The American Jewish Archives Journal, Volume LXI 2009, Number 1

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This trend of using translation and manuscripts, and the ability to create new liturgy, was indirectly affected by the discovery and deciphering of the Geniza. Suddenly a plethora of manuscript readings were available. The standardized Amidah (literally: “standing prayer”), which many had assumed to have been canonized in the first centuries of the Common Era, suddenly was seen to be more fluid than was first thought, thanks in part to the new manuscript readings available in the Geniza. The Reform and Conservative movements used this fluidity to demonstrate that there was strong historical precedent for liturgical creativity in formulating prayers. 43 Psalm fragments were found in almost all of the eleven caves, and texts of the psalms represent the largest number of manuscripts of any book in the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries. This suggests that Qumran prayer was similar to Temple prayer, but the unique Qumran original psalm compositions, or Hodayot, suggests that the Qumranites were not just following the rites of Jerusalem but summoned the authority to create (and innovate) new prayers. 44 The existence of new prayers in original manuscript versions (albeit with Dead Sea Scrolls) further legitimated the Reform prayer book innovations that were created in the twentieth century. Three examples from the Reform movement’s use of the scrolls will suffice. First, the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (based in the United Kingdom) introduced a new prayer book in 1995, Siddur Lev Chadash—“A New Heart” prayer book—which uses extracts from the scrolls as they might use readings from normative Jewish thinkers throughout the ages, including the Geniza fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The title of the siddur is taken from Ezekiel 36:26:“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.” Besides changing the masculine pronouns for God in the liturgy, it includes the matriarchs and extracts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, alongside normative citations from the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Maimonides, Judah HaLevi, Hasidic masters, and Samson Raphael Hirsch. 45 The second example involves the newest prayer book of the Reform movement, Mishkan T’filah. The inclusion of citations from the Dead Sea Scrolls as readings, benedictions, and liturgical versions was a conscious decision by the editors of the new siddur. They map out their view in the introduction to Mishkan T’filah, where they specifically demonstrate why the scrolls reflect an ideological stance of a movement that developed its own liturgical formulation. HUC-JIR professor and member of the Mishkan T’filah editorial board Richard Sarason writes: Some groups of Jews outside the Land of Israel who did not have access to the Temple, and others, like the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls who withdrew from the Temple in protest against the perceived illegitimacy 130 • American Jewish Archives Journal
of the Maccabean priesthood in the second century before the Common Era [B.C.E.], engaged in regular communal prayer even before the Temple was destroyed. 46 The third example is from the Israeli Reform siddur and mahzor, Ha’Avodah Shebalev and Kavanat Halev. 47 In Ha’Avodah Shebalev the scrolls’ “midrashic” version of the Birkat Kohanim (Numbers 6: 22–27) is featured in one of the most important parts of the service. This version of the priestly blessing is indeed a liturgical innovation on the famous biblical verses (1QSb) 48 that links the Qumran community with the holy angels. Reform rabbis use the Aaronide blessing in various contexts—for blessing bar and bat mitzvah candidates, at weddings, and at the benediction at the end of services. The Israeli prayer book uses it at the end of the Kabbalat Shabbat service (90) as an alternative concluding benediction (the benediction is an important innovation in Reform liturgy). 49 In the Israeli Kavanat Halev, the High Holiday Reform mahzor, several passages from the Thanksgiving Scroll (Hodayot) were incorporated as well. For the Shaharit (morning) service for Yom Kippur, a number of Hodayot were selected for inclusion. Among the suggestions for “opening readings” between the tallit blessing and the Torah blessing, for example, the Reform mahzor incorporated several readings from the Hodayot; and several other Hodayot lines were chosen as readings in the meditations after the morning Amidah. 50 In the Shaharit Musaf (concluding prayer) the meditations following the Amidah are other Hodayot verses. 51 These Kavanat Halev inclusions seem to serve two very different purposes. First, they demonstrate the development of the Hebrew language and the importance of a larger canon of Hebrew literature, which has significance for the development of Israeli Reform Judaism. But these citations in a modern prayer book make the Dead Sea Scrolls equivalent to ancient rabbinic citations. The idea that the Qumranites created new blessings based on biblical verses and that these blessings became authentic expressions for modern Israeli Reform Jews is also significant. This embracing of the Dead Sea Scrolls is unprecedented in modern Judaism. The translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s have made more of these texts available to the larger public. The discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls prayers that parallel rabbinic prayers, such as the Birkat ha-Mazon (grace after meals) fragment, 52 for example, demonstrate differences between the Qumran version of the blessing and the rabbinic version. The discovery of the scrolls version (in addition to the well-known versions discovered in the Geniza 53 ) demonstrated that for different groups this fundamental blessing was, for thousands of years, more fluid than was once thought. Since the Reform and Conservative movements usually use a shortened version of the Birkat ha-Mazon, the scrolls version gave further antiquity to this practice. How the Dead Sea Scrolls Influenced Reform Judaism • 131
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The American Jewish Archives Journa
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VoLume LXI NumbeR 1 (2009) A Journa
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To Our Readers Articles CONTENTS Ga
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Marc Lee Raphael, ed., The Columbia
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TO OUR READERS… The distinguished
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Scrolls. Saperstein has been a pion
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ARTICLES Optimistic, Even with the
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In the months before his death in N
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that if the Hebrew University purch
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In all of [the] effort to acquire a
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On 30 December The New York Times r
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As is clear from the roster of visi
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document for the second volume of s
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He is reputed to be neither an arch
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“A Commentary on the Book of Haba
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print, or else admit they do not kn
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In 1953 Orlinsky was still suggesti
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Yigael Yadin. Yadin was calling fro
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a session devoted to surveying the
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Christian origins? Do they throw an
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Scrolls, necessarily indicated an i
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Although I agree with his cautions
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when you write that ‘Zeitlin’s
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appeared explicitly. Therefore, sug
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acquisition of a set of negatives o
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There can be little doubt that in t
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Mazar be included on the team, alon
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areas as archaeology, linguistics,
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to publish two articles on the scro
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Left to right: G. Ernest Wright, Ne
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through the heavily padlocked and s
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other than study without an explici
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compiled but, because of financial
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United Nations and the Israeli mili
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egan teaching seminars on it 390 an
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Shanks’s intuition about the gene
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faculty and students. However, Zafr
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“annoying” scholars and various
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Scan of original halftone plate of
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your copy of our publication ‘A P
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Ziony Zevit of the University of Ju
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What the scrolls should provide …
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negatives were in the collection bu
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threatened to sue. Second, they saw
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to inform him of his intentions to
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Page 103 and 104: 139 Albright to Orlinsky, 3 Decembe
Page 105 and 106: 173Samuel Sandmel, “Judaism, Jesu
Page 107 and 108: 205Wayne G. Rollins, “Reviewed wo
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Page 113 and 114: 20 June 1972, Sang, Philip D., Near
Page 115 and 116: 340Broshi to Zafren, 12 June 1972;
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Page 119 and 120: 424 Ibid. 425 Gottschalk to Harman,
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Page 123 and 124: 511 Ibid., 391-393. 512For a thorou
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Page 129 and 130: whom preserved ancient and elitist
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Page 184 and 185: Michael A. Meyer, ed., Joachim Prin
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American Jews engage with Israelis
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Shlomit Steinberg, Orphaned Art: Lo
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Hollace Ava Weiner, Jewish “Junio
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street; Riv-Ellen Prell warns that
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Rabbi Geri Newburge Temple Emanuel,
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Biblical Archaeology Review, 24, 56
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Glueck, Nelson, viii, 1-7, 12, 17,
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L Lacheman, Ernest R., 8-9 Landau-C
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Samuel, (Mar) Athanasius Yeshue, me
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Wicklein, John, 94n194, 97n235 Weis
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The American Jewish Archives Journal, Volume LXI 2009, Number 1

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