Unetanah tokef
Dec. 18th, 2006 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioA thought snippet I want to hang onto (result of tonight's class)...
The liturgy for Rosh Hashana includes a powerful prayer called Unetanah Tokef, which includes the theme of God sitting in judgement and deciding who will live and who will die (etc) based on our past deeds. Lots of people (myself included) have trouble with this idea, because it seems to say that if someone dies it's because he did something wrong. (I choose to interpret it with a big dose of metaphor.)
Tonight when we were studying this prayer I found myself wondering about the intentions of the author, Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. According to tradition, he proclaimed this prayer one Rosh Hashana -- while dying from torture because he wouldn't convert to Christianity. So we have someone who was clearly dying for a holy cause uttering these words. Somehow I don't think he had in mind that death implies sinner and righteous implies life.
Hmm. I wonder what else (beyond the story itself) has been written about this. Must file away for later followup.
The liturgy for Rosh Hashana includes a powerful prayer called Unetanah Tokef, which includes the theme of God sitting in judgement and deciding who will live and who will die (etc) based on our past deeds. Lots of people (myself included) have trouble with this idea, because it seems to say that if someone dies it's because he did something wrong. (I choose to interpret it with a big dose of metaphor.)
Tonight when we were studying this prayer I found myself wondering about the intentions of the author, Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. According to tradition, he proclaimed this prayer one Rosh Hashana -- while dying from torture because he wouldn't convert to Christianity. So we have someone who was clearly dying for a holy cause uttering these words. Somehow I don't think he had in mind that death implies sinner and righteous implies life.
Hmm. I wonder what else (beyond the story itself) has been written about this. Must file away for later followup.