgy.  They were discontinuous and separated by 700-800 years.
- It becomes very complicated when you get into modern liturgies that are intentionally selective.  Even siddurim that are considered "traditional" (Yaacov Emden, Seligmann Baer) did a good deal of selection from the manuscripts they had available.  Even more so for "Reconstructionist" nusah, of which there are many variants.  When it comes to piyyutim, secular poetry that was contemporary to authorship is also a huge influence.

In a more detail rich map zooming in should show more complexity. I'd love us to get to a place where we could compare these traditions but it will be difficult so long as some of them are locked away by copyright. At least with the public domain nuschaot we can test our assumptions against the raw data.

This process makes me think of genetics.

-- 
---
Efraim Feinstein
Lead Developer
Open Siddur Project
http://opensiddur.net
http://wiki.jewishliturgy.org

[Aharon Varady]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Efraim Feinstein <efraim.f...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a great chart.  The only free software I can find that can open it is dia <http://projects.gnome.org/dia/>, but it doesn't open it with full fidelity.  The biggest problem seems to be font sizes.  The spec is released, but it's not widely implemented.

What are some other file formats that you can open with that? I can also save it in dxf (AutoCAD Interchange Format).

We know very little about First Temple/pre-Temple liturgies.  We know a bit more about late Second Temple liturgy, although it's sometimes reconstructed.  We don't even know if a formal liturgy existed aside from sacrifice.  Perhaps the oldest liturgies we have are: Birkat Kohanim, the formula for bringing first fruits, and Psalms (composed between the monarchy and exile), which brings us to a big missing element at the top of the chart: the Bible!

The TaNaKh is a source for liturgy for sure, but I didn't think it was its own box... and I was under the impression that until the second temple, the TaNaKh was pretty centrally located as texts preserved within the Temple Cult and among the elite families. Since we're tracing the evolution of the ingredients which comprise liturgies, ultimately we also need to include extra-canonical surce texts like Ben Sira.

A few questions:
- There was a large community outside of Israel during the Second Temple Period, so the Babylonian Rite was probably being developed concurrently with Second Temple and with Palestinian liturgy.  There was certainly communication between them.

Good point. Heinemann has them drawn in parallel with an indrect dependence line between them... I should have followed that more closely.

 

- Why do you think the Rambam is unlinked to Saadia Gaon?  Any of the modern nuschaot are linked through one or both.  Saadiah was definitely not a historical "dead end."

I don't know. You can see that is how Heinemann drew them and it made me wonder as well. Liturgy scholars, please speak up.

 

- Others can probably speak better for Karaite tradition than I can, but I don't know that I would draw a line from the Sadducee to the Karaite liturgy.  They were discontinuous and separated by 700-800 years.

You know that's what I thought as well. Then this senior lecturer on Talmud from Bar-Ilan came to Yeshivat Hadar this past week to talk about Bava Batra, and he claimed that Karaites existed in the Tannaitic period (and earlier perhaps). So I called him on it, and in his answer he indicated that Karaites go back farther than we think and connect with other sectarian philosophies. I was surprised but open minded.... I'd like to know what others think about this. Paging Rachel Elior.

 

- It becomes very complicated when you get into modern liturgies that are intentionally selective.  Even siddurim that are considered "traditional" (Yaacov Emden, Seligmann Baer) did a good deal of selection from the manuscripts they had available.  Even more so for "Reconstructionist" nusah, of which there are many variants.  When it comes to piyyutim, secular poetry that was contemporary to authorship is also a huge influence.

Agreed. Representing modern redaction presents a serious design challenge at this scale.
 

In a more detail rich map zooming in should show more complexity. I'd love us to get to a place where we could compare these traditions but it will be difficult so long as some of them are locked away by copyright. At least with the public domain nuschaot we can test our assumptions against the raw data.

This process makes me think of genetics.

I'm reminded of the digital humanities project comparing all six versions of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution: http://www.benfry.com/traces/

[David A.M. Wilensky]

Any chance we could get a color key in the chart? I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the differently colored boxes.

--
David A.M. Wilensky
--
Living the Reform Jewish life at The Reform Shuckle
http://davidsaysthings.wordpress.com
--
Discussing progressive Jewish culture and religion at Jewschool
http://jewschool.com
--
Tweeting Jewishly and daily @davidAMwilensky
--
Associate Editor,
The Acorn, Drew University's student paper since 1928
--

[Aharon Varady]

Great suggestions. The colors are meant to separate out the periods of development. They're explained over at http://opensiddur.net/2010/05/a-historical-map-of-jewish-liturgies/
but I should really include a color coded legend directly in the chart.

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:25 AM, David A.M. Wilensky <d.pro...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any chance we could get a color key in the chart? I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the differently colored boxes.

--

[Ze'ev Clementson]

Hi Aharon,

This looks really good. However, I couldn't open the source document
with any program I have on my Mac - is the vdx file a Visio file? Do
you know any open source applications that will open it?

One thing that would really "finish off" the diagram would be to make
each of the boxes a clickable link that goes to a
jewishencyclopedia/wikipedia (or other) article giving more
information. That would make it less of a static diagram and more of a
learning tool.

- Ze'ev

[Aharon Varady]

Below is a response from Dr. Richard Sarason, professor of Rabbinic literature and thought at HUC-JIR (http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/sarason.shtml). I asked him if he would share his response on this discussion list and he was very gracious in agreeing for me to forward it to you all. Thanks Dr. Sarason! (pdf's attached)

Aharon

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: RIchard S. Sarason <rsar...@fuse.net>
Date: Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: [opensiddur-talk] Historical Map of Jewish Liturgies v0.1
To: "David A.M. Wilensky" <d.pro...@gmail.com>, aha...@varady.net

[....]

 

The Larry Hoffman chart you were asking about was copied verbatim from Jakob J. Petuchowski, Guide to the Prayerbook (Cincinnati: HUC-JIR, 1968), p. 10---this is a booklet that JJP had prepared for use in his introductory Liturgy class at HUC (I still use it in my own teaching in an updated form).  The Petuchowski chart, in turn, is simply an English translation of a Hebrew chart that Joseph Heinemann had prepared for HIS course on the history of the Siddur at Hebrew University in the mid-1960's; it appears in his Akadamon choveret, T'filot Yisra'el v'toldotehen: Leqet m'korot (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1966 and subsequent reprints).  Attached you will find pdf scans of both charts, and another page from the Heinemann choveret which briefly characterizes the distinctive elements of the major rites in use today and the major rites no longer in use but of historical importance.  He doesn't characterize Siddur Ha'Ari/Hasidic Nusach Sefarad there. There is very useful background information on Siddur Ha'Ari/Nusach Sefarad in Stefan Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History (Cambridge, 1993),  pp. 251-255. Joseph Tabory (on the faculty of Bar-Ilan University) published a major bibliography of scholarly publications in the areas of Jewish liturgy, ritual, festivals, etc., as a supplement to Kiryat Sefer (the bibliographical annual of the Jewish National and University Library) in 1992-93 (to vol. 64).  This is divided into useful categories, and you'll find sections there on the various medieval families of rites and local rites that lead you to the basic literature on each.

David----You asked for my thoughts on the specifics of the chart.  I'll start from the top (literally).  The major influence on the language and content of rabbinic prayer is (unsurprisingly) the language and content of biblical prayer, particularly--but not exclusively--that of the psalms.  There are (literary) prayers in the surviving Second Commonwealth-period literature and substantial evidence for regular communal prayer at Qumran (but no evidence of regular communal prayer anywhere else)--we have fragmentary daily liturgies there. These have no direct influence on rabbinic prayers, but share some common themes and rhetorical characteristics (most of which are derived from biblical models).  The earliest information about rabbinic prayer is in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and cognate literature.  The early distinctive local liturgical developments between Erets-Yisrael and Bavel can be seen in the two Talmuds (and in the Erets-Yisraeli midrashim).  The more developed Babylonian liturgical customs and formulations are first attested in geonic literature, particularly in Seder Rav Amram (although the liturgical texts that we find in the surviving manuscripts are not reliable, because they have often been "reconciled" with the texts familiar to the manuscript copyists!).  Saadia's prayer book is not "purely" Bablyonian, but reflects as well usages from Egypt and Erets Yisrael that are part of his personal history.  There are also halakhic texts from Erets Yisrael during this period that reflect Erets-Yisraeli customs (and lists of differences between customs and halakhot in the two communities that include liturgical customs and halakhot). 

Karaite liturgy, by the way, still displays the influence of rabbanite liturgy, even in rebellion against it (a not unusual phenomenon culturally and psychologically)--the formula, Barukh attah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha'olam, which is quintessially rabbanite, is still found in Karaite liturgy. 

The Chinese Jewish community (Kai-feng---we have their manuscripts at the Klau Library in Cincinnati) originated in Persia---they were Parsee traders who made their way through India to China (the Indian Bene Yisrael have the same Persian origin).

The medieval rites listed on the charts should really be viewed as FAMILIES of rites, because there are local variations in the manuscripts that survive from all of these areas.  (There are slight differences, for example, between Rhineland, France, pre-expulsion England, etc.---but these are basically Ashkenazi rites.)  The three northern Italian rites (APAM), I believe, have some similarities to the French rite, etc., etc.  Stefan Reif points out that the Spanish-Portuguese diaspora overwhelmed many of the local rites and customs in North Africa, so that these became "Sefardic" by default.  Similarly, many of the communities in Italy to this day follow the Sefardic or Ashkenazic, rather than the Roman, rite--because the Ashkenazi and Sefardi immigrants overwhelmed the locals (and northern Italy was for a long time part of Austria).  Many of the local variations within the larger families of rites have to do with the piyyutim that are recited on the holidays.  Ashkenaz, by the late middle ages, divides into two sub-families, German (or south German) and Polish.  Frankfurt a.M. is simply one of the local German rites (but a distinctive one).  Siddur Ha'Ari begins, more or less, among Luria's followers--but is popularized in Poland (think Isaiah Horowitz, Shei Luchot Habrit) and then developed (somewhat differently) by different Hasidic groups---HaBaD indeed has its own version of this, etc.  Frankfurt a.M., BTW, is not the specific source of all the German and American liberal pbs.  Each of the German Reform pbs reflected the specifics of its own cultural locale (remember, there was no united Germany until 1871)---so Hamburg, for example, reflected the prominence there of the Spanish-Portuguese community, and much was taken over from the Spanish-Portuguese rite into their liturgy.  The original Reconstructionist liturgies of Mordecai Kaplan derived from the eastern Ashkenazi (Polish) rite, but were also influenced by the Reform Union Prayer Book. Koren-Sacks reflects the eastern European (Polish) rite, not the German rite; same, obviously, with the Conservative pbs in North America--those were/are eastern European Jews!  Today in North America, everyone influences everyone else--because there is a shared North American Jewish culture (with local and institutional variations).

 

You ask about best texts to reproduce:

 

For the Ashkenazi Mahzor (both sub-families), the critical texts edited by Daniel Goldschmidt and Yonah Frenkel and published in 5 volumes by Koren remain the best.  Earlier, the 19th c. Wolf Heidenheim Mahzor (first published in Roedelheim) in 9 volumes best represents the German rite.  Heidenheim also published an edition of the Siddur that represents the German rite.  Seligmann Dov Baer's Seder Avodat Yisrael (1868) best represents the Polish rite.

 

For the Spanish-Portuguese rite, Moses Gaster's edition published by Oxford in the first decade of the last century is excellent; so is David DeSola Pool's edition from the 1940's-50's-----the new edition coming out of Seattle reflects the local customs of Rhodes and a few other places.

 

For the Italian rite, there's a fine 3-volume edition published by Jerusalem Fine Arts Prints in 2005 edited by Menahem Emanuel Hartom.

 

For the Persian rite, Machon Ben-Tzvi published a photo reproduction of a manuscript in 1981 (Nusach tefillah shel yehudei Paras).

 

For an early version of Siddur Ha'Ari---see the pb and commentary of Isaiah Horowitz, Siddur HaShL"aH Hashalem/Sha'ar Hashamayim (3 vols.)

 

For the Yemenite rite (Tiklal), have a look at Tiklal Ateret Avot, in 7 volumes, published in Bnei Brak in 2004.

 

The Karaite liturgy has been republished in Israel (original plates from the Crimea) in 5 vols.

 

"That's about as far as I can go"  for now.

 

Best wishes as this project moves forward,

Rick Sarason

----- Original Message -----

From: David A.M. Wilensky

To: RIchard S. Sarason

Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 10:13 PM

Subject: Fwd: [opensiddur-talk] Historical Map of Jewish Liturgies v0.1

Rick, long time no e-mail. I'm working on a little project right now that had me looking at the older Reform liturgies you sent me last year. So I had you on my mind when Aharon Varady, the creator of the Open Siddur Project (which I'll assume you're already somewhat familiar with), sent out this chart today. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on it. Also, when I asked him if it was alright to send it to you, he said: "For sure, but please include my request for help with this project. We need to know what are the besr texts to transcribe that witness each nusach. (And we need academic scolars to reqiest permission for scanning documents at institutions with book scanners.)"

So that's that. Shabbat Shalom.

[Aharon Varady]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Ze'ev Clementson <bere...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Aharon,

This looks really good. However, I couldn't open the source document
with any program I have on my Mac - is the vdx file a Visio file? Do
you know any open source applications that will open it?

Alas, I don't. Visio is also the only application I know which does flowcharting really well. Perhaps at some point Open Office's drawing application will be able to compete with it.


 

One thing that would really "finish off" the diagram would be to make
each of the boxes a clickable link that goes to a
jewishencyclopedia/wikipedia (or other) article giving more
information. That would make it less of a static diagram and more of a
learning tool.

Agreed! I haven't made an image map in years... do you know of a program that can help with this (outputting standard HTML)? I'd hate to try and do this in Flash... there must be a better way with HTML 5 but I haven't looked into it yet. That would be a great feature for Visio... I'll check to see whether it can do that...

[Ze'ev Clementson]

Hi Aharon,

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Aharon Varady <aharon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Ze'ev Clementson <bere...@gmail.com>

>> One thing that would really "finish off" the diagram would be to make
>> each of the boxes a clickable link that goes to a
>> jewishencyclopedia/wikipedia (or other) article giving more
>> information. That would make it less of a static diagram and more of a
>> learning tool.
>
>
> Agreed! I haven't made an image map in years... do you know of a program
> that can help with this (outputting standard HTML)? I'd hate to try and do
> this in Flash... there must be a better way with HTML 5 but I haven't looked
> into it yet. That would be a great feature for Visio... I'll check to see
> whether it can do that...

It's been a few years since I last used Visio; however, it did support
hyperlinks at that time. So, unless you're using an ancient version of
Visio, you should be able to do it with the tool you're currently
using.

- Ze'ev

[Efraim Feinstein]

On 05/08/2010 11:16 PM, Aharon Varady wrote:

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Efraim Feinstein <efraim.f...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a great chart.  The only free software I can find that can open it is dia <http://projects.gnome.org/dia/>, but it doesn't open it with full fidelity.  The biggest problem seems to be font sizes.  The spec is released, but it's not widely implemented.

What are some other file formats that you can open with that? I can also save it in dxf (AutoCAD Interchange Format).

DXF is not an open format.  Avoid it.
ODF has cross platform support.  OOo Impress probably would do just fine for a diagram with the level of complexity of the chart.  It has its own brand of ugliness, though.

I haven't tried anything that generates UML, but it seems to be widely used. 

Flowcharting is not something I do often, so, I'm not current on what people use.

-- 
---
Efraim Feinstein
Lead Developer
Open Siddur Project
http://opensiddur.net
http://wiki.jewishliturgy.org

[Aharon Varady]

Check the link for a revised chart (which is, alas, still static).

On May 9, 2010 11:37 AM, "Aharon Varady" <aharon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Great suggestions. The colors are meant to separate out the periods of development. They're explained over at http://opensiddur.net/2010/05/a-historical-map-of-jewish-liturgies/
but I should really include a color coded legend directly in the chart.

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:25 AM, David A.M. Wilensky <d.pro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> Any chanc...

[Ze'ev Clementson]

Hi Aharon,

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 4:06 AM, Aharon Varady <aharon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Check the link for a revised chart (which is, alas, still static).
>
> On May 9, 2010 11:37 AM, "Aharon Varady" <aharon...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Great suggestions. The colors are meant to separate out the periods of
> development. They're explained over at
> http://opensiddur.net/2010/05/a-historical-map-of-jewish-liturgies/

I'm not that familiar with the histories of the different traditions;
however, are the "German Rite" and "Frankfurt An Main" boxes really a
"dead end"? I would have thought that the Reform tradition descended
(in part) from the Frankfurt An Main path?

Again, I'm not an expert, so please don't make mods based on my
comments - I'm just asking whether the "Frankfurt An Main" box is
really a "dead end".

Also, although the Karaite Rite came (geographically) from the same
place as the Babylonian Rite, I would question whether it should be
shown as a derivative of the Rabbinic tradition (but, I guess you are
showing it as being "indirect influenced", so maybe that is the right
way to represent it).

- Ze'ev