Rambam, Lethargic Innovation Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz | July 14 2026

I think it's safe to say that the Rambam is a fairly conservative voice in the sense that he was against he was against additional new braots that are not mentioned in the Talmud. Sometimes he had active opposition. He would say don't do it. Other times he had what you might call benign neglect. He said yeah you want to do it do it but there's no particular reason to do it. So for example, with respect to the yudim midot regarding the Torah reading on a fast day where the congregation says the 13 midot of raim before the balor. So the Rambam said no reason to do it but if you want to do it there's no problem. On the other hand when it came to certain additional the Rambam actually said you're not allowed to do it. It would be a blessing in vain. And I had mentioned and this is going to come out today in more detail that the Rambam had a certain tension because one of his great predecessors uh like a hundred years earlier was Ravaja Gaon and Rafajon was a person who was greatly greatly greatly admired and even by the Rambam himself and Ravsaja Gaon really had the opposite orientation. He was adding things left and right uh new poems and all sorts of things and uh the Rambam obviously had a tremendous amount of respect for Abs but the Rambam totally disagreed with this approach. So essentially the Rambam I think is walking very cautiously uh in this particular area because he certainly does not want to say anything that would detract from the cover of Rafson but frankly he absolutely disagreed with Draajone's improvisation uh and creation. I'll talk a little bit more about where did that come from where did get all of these uh get all of these things. Um actually I have to remember this is a bit of an inside humorous remark. I I hope uh you'll get it. You know many of you might have heard of Rabbi Dr. Kaim Salvetek. He's the son the only son of of Yoshir Salvichek and Dr. Salvich, Rabbi Salvich is a both a big tot but mainly he's an academic historian and uh he's very assurerbic sometimes sarcastic very very sharp but he's really really brilliant person so he once said that making Rabs appointing Rabaja goon as the gaon of surah surah was the main Babylonian yeshiva would be similar to making vi hoffman the roshashiva of now that's a joke that requires requires a lot of unpacking but essentially the yeshiva of the was the epitome of traditional Tammudic study. Rabdi Hakman was a big but he was also an academic who was involved in all sorts of other things like Bible criticism and the like. So Ravajon in a sense broke the mold. Ravajon was interested in poetry. He was interested in in Putim. the gaon above had tended to be very traditional and even a little rigid in just following the the Talmud and Sajya is again it's it's it's such a perfect analogy it's like making so in truth it's no accident that Rafajan's appointment was very sharply contested and I can understand why that would be so because he was undeniably a very very great figure but he was very different than his predecessors and very different than his successors. So he was kind of a very unique colorful type of figure. That's besides the polit there were political intrigues as well uh surrounding his appointment. So as I say the Rambam who of course is immensely brilliant in his own right uh did take uh issue with Ravsajone's creative innovations uh in the liturgy but as I say he would never say anything directly critical of Ravsajone so this this will come out so one of the things the last thing we talked about I want to talk about a little bit more is maybe this somewhat indelicate subject of what is called Birkat basul the blessing over virginity. This is a bit of a strange braha. And here we cannot blame. This is not his fault. He didn't create that braha. Uh the braha is brought by someone earlier than that is the bahag the hillot gdollot. Uh and who knows where he got it from. I mean he seems to say that this is such a braha and this was quite literally a braha that a katan would recite when he discovered that his wife was a virgin after they had their first consummation of the marriage and he would thank God for that gift. Uh that itself is a quite unusual type of braha. Uh but at least according to the bahag it was a private braha that was recited. It was not meant to be public. Even then it's it's relatively strange but the bahag does not indicate it was public but the bahag does indicate that it should be recited over a cup of wine brigen and hadim myrtle in which you spake the brain in fact the gaim generally had this thing interestingly enough and some still do it that every time you do a mitzvah over a cup of wine you also couple with bisamim that's a general coupling throughout the all the chubasim for example at a bris or pigeon aben whatever it is anything that you make you also include because that would make it eight brahas you include um the sim so the bahag writes that the braha over virginity should include a braha over wine and a braha over bamim and then the braha over virginity but it is a private Now by the time we get to the Rambam's time the custom in Egypt was kind of bizarre and that is the Shabbat after the Katan would make the bra in Besset publicly by kind of my wife is a is a is a virgin. So the Ramba and this was a fairly widespread custom and uh the Rambam was asked about it. So the Rambam makes two points. This is a quick review. I I'll go over some new points in in a few moments. Point number one is the whole is of and that's consistent with the raam that we don't make that are not codified in the Talmud and whoever created this brah is just making up a braha and therefore the raam says can't do it. Now that's a that's kind of a generic issue that the Rambam has with new brahas nothing to do with the content of the braha. The second point the Ramba made was that it's an egregious breach of modesty and sne uh that something should be recited publicly about someone's sexual history or or whatever it is. Number one, inherently it's not a proper thing to talk about and number two it would cause shame and humiliation for a given woman who might not be a virgin. You know what are you going to say if you if you have this custom to make such a braha then what's going to happen when you don't make the braha so one of two things are going to happen either a woman is going to be shamed or what might happen is people are going to make the braha anyway not in other words and you're going to be saying a for sure I mean that's going to be the the situation you know it remind so because of this the Rambam said number one but again I want to it's important that you understand there are two separate points here The Rambam's first point is this entire braha is improper not because of the what it's talking about but simply because it's not in the garra it's not in the Talmud therefore we don't innovate that's consistent with the Rambam's general gisha of extreme conservatism in the preservation of the second issue is to make a public brah about virginity is a disgrace and uh he says in very strong language anyone that has the irashm uh would not make such a would not make such a braha. It's a very very bad practice. Now interestingly enough by by and large the has followed the Rambam and by and large this braha is not recited that much and I don't think in well when I had my class many years ago they didn't they didn't tell me to make it uh and I don't follow every class today but I my my my guess is that people are not told to do it. Nevertheless, strangely enough, this braha has a survivability history that you might be quite surprised. Uh it is mentioned in the tour and even in the so the actually says that such a braha is made not publicly not publicly but such a braha is made privately over wine and bam andor bisamim. uh and the commentaries bring only the mahar who says we don't make the braha but in fact the actually says said you do uh and uh indeed the rush uh says that you do the rush raenu asher I mean that's why the tour you know the tour of yakov balatur was the son of raenu aer so in fact the tour is largely based not totally based but it's largely based on the sakim of the rush by the way maybe this will be a subject for a different course kind of the history of these great great medieval commentators it's very worthwhile the rush is an extremely pivotal figure in the history of halaka because the rush was ashkenazi the rush was from Germany raeno asher but then in the aftermath of the crusades he migrated to spain and Therefore, he was one of the main bridges between Ashkanazim and when he came to Spain uh the chief rabbi in Spain was binat the rashba and the rashbah appointed the rash to be a dion on his basin and that is one of that's a very very important what you would call a cross fertilization remember in those days travel was not so easy France Germany to Spain is not an especially ly long trip today, but it was arduous and again remember that um Germany and France were under Christian rule, Spain was under Islamic rules. So ballet was not an easy way of going and as a result Ashkenazim and Spartan were fairly isolated and cut off from each other even within the small area of Europe. So people like Rash like the Rash are extremely important in bridging Ashkenazim and and Spartan. So it's important to know that again maybe some point in the future we can talk about these historical issues at greater length but the rush does bring birkat basulim and the rush says it should be recited. It should be recited. So in this case I want to digress a little bit and go away from the ramb and mention that the mafam do raise a contradiction in the rush and that is batulim is one example of a madeup ra that just came in at a later time. It's not in the Talmud at all. There's another example of a madeup raha that I guess may be less offensive, but it's still a madeup raha in the sense that it is postmudic at a brit. Right? So the Gmorrah actually says there are three that are recited at a brisma. The first braha is said by the moel generally and that's the mitzvah. That's the mitzvah. That's the second braha is recited by the father and that is you commanded us to bring my son. That's the second brah. Now in Eric Israel there is a third braha that's recited and that's now the atrisis has a little bit of an interesting history actually pas that ashkenazim do not recite aanu at a brit because since the baby feels pain you don't want to kind of celebrate when the baby feels pain although I think that the parents probably feel more pain than than the baby. So that's why if you remember the old country, so probably you did not hear at a bris in Erit Israel. They say bris uh because that became the minute of Israel simply because the mitzvah of bris is so joyous and so precious that it even overrides the relatively small discomfort that a baby would would feel. So insets generally speaking two brahas on a bris and there's three brahas but there is then a fourth braha after the brris right these are the brahas before the bre after the brris right before the baby is named you'll recall we fill up a cup of wine and like the gonim you would also take had remember they they always couple it prior bisim and then there's a long a long that God sanctified the Jewish baby all the way from conception and he commanded us to enter into a bris etc and after that which ends blessed is God who makes the covenant that is when the baby is named that's not that's when and often in terms of kibim although that's not that important very often sometimes that braha and the creat are divided among two people. But most of the time the one that recites that braha over the wine whether it's a grandparent or a rabbi whoever it is will also be the one that names the baby. Okay. Now the source of that is from the gmorra too. So the garra does say before the briso before the bris the gammor itself does not mention and that's why we have that but it does mention after the bris to make the special by the way a little little digression about naming you know um the way it always is the name is like kept secret. Doesn't have to be kept secret. People keep a secret. So they they whisper it to the person like so nobody should hear it until the announcement is made. Now sometimes the one that's naming the baby didn't hear it right. So they may say the wrong name. So how does that work if they said the wrong name? So I was witness many many years ago to uh I was two verses in the week and the same thing happened twice and the same Roshiva was there and he gave two opposite sucker and here was the story. Uh the first time the um the one who was honored with katam didn't hear it correctly. So he simply said the wrong name because he didn't hear it correctly. So when the parents corrected him the Roshiva Paskin it was a mistake because it was a mistake obviously you can go with the right name. Now the second time the grandfather was honored with creat and he didn't like the name. >> They just changed it >> that his daughter ch his daughter picked her daughter and her husband picked so he just changed it >> and I remember I remember hearing this whale like from the women's section you know etc. And the Rosha said, actually I'm rehearsing it. This this was the first story. Um and the Rosha said, "This was hashka practice. This is minayam. This is God's decree." You know, that's going to be the name. Now, I'm not sure what their relationship was afterwards and and the like. So, I guess there's a difference between intentional change, which somehow will be more legitimate versus an accident. I I don't know. But that's not a brah. I'm referring to the brah. The brah of is in the garra. Okay. Now we now come to the time of the gaim after the now let's go to pigen which is the next big ceremony uh in the life of a Jewish boy if he happens to be a firstborner and not a ceerian. Remember cescareians don't get pigets. Okay. Um now so what do we have? uh you give the coe the the money or the silver and there is a grapha on mitzvah we also make au and here even the rama makes au simply because there's no pain to the baby unlike a brit where the rama says we don't make because of the pain to the baby pigan is a harmless financial transaction. So we have mitzvah and we have now the at some point we don't know exactly when introduced a new bra modeled exactly on the braid that we recite on a bris meaning after the pigeon the coen pours a cup of wine and bamim again the gonim always couple the wine on the bamim and then says a very long braha which once again starts off with he sanctified the baby from birth and said that as a he has to be redeemed. Uh and it's a long braha and it's very very clearly modeled after the braha and a bris except the problem is the talmud makes no reference to it and it's a very long braha and we don't recite it. We do not recite it today and the reason is because of the rush. The rush says we never recite that are not in the Talmud. We do not recognize later but in fact what you will see at a pigeon is that the Cohen will pour a glass of wine and make priyan but that's it. He's not going to make this other this other long braha. So you understand there actually is a stra there is a contradiction in the rush because by birkatul the rush says we should say it even though it is a braha that has no source in the tal privately but when it comes to the extra ofen the rush says a we don't say like the raam would say we do not say that are not sourced in the to so the do ask that there's a contradiction in Rabenu a Usher's in Berkulim versus Rabenu a Usherak by Pon Haben various answers are suggested but at least our practice is consistent we don't say either one and we're following the rule that these are new putting aside issues but we we don't kind of incorporate these brahobs that are not in the that are not in the gamar okay uh so if you're going to look in sitter for this long braha after pigeon. You are not going to find it. It is only I mean the tour brings it. Uh but the tour then brings his father the rush that says lo. So apparently it was said in Spain although the Rambam does not bring it down. Consistent with the Rambam's position it was said in Spain. it was not said in Germany or or or France. Okay. So, uh you can write a whole book again this idea that the liturgy is closed so to speak. You know, you see it was kind of a lively debate. I mean the Rambam kind of took that position and the rush sometimes yes sometimes not. Others like again he he did not create either of these brothers but sajon generally was much more freewheeling in terms of the uh liturgy and and the like. Okay. So now though I want to go back to the Rambam's discussion of lurggical innovations and here to understand this a little bit you have to understand that there were two major sedurim that were created before the Rambam within less than a 100 years in the 9th century the 800s remember that in Babylonia Babylonia then was really the center of world jewelry meaning all of there were communities in Europe. There were communities in Italy, Germany, France, maybe not so much in Russia or Poland yet, but certainly Italy, Germany, France were big big Jewish communities, but Eric Israel was very very small. Not that many Jews in Erit Israel. Uh but the chief rabbinet of the world were the Gonim of Ba. They really had an amazingly strong centralized authority over all of the Jewish community. Uh the period of the gaonim, this is before the vishonim. And in Bavl itself, Iraq, there were two main yeshivas which had different leaderships and to some degree different minhagim. There was the yeshiva of sura and the yeshiva of pompadisa. Now these communities are mentioned in the in the Gammoria itself but they continue to be the main centers of in the hierarchy of things. Sura was generally considered to be a little bit higher know Harvard Yale or whatever type of thing whichever way you rank it. On the other hand, there were times where the gon of pompadisa was so eminent that that overrid the institutional uh eminence of surah surfon the last of the gaonim who was considered to be the greatest of the goon. It was actually the the ga of pompadisa. So as I say uh sura was slightly higher but both were great very much esteemed and you will find in the later reonim after these yeshivas close down because of persecutions they will often refer to the minivote. This is the custom of the two yeshivots. The two yeshivas are sura and pmpedisa meaning that kind of created the minhagim of klra that were later brought down by all the different rishonim the riff and rashi and tovos and the like the rambom too looking to what the gahon uh the gahon did now in the um 9th century in the middle of the 800s for a very long period of time the ro it's called the r mifa which means Roshiva the head of the yeshiva of surah was Rabbi Amram and G today we use g to anyone fact everybody's a goon today uh but but but even when we use the title authentically to someone that is a goon in Torah uh we're not really using it in its original usage the word gaon means excellency and the word appears in Tanak ga but ga was the official title, meaning it didn't just mean anybody that was learned in Torah. You could be an extremely learned person, but ga was an office. Gaon means you were the head of Surah or Pompad. Now, keep in mind that there were many, many, many great and many of them might have been greater than some of the ga, but they're technically not ga because they did not occupy that position. So gaon in its original usage did not mean a great great to it meant the occupant of a particular position. So the same way uh you can have a given legal scholar who may be smarter and more knowledgeable than anybody on the Supreme Court but you can't call them justice because they don't have that job. So the greatest kafam could not be called gaon unless he had that position. Okay. So that's important to know. Now later what happened was at some later point we don't know exactly when the term ga was just a title of respect to a very very great and still later it got to mean so anybody who went to okay that's that's another issue. Everybody is a gaon today. That's a separate issue. But but even when gaon was used for a real gaon, it was not appropriate if they were not that position. So ram gaon was the ram mipa in surah. Now the way it worked was communities all over the diaspora and including arrael which was very small. They would send they would send questions to the gaim and the answers would come back signed by the re mipa but they were not his personal opinions. They were like discussed with the yeshiva and this was like a consensus. This was like a formal judgment. And these eventually were collected in different collections that are called the chuvos of the gaon. And this spans a thousand years. This spans, you know, many, many, many years. So, Raong received a question. Actually, the yeshiva of Sura received a question from a congregation of Jews in Spain in which they were uncertain about the appropriate order of the liturgy. So the massa of surah essentially sent them an officially approved sitter and this is called the sided of rabi am and this is a very complete sided. includes uh the shakus the shabas of yamt rashana yam kipperosa pigen very very complete the sitter of ram is the basis of our liturgy hay haz and even ashkinazm and spider even though obviously there are going to be differences over time but Everything is based on the s ofone even though as I say differences were introduced at a later point. So our when I say I mean everybody is based on sidor shelon and ram was indeed very very conservative as the rambom later was. Raam Ramon based his things primarily on Talmudic precedent uh and did not bring in extra poetry and extra pim and extra and that became makubal. Now less than a hundred years later we have Revaj less than 100 years later and Revs also became the go of Sur and his Salatrix immortal formulation. Forgive me for keep on repeating it because I I I love it a lot. Uh Rabdihman becomes Roshiba Bajin and Ravajong came out with his own sitter but sitter is very very different than a Ranong sitter. Now when I say very different obviously it's the same structure. I mean I don't want to exaggerate that you know my chakras you know men shabas you know that's basically the same but what he did was he incorporated a huge amount of innovation now not all of it comes from him meaning some things he wrote himself he was a poet he wrote manyos kinos all sorts of things poetries supplications but he also incorporated many many things that the gain did not accept from the old minhagim of Eric Israel. Remember that Erit Israel in the time of the Gaonim there were so few Jews and they were so persecuting and the Gonim sometimes were a little high-handed which is an interesting history and a lot of the old customs of Eric Israel some of which survive in the Tad Shami and Midrasha but they don't carry over in the Babylonian and the Goner's main agendas was to secure acceptance of the Babylonian as the main source of authority. So a lot of the min erich isra from that time fell into oblivion including the poetry that they added the innovations that they had and gone I'm not sure exactly how had access to a lot of this material and he resuscitated he reclaimed the old heritage material. So again he didn't write in other words these are not his originals he reclaimed old Erico material and he incorporated into his sitter so it's a very different work than the sitter of Ramon what's interesting is that although as a literary creation if we could talk about the sitter that way sitter is far superior uh to ram because also included many halos written in Arabic. So or Judea or you know Hebrew letters but Arabic so people would understand. So it was a very learning type of sitter as well kind of an old arts world sitter or whatever it would be but it was very innovative. It was far less conservative than the sitter of a bra. And interestingly enough although it had some influence but by and large it got discarded and people stopped paying attention to it and indeed the kissad the manuscripts are of sad sitter were like lost for almost a thousand years meaning we simply didn't even have it we only knew it by references and the like so ram gonsitter became the foundation of the liturgy. Refa was virtually ignored for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was only published for the first time around 100 years ago, maybe less than 100 years ago. Uh and uh and and and the like. So in the Rambam's time, Revaj did have a lot of influence and as a result, the Rambam has asked a lot of questions about the lurggical innovation. Remember Ravajon himself was a native of Egypt. As a result, Bedafka in Mitraim where the Rambam lived is where Ravajon sitter had the greatest influence. And that's where the Rambam has a problem because the Rambam fundamentally does not like Rabaj's innovations and even reclaiming old material uh that for marriage is really young. the in Babylonia that was still from the first how did that come about? >> Yeah, it it it was a mix. There was a core of the community that goes all the way back to the first BA mikdash. But by and large uh these are people that came after the after the >> after the second. Yeah. Yeah. After the second. Um although as I say it does date all the way back but but that was not that was not a large that was not a large a large number. So let me just mentioned some of the innov >> right >> 15th century. Yeah. >> Well that's exactly right. I mean listen uh I mean how is the spread? How is the spread? Basically, you had copiest. This was a big job. People would copy manuscripts and uh books were certainly not as widely available as today, but it was copied. Manuscripts were copied. Indeed, that was exactly the case. So, let me give you an example of some innovations in Rapadia's Stiger. again not I mean there's plenty of original compositions that he put in that that's true also but I'm talking about reformulations that are much older than him that he reclaimed from the old minhagim of Israel and these are the brahos before and after crema and the raam deals with this directly the Mishna in masak's braos lays down a very very definitive rule and it says in keshma of the evening There are two brahos that we recite before the shma and there are two brahos that we recite after the shma. Now what are these? So at so the bra first before the ise and the second bra ends with oh is the third after the begins with and it ends with and then we have the bra of hashu is now in uh there's another that comes from the that's also a later brah but the lays down two before and two after now as far as the atonement is concerned these brahos are identical for shabas right but when we d marif Friday night the brahos before and after the are exactly the same you might add bashra but but that that's that's that's not a bra that's an addition Inaj the whole bra is rewritten. In other words, the the brahos before both brahos and the brahos after shma are totally reformulated and rewritten in honor of shabas. Now the same thing is true in the morning. In the morning uh we have uh yodz or now y is a very long you wouldn't know it from the typography of the sitter but it starts with but then it keeps on going and it ends with now here on shabas we do add something to that we have kon we do have some changes But they are just additions meaning we say the same during the week and we have some additional infra totally rewritten and the same thing with the braos after. So one of the questions the Rambam was asked was that we have congregations in Egypt that have a special for and Shabbat which is different than the of the during the week. And again let me emphasize as you would probably guess in the sitter of Ramon that is not indicated at all. So here the Rambam clearly does have a certain tension with the Rambam's initial reaction is he tells somebody don't say it don't say it just say it is the same for and the same for Shabas uh we do not accept that the of the is going to be changed for Shabas because the tow does not indicate that at all. He then says, however, interestingly enough, that if everybody else in the SH is saying it, so you still shouldn't say it. Don't say it, but don't make mus don't make a speech that they shouldn't say it. Meaning, let people do what they're doing. So, he tells the person actually don't say it. And the Rambam himself says that I have been in Schulz where people have said it and I don't say it, but I don't protest. Now it's not clear to me there might be two ideas here. Is he saying don't protest for shalom or don't protest because of the honor of sajjun and it could be either way because there are times where the raom I think would protest. I think the burkat pulum made publicly I think the ra would have gotten up and said don't say it here said hands off now. So the person then said, "What if I'm the what if I'm the shore?" So I got to say it especially because the min was the said every word out loud. So here the Rambam tries to come up with a compromise which frankly I think was not would not work but his compromise was well listen instead of just saying the alternative why don't you start with the standard Nus and then just interweave thing as an addition meaning you'll say everything there but you'll submission it with the regular as opposed to making it a whole new and the Rambam says That's not great either, but at least you'll be saying the right braha, albeit with an addition. Now, is that going to plate the congregation? I actually think not. I mean, they're going to yell at them for not uh saying exactly exactly what they what they say, but this is what the Ram says. So, so this, I think, is a um it highlights an important tension that really uh every rabbi kind of has to face. meaning to say if things are going on that are not optimal when do you say I got to stop this and when do you say for purposes of shalah it's better not to make because that way we could accomplish more things right if you fight you got to choose your battles this is true for parents too you got to choose your battles if you're going to fight over everything, you're not going to achieve victory over anything because people will just get antagonistic including your own kids uh and the like. They'll turn you off. So, it's fascinating that the Rambam himself is kind of struggling uh with this particular issue which he says don't say it but don't protest and uh if you're a kazan try to make this compromise of of of of mixing it in. But it is fascinating that again he did not author this but he actually incorporates a totally different braha before and after the schma if it's shabas and uh that did get dropped based on on the raam and the like and as I say um our nus anyway is based on Rav Amram who does not have any of these particular uh particular innovations. Now here I I want to talk a little bit again just to take this a little further about the whole genre of put are poetic additions to the now when pim are simply said let's say after davening or before davening they have no particular problem you're simply saying extra prayers but the problem is that pim are often inserted at times in the dominating when you're not allowed to interrupt and the question becomes if they are not if they are not part of the official lurggical text is the recitation of Pim considered to be a hefts in you see this is a different issue than the Rambam was directly addressing when the Rambam was addressing essing the different nak for shabas that was a different problem that was changing the brah but now when we talk about pim we're actually talking about the ram's own suggestion where you say the braha properly but you're adding different things that's going to be a different type of problem that's not going to be the problem of innovating a text this will be a problem of interrupting the So I want to point out when you think of puim the only thing that comes to mind for most people is that extra stuff that we say on Roshashana and Yum Kipper but that is far from the amount of put that that were written. There is a huge huge huge number of PU that were written not only for Rashana and Yipper uh but for the Shogim for Porim for the Shabbat of of Aassa before and after a for the three weeks for especially after the Crusades There were these are called Shabbat Tager because many of the massacres of Jewish communities occurred during the Omr period and they had special puim which actually still said in in in German shells. Uh these are called Shabbaso Sager. Uh so the genre of puim which among most ashkanazic kahilos has become extremely attenuated and narrow and even rash kipper we only say a fraction or at least only some of the put this is huge I think I mentioned last week the drmith's makurim which are not suitable for domining use in which he has the puim that were said in different kilos in Germany and in France uh and and and and and the like. This is only Ashkanazard had put as well but the putim of Spartim tended to atrophy precisely because of the Rambam in a sense had more put than Ashkanazim uh the Rambam can be blamed for virtually killing them off. So if you open up an Ashkanazi mak um even an art even an art you will see all sorts of put for the and you will even see in the back of the mak in the back of the mak untransated will be uh these put are not recited by the overwhelming majority of congregations but here they are yeah >> yos that's that's correct that's correct the yos for the four parts are examples of those for you, Tim. Uh, some say them, some don't. It's interesting. I don't know if if it got declined in recent years. When I grew up, I just grew up in a regular Young Israel shop. And we did say the OS for the four partials. Uh, but uh it's kind of kind of neglected today. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a huge huge huge genre and it spans many many years. It started in Erit Israel really in the in Tammudic times and in Eric Israel there was a very freewheeling approach to liturgy. Not only did they addim they added brahos they changed they did not regard the liturgy as fooling. Uh in the Gonic times ra kind of wanted to make it fixed. uh so he gave you a fixed nusk but still many many pim were incorporated so I'm going to give you a little vocabulary of put so you understand uh what what they are uh they are put that are written for the my prayer and they are called maravit right they are called or maravim actually they use the masculine for whatever reason these are called the maravim and the way the marav work is you don't change the braha you recite the but right before thee you say a few lines are pretty short that each per is like four lines four lines before lines before Israel four lines before Israel four lines before hasheno although the last one is elaborated somewhat and these are called ma vim they are in the maker Although almost nobody says them, Hungarian cahilos say them. Uh the German again, Yaki, this is a I'm still trying to figure this out. Um I say Yaki uh but now I hear from uh German Jews that Yaki is considered to be insulting. But then I hear from Yakis, they refer to themselves as Yakis. So I honestly don't know. I I I don't want to insult anybody. Uh, the word yucky means short jacket. Whatever. Okay, maybe it started off because the Polish Jews would humorously refer to the German Jews who didn't wear kapatas as they wear short jackets. But I I don't know. I grew up in I thought it was a fairly common non-inssulting term. So if I'm insulting anybody, I ask their forgiveness. Uh, just easier to say than than German or or whatever whatever it would be. uh but they do say the marraim uh in the uh in let's say berser in the German kahilos and they do say it in the Hungarian minagim factner from Hungary once said he didn't know how you can enter a yamt without saying the special maravim that kind of bring you into the spirit of the yamt now our min is we don't say maravim at all and even on rash We don't say actually no actually actually I should stand corrected the marim were only written for the we actually don't have maybe because they didn't want to extend the ding longer than it is the only thing we have on is we say after so the are for the now in the morning we have all sorts of pim in the blessings of keshma and they are given distinct names. Collectively they are called yots. Now again there's semantic confusion here. Many people use the word yotzro as interchangeable with putim and that's the common way people talk. In reality yros refers only to the putim in the blessings of schma. The yots, the putim and are not called yos. Colloally they will be but technically yots are the pim in birkas keshma. And the reason is because berkash keshma begins with yoder or now those put depending on when they are inserted have a different name. The p that is inserted in the brah of yer or is called yzer. the piet that is inserted before yam I'm sorry then there's a p that's after kadosh kadosh kad right before that's called the little pia the p that is inserted before is called the p that is inserted before is called aa is not interrupted. And then in the paragraph ms after there is a p that is called a zulat. These are named these are the names we have yer oan ma aa zulat and then before goal is there would be a p that is called a gulva okay so the complete set of the yots in terms of names again I hope I'm not overwhelming you with detail is the yer the the ma the ava the zulat and the gaul that's the complete set there are very very few if any even among those that have budin that have the complete set and typically even if you go to Washington heights which is uh forgive the metaphor the mecca for those who say put uh the standard There's only three yoder opulas yeran zulas. Uh there is no gula, there is no ma and there is no ava. Uh the only exception is on the first days of pes there is a very beautiful gula which is baraki. Perhaps you remember this uh which is right before Israel. And that is a gula for uh the first day of Pes and for Shabas is based on Shira and for that is the only surviving gula uh in the Ashkanaz. Um now in Sarat when Spartum used to write Putim they had the same format and they were much more complete. They had maos, they had a they had gulos. In other words, their put were much more complete. The ashkanazic put even when they were written were only the yodairan and zulas. They didn't have the other parts except for bra and the like. Uh so I tried to find this. I tried looking in spartic makurin for this complete set of putin and you don't find them because what happened basically was that because of the raam and postal in their ilk the whole genre of the yots became defunct because the raam took the position that this is a heic in schma. So the swartim used to have a richer python tradition than Ashkanazim but it became dormant. So anyway the word yots are the putim in beros keshma. Now then we have putim in the amida in the repetition of the amida and they are called kovos. Kovos is drawing near to hashem. Okay. Okay. So, I'll go over a little more detail about next week, but the two types of are the yots of beros keshma and the kovot within the amida. But in popular speech, the whole genre is called yotros. So when you look in a macho or a sitter and you see what are called yolots for the four partios you will actually see that the yots are mainly croo yos as well but the bulk of what we call yros are technically croo because they are said um in the u in the khazar sashhats. Similarly therefore the putim of yim which are mainly in khazar sashhats are technically called croo. Okay little vocabulary maybe it's more than you want to know but uh it's useful to uh be aware of this because it truly is a very very fascinating thing. I mean the u the goldmith marsur I have to count as some of my guilty pleasures. just leaf through it and just see the tremendous diversity of uh ingenious, beautiful, very hard to translate uh poetry. Uh now this is only Ashkenazim. I'm still trying to find spart as I say there in recent centuries there there are no I mean there's plenty of spartic putum after daming that that's for sure that that always remained before and after but the bat almost became of primarily because of the tremendous influence of the Rambam so he killed it off he killed off a whole genre of literature uh and that was followed by Rio Yoseph Kra so it's a very very different orientation. Ashkenazm went with it a lot longer, but Spartum originally had a richer tradition of Pia than even even. Okay, have a good week. We'll see you tomorrow next week.