THE AMIDA: THE STANDING PRAYER The Amida is the summit of prayer: in it, we enter the holy of holies of religious experience. We say it standing because we are conscious of being in the unmediated presence of God. The name Amida is also related to its earliest setting: prayers said by the people of the Ma’amad, groups of laymen who, in Second Temple times, accompanied their local “watch” (mishmar) of priests who officiated in the Temple on a one-in-24-week schedule. The Ma’amad was one of the prototypes of congregational prayer. According to tradition, the Amida in embryonic form dates back to the Great Assembly in the time of Ezra following the Jews’ return from Babylon. Several centuries later, it was canonized in a fuller form by Shimon HaPakuli in the days of Rabban Gamliel II (Berakhot 28b). It is often called the Shemoneh Esreh, “Eighteen,” because it originally consisted of eighteen blessings (now, nineteen). It has a three-part structure: (1) praise (blessings 1–3), (2) requests (blessings 4–16), and (3) thanks (17–19). Each of these has a tripartite form. The first and last sections each contain three blessings. The middle section is composed of twelve blessings (4–15), six personal requests and six collective ones. The first three personal requests are for spiritual goods (wisdom, repentance and forgiveness). The second are for physical goods (deliverance, healing and livelihood). The first three national requests are for physical events (ingathering of exiles, justice, and an end to internal conflicts). The second three are for the nation’s spiritual needs (the righteous and pious, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the restoration of the Davidic monarchy). One blessing, “Listen to our voice” (the sixteenth, last of the “request” blessings), stands outside this structure because it is a prayer about prayer itself. It is also the point at which individuals can add their personal requests.

אבות Blessing 1: Patriarchs. In these opening chords we refer back to the dawn of our people’s history – the days of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In so doing, we echo Moses, who constantly referred to the patriarchs when praying for forgiveness for the people. God’s love for, and covenant with, those who first heard His call is the supreme ground on which we stand when we turn to Him in prayer. The paragraph ends with a reference to Abraham, who was the first person to heed God’s call. לְמַעַנְךָ אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים *For Your sake, O God of life:*the phrase literally means “living God.” The translation, however, conveys the poetic structure of this short but powerful prayer: four phrases, each ending with the word ḥayim, “life.”

גבורות Blessing 2: Divine might. The fivefold reference to the resurrection of the dead reflects the controversy between the Sadducees and Pharisees in the late Second Temple era. The Sadducees rejected belief in resurrection; the Pharisees, whose heirs we are, affirmed it. Belief that those who died will one day live again is one of Judaism’s great principles of hope, set out in the vision of Ezekiel of the valley of dry bones that came to life once more. Jews kept hope alive; hope kept the Jewish people alive.

קדושה *Kedusha.*The Kedushais the supreme moment of holiness in prayer. It takes several different forms. Common to them all is that they are built around the two supreme mystical visions in the Hebrew Bible, of Isaiah (chapter 6) and Ezekiel (chapters 1–3). The prophet sees God enthroned in glory, surrounded by angels singing His praises. Isaiah hears them singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole world is filled with His glory.” Ezekiel (3:12) hears them singing, “Blessed is the LORD’s glory from His place.” Together they constitute the most sublime expression of prayer as praise in the presence of God. In the morning, Kedushais said three times at different points in the service. There is Kedushat Yotzer, which appears in the first of the three Shema blessings (page 95), Kedusha DeAmida, said here during the Leader’s Repetition; and Kedusha DeSidra, toward the end of the service. The first and third do not require a minyanand are said sibling. The second requires a minyanand is said standing. The reason is that the first and third are descriptions of the song of the angels; the second is a reenactment. We stand, feet together, rising on our toes, as if we too were angels. In the Kedushawe move beyond the priestly prayer-as-sacrifice and the prophetic prayer-as-dialogue, to prayer as a mystic experience. So holy is it that in Israel in ancient times it was said only on Shabbat and festivals. The Zoharinterprets Jacob’s vision of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending (Gen. 28:12), as a metaphor for prayer, and this, too, is part of the meaning of Kedusha. We have climbed the ladder from earth to heaven. As the Leader repeats the prayer on behalf of the entire community, we reach the summit of religious experience.

קדושת השם Blessing 3: Holiness. The threefold reference to holiness (“You are holy and Your name is holy, and holy ones praise You daily”) mirrors the threefold declaration of the angels in Isaiah’s vision: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts.” Kadosh, “holy,” means “set apart, distinct.” When used of God, it refers to His transcendence, the fact that He stands outside nature, creating and sustaining it. When used of Israel, it means that we too are summoned to stand apart from the idols of the age, living instead in close and continuous proximity to God. The first three paragraphs of the Amida (excluding the Kedusha), form a composite unit. The first speaks of the beginning of covenantal time in the days of the patriarchs. The second is about the end of time: resurrection. The third is about holiness, beyond space and time.

דעת Blessing 4: Knowledge. This is the first of the “request” blessings. King Solomon, when asked by God to name the thing he most desired (I Kings 3:5–15), asked for wisdom; so do we. Knowledge is prior to emotion, because “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9). Untutored emotion can be misdirected, even destructive. This paragraph replicates the structure of the Amida as a whole. It begins with praise (“You grace humanity with knowledge”), proceeds to request (“Grace us with the knowledge”), and ends in acknowledgment (“Who graciously grants knowledge”).

תשובה Blessing 5: Repentance. Knowledge and understanding allow us to see where we have drifted from the right path of life. So we ask God to help us find the way back to repentance.

סליחה Blessing 6: Forgiveness. Repentance involves asking God to forgive us. This applies to sins between us and God. Sins between us and our fellow human beings are only forgiven when we have apologized to, and tried to obtain the forgiveness of, those we have wronged. Knowledge, repentance and forgiveness are the three primary needs of the mind and soul.

גאולה Blessing 7: Redemption. The commentators explain that this request is not for national redemption, the subject of later blessings. Here the reference is to release from personal crises: captivity, persecution, misfortune or affliction. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch distinguishes between the first two phrases thus: “Look on our affliction” refers to suffering not caused by others, while “Plead our cause” refers to those who seek our harm. Rational argument is often insufficient to cure hatred; therefore we place our fate in the hands of God, asking Him to heal hostility (Rabbi J.H. Hertz). למַֽעַן שמֶֽךָ For Your name’s sake: may we be spared suffering not for our own sake but so that we may be free to worship You without distraction (Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg). גּוֹאֵל יִשָׂראֵל Redeemer of Israel: in the present, as opposed to the blessing immediately prior to the Amida, which refers to acts of divine redemption in the past.

עֲנֵֽנוּ Answer us: A special prayer to be said on public fasts (Ta’anit 11a). The Leader recites it at this point in the Repetition of the Amida.

רפואה Blessing 8: Healing. We pray that medical treatment be successful, and that God Himself be part of the healing process. We are both body and soul: the health of one affects that of the other.

ברכת השנים Blessing 9: Prosperity. We pray for God’s blessing on our efforts to earn a livelihood. Israel’s agriculture depends on rain, so this blessing includes – during the winter months – a prayer for rain. Israel is a land that teaches its inhabitants the need for prayer. ותֵן טַל וּמָטָר Grant dew and rain: unlike the praise “He makes the wind blow and the rain fall” (page 111), which we begin saying on Shemini Atzeret, the actual prayer for rain is said later to coincide with the rainy season itself. Outside Israel, it is said from the sixtieth day after “Tekufat Tishrei,” the Jewish equivalent of the fall equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere).

קבוץ גלויות Blessing 10: Ingathering of exiles. With this paragraph, the requests change from individual to collective hopes. They begin with three prayers for political-historical renewal: the return of exiles, the restoration of independence, and an end to the factionalism that caused great damage to the Israelites from the biblical era to the end of the Second Temple period. תקַע בּשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל Sound the great shofar: A reference to Isaiah 27:13, “On that day a great shofar will sound.” ושָׂא נֵס Raise high the banner: Isaiah 11:12, “He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”

משפט Blessing 11: Justice. A prayer for self-government. The “Judges” in the biblical book of that name were not merely judges in a legal sense; they were leaders of the people (Rabbi Abraham ben HaRambam). The prayer for the restoration of judges, following the ingathering of exiles, is thus a plea for the return of national sovereignty. והָסֵר מִמֶּֽנּוּ יָגוֹן וַאֲנָחָה Remove from us sorrow and sighing: the plaint of a people who have known the full precariousness of being dependent on the goodwill of others.

ברכת המינים Blessing 12: Against Informers. The text of this paragraph underwent several changes during the centuries. Its original object was the sectarianism that split the Jewish world during the late Second Temple period.

על הצדיקים *Blessing 13:*הַצַּדִּיקִים The righteous. After mentioning those who harm the Jewish people, we go on to describe those who endow it with greatness: the righteous, the pious, the elders, scholars and converts. פְּלֵיטַת סוֹפְרֵיהֶם The remnant of their scholars is a reference to those Jews who endured religious persecution under the Greeks and Romans, and later, those who survived the Crusades and those who lived through the Holocaust. Judaism lost many of its greatest scholars as martyrs.

בניין ירושלים Blessing 14: Rebuilding Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the home of the Jewish soul, the place to which we turn in prayer and for whose restoration Jews prayed in every generation. The book of Psalms has left us an indelible description of how Jews felt when the city fell to the Babylonians in the sixth century BCE “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion…May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy” (Psalm 137). Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible.

מלכות בן דוד Blessing 15: Kingdom of David. David was promised by God that the monarchy would always be the heritage of his children. The Davidic monarchy came to an end with the Babylonian conquest. It will be restored in the messianic age. The word “Messiah” in Hebrew means “anointed”; that is, a duly appointed king of Davidic descent.

שומע תפלה Blessing 16: Response to Prayer. An all-inclusive prayer, that our prayers be heard. At this point in the silent Amida, the individual can include any of his or her personal requests.

עבודה Blessing 17: Temple Service. The last three blessings, called by the sages “Thanksgiving,” are linked because they were said by the priests in the Temple (Tamid 5:1). This paragraph was originally a prayer that the day’s sacrifices be accepted. The priests then said Modim “We give thanks to You” and blessed the people. According to Tosafot, this means that they said the threefold Priestly Blessing, but according to Maimonides it means that they said the prayer beginning שִׂים שָׁלוֹם, “Grant peace.”

הודאה Blessing 18: Thanksgiving. The root y-d-h has three meanings: (1) to bow (see Targum to II Samuel 16:4), hence we bow at the beginning and end of this blessing; (2) to confess or profess; and (3) to thank. The blessing begins as a confession of faith, and moves to thanks for God’s blessings which surround us continually. וְעַל נִסֶּֽיךָ שֶׁבְּכָל יוֹם עִמָּֽנוּ For Your miracles which are with us every day: Nahmanides explained the difference between a “revealed” and a “hidden” miracle. Revealed miracles stand outside the laws of nature; hidden miracles take place within them. God is present not only in signs and wonders, but also in the very laws that govern the universe. To see the miraculous in the everyday is part of the Judaic vision, beautifully expressed in these lines.

שלום Blessing 19: Peace. Shalom means more than the English word “peace”: it also means “completeness, perfection, harmonious interaction.” The prophets of Israel were the first in history to conceive of peace as an ideal, most famously in the words of Isaiah: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore” (Is. 2:4). Peace is the ultimate hope of monotheism, with its belief that the world is the product of a single will, not the blind clash of conflicting elements.

אֱלֹהָי Guard my tongue: A private meditation composed by the fourth-century scholar Mar son of Ravina. It beautifully mirrors the opening meditation, “O LORD, open my lips.” Having asked God to teach us what to say in His presence, we now ask Him to teach us what not to say in the presence of other human beings. We ask for help not to respond in kind to those who seek our harm. “The way of the righteous is to suffer humiliation but not to inflict it; to hear themselves insulted but not to reply” (Yoma 23a).