Re: Maoz Tzur & Shavuot (part II)

[SamWeiss <SamWeiss...>]

At 07:09 PM 1/5/02, I. Oppenheim wrote:
>On Thu, 3 Jan 2002 SamWeiss (at) bellatlantic(dot)net wrote:
>>... It seems to me that the practice of the congregation would more 
>>likely be determined by the contents of a book, rather than vice 
>>versa.  So the ultimate arbiter of much liturgical practice could very 
>>well have been the book publishers.

>I am afraid that in the times that the liturgical customs developed,
>most jews did not have the luxury of owning their own machzor.
>And even those that had, probably had one in manuscript.

The "times that the liturgical customs developed" embrace at least two 
millenia (including our own century).  For the contents of a book (or, as I 
wrote in my posting, any type of "anthology" -- containing, for example two 
or three manuscript pages) to influence the practice of a congregation it 
was, and still is, not necessary to have more than one single copy, i.e. 
the one in the hands (or the memory) of the cantor.

>The machzor of the famous community of Carpentras, for example, was only 
>printed during the 18th century. As we know that the most important 
>piyutim were already written by Elazar Kallir, in probably the 6th 
>century, according to some even earlier, a lot could have happened in 
>those centuries in between. Probably more than the printers and publishers 
>alone, can account for.

A lot did indeed happen during those centuries wherever Jews lived, in a 
very complex process involving exiles and migrations of communities; the 
whims and output of local poets (which would supplant many older works and 
would determine, for example, which of Eliezer Kallir's countless Piyyutim 
entered which geographical rite [a matter of great variation] and which 
were forgotten by everyone); and -- above all -- the often reproduced 
written collections starting with the highly influential Prayer Manual 
written by Sa'adya Gaon (882-942 CE) and continuing to this day.  So even 
by the time an atypical community like Carpentras got its first =printed= 
Machzor, many other written and printed works informed its practices.

Probably the most striking instance of the widespread effect of the 
printing press on Jewish liturgy is the entire Friday night Kabbalat 
Shabbat service, developed and strategically disseminated ("published") by 
the Safed mystics at the end of the 16th century.

_____________________________________________________________
Cantor Sam Weiss === Jewish Community Center of Paramus, NJ

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