all knowledge is contained on LiveJournal

[cellio]

Request to brain trust:

I'm looking for information on the "eitz chayim" passage in the torah-reading liturgy, starting with its textual source (dang, didn't bring a concordance). I'm interested in its liturgical history. Was it an earlier or later addition? It's universal in Ashkenazi nusach; what about others? Any other interesting tidbits?

Yes, I hope to get to the campus library tomorrow, but who am I to turn down any parallel processing that might be forthcoming?

Thanks.

Comments

we live to serve

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Request to brain trust:

You mean "who among you has Elbogen"? :-)

The three passages usually recited starting with "Etz chaim he" are: Prov 3:18, Prov. 3:17, and Lamentations 5:21. The actual start of that section is Num. 10:36, "Uvnucho yomar..." about putting down the Ark. Elbogen says that Num. 10:36 and Lamentations 5:21 ("Hashiveinu...") are the only parts of that particular section that are done in all rites; all the others use different sets of verses between these two.

Elbogen's commentary on the section is interesting. The Talmud doesn't talk about any special liturgy for taking out or putting back the torah. However, it's there in the earliest siddur, Amram's (9th c.), along with all many brachot and passages not unlike what we do today. All the rites do something like these ceremonies, though they differ widely on specifics. So he says it's an evolution from the point of the torah service being to read the torah, to the point being to celebrate the torah and commemorate the giving of torah in the abstract. He doesn't elaborate, but I would guess that the whole substitution of torah/ark for temple/altar would have something to do with enriching the torah ceremony, which has to become much more central liturgically than it had been before, much as the object of the torah became more central in a ritual fashion to Judaism as a whole.