MINḤA – ASHREI Ashrei is to the Afternoon Service as all of the Verses of Praise are to the Morning Service. It represents a highly abridged form of preparation for, and meditative prelude to, the Amida that follows. It is constructed out of Psalm 145, a key text in the book of Psalms because of its alphabetical structure (praising God with every letter of the alphabet except for the missing nun, omitted because of its association with nefila, “falling”) and because it is the only one of the 150 explicitly to be called a “psalm” – tehilla. Added to it are two verses beginning with Ashrei, the first word of the book of Psalms, and one ending with Halleluya, the last word of the book. It thus becomes a miniature version of Psalms as a whole.

וּבָא לְצִיּוֹן גּוֹאֵל A redeemer will come to Zion. A key verse from the prophet Isaiah, the poet laureate of hope and the great visionary of Israel’s redemption from exile and persecution. The concept of redemption, ge’ula, is one of Judaism’s most striking beliefs. Other religions have found solace in other worlds – paradise, the afterlife, the realm of the soul after death – believing that justice, truth and the encounter with God are impossible in a finite universe with all its failings. Judaism, to the contrary, believes that it is precisely here, in this physical world and its history of humanity, that we are to strive, with God’s help, for redemption. Just as Moses led the people out of slavery, David established them as a united kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital, and Solomon built the Temple, so a redeemer will one day come to Zion to restore Israel to freedom, unity and peace – an independent nation under the sovereignty of God and a role model to humankind in its commitment to the good, the right, the just and the holy.

קָדוֹשׁ, קָדוֹשׁ, קָדוֹשׁ Holy, holy, holy. This entire sequence – similar to the Kedusha said in the Repetition of the Amida, but set out as verses from Isaiah, Ezekiel and Exodus together with their Aramaic translations – is known as the Kedusha deSidra. Its origin is in the ancient custom of studying the prophetic books immediately after prayer. Study usually involved translation since not everyone understood the original Hebrew. The language they spoke from the late Second Temple era to that of the Babylonian Talmud, was Aramaic, and it was thus into Aramaic that the biblical verses were translated. The Kedusha sequence beginning “Holy, holy, holy” tells us how the angels praise God in heaven, according to the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel. It appears in three forms during the prayers: (1) In the first blessing before the Shema in the morning service, we recite it; (2) During the Repetition of the Amida, we enact it; (3) During the Kedusha deSidra, as here, we study it.

READING OF THE TORAH Reading the Torah on Shabbat and festival afternoons was ordained by Ezra for the sake of those unable to come to the synagogue on Mondays and Thursdays to hear the beginning of the Torah portion of the coming Shabbat (Bava Kamma 82a). According to the Talmud, though the midweek readings may have existed earlier, it was Ezra who gave them their present form so that people would not have to go more than three days without hearing the words of Torah. Behind this institution is the remarkable assumption that just as the body needs water so the soul needs the word of God. It is dangerous for the body to go three days without water, equally so for the soul to be deprived for three days of spiritual sustenance.

הַאֲזִֽינוּ הַשָּׁמַֽיִם Heavens, take heed. Moses, nearing the end of his life, calls heaven and earth as witnesses to the terms of Israel’s history as the people of the covenant. In majestic poetry he contrasts the faithfulness of God with the faithlessness of the people. God has continually shown the people His loving care, rescuing them from danger the way an eagle does with its young, sheltering them under its wings, but the people have acted like wayward children. Do not blame God when bad things happen, Moses warns. God is just. The explanation lies elsewhere.

הַצּוּר תָּמִים פָּֽעֳלוֹ The Rock, His work is whole. A classic expression of tzidduk hadin, acceptance of God’s judgment. Even when faced with suffering, persecution or loss, Jews continue to have faith in God.

זְכֹר יְמוֹת עוֹלָם Remember the earliest of days. The command to remember, Zakhor, is fundamental to Judaism. The verb appears 169 times in Tanakh. Jews were the first to see God in history, the first to see history as a single extended narrative with a beginning, middle and anticipated end, the first to see time as the arena within which the Divine–human encounter is played out, and the first to see memory as a religious obligation.