Birkat ha-minim (henceforth BH) is the name of one of the eighteen benedictions of the Jewish daily prayer, the Amidah. This benediction, which is in fact a curse against various “enemies” of the Jewish community (as understood by its authors), has attracted the attention of scholars for many years. Because minim is frequently understood as a reference to Christians, many scholars consider the introduction of this benediction a pivotal moment in the history of Jewish-Christian relations, and as a crucial turning point in the so-called “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. Ruth Langer's book is a comprehensive treatment of this benediction: its origins, its history, its text, and the various sensitivities surrounding it up to the modern period. This is indeed the book's major novelty: while most discussions of BH focus on the early centuries of the Christian era, Langer treats it as an important locus revealing Jewish sensitivities about Jewish-Christian relations throughout the ages. Accordingly, only the first chapter is devoted to the early history of BH in late antiquity, while the other four chapters discuss its text and meaning “Under Early Islam” (chapter 2), in “Europe of the High Middle Ages” (chapter 3), in the “Early Modern” period (chapter 4), and finally in “The Modern Period” (chapter 5). This is not a book, then, for students of ancient Judaism alone, but for anyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations more broadly.
The book is “textual” in its basic orientation: its main focus is the precise text of BH and its changing meanings. The textual tradition itself is presented in detail in the five appendixes accompanying the book: “Geniza Texts of the Birkat HaMinim” (appendix 1), “Birkat HaMinim in the Pre-Sepharadized Rites of the Muslim World” (appendix 2), “Uncensored Medieval European Texts of the Birkat HaMinim” (appendix 3), “Censored Texts of the Birkat HaMinim, 1550 to the Present” (appendix 4), and “Texts of the Liberal Movements” (appendix 5). Except for the first chapter, which serves as a background to the following discussions, each of the book's chapters is devoted to a close examination of these different phases of the text of BH. To the best of my knowledge this work has never been done before, and one needs to thank Langer for having devoted so much time to the careful examination of such a vast number of liturgical manuscripts, so as to be able to sketch the history of both the text and the interpretation of BH over a period of more than a thousand years.
Langer begins her treatment by assessing the early evidence concerning the BH, both rabbinic and patristic. A talmudic story ascribes the formulation of BH to Shmuel Ha-Katan (Samuel the Small), who composed it under the supervision of Rabban Gamliel at Yavneh. Following this tradition many scholars dated BH to the early second century CE. This facilitated a linkage to various early Christian texts (beginning with the Gospel of John) that mention the excommunication and cursing of Christians by Jews in their synagogues and prayers. Langer, like some scholars before her, questions the historicity of the talmudic story and casts doubt on the attempts to rely on it as evidence concerning the benediction's date and origin. Only in the ninth-century world of the Ge'onim did BH become “as normative as the rest of the talmudically mandated core of rabbinic prayers” (41). Langer shows how little we know about BH in the second and third centuries, and emphasizes that “we have no ability accurately to reconstruct the ‘original’ text of the birkat haminim or even to date its origins precisely” (40).
Indeed, the earliest evidence of the actual text of BH, much of which is preserved in Genizah manuscripts, is from the Islamic period, and as Langer notes this evidence seems quite surprising in light of the earlier talmudic material. She writes, “Every single geniza version begins ‘למשומדים אל תהי תקוה, May there be no hope for meshumadim.’ There is absolutely nothing in the talmudic-era materials discussed in the previous chapter that would have led us to expect the universal appearance of this line or its prominence as the opening line of the prayer” (45). Similarly, “In most geniza versions of the birkat haminim, the curse of the malkhut zadon, the kingdom/empire of insolence, immediately follows this curse of apostates… This line, too, could not have been anticipated based on our late antique sources” (55). These gaps should caution us against rushing to conclusions about the text and meaning of BH in mishnaic and talmudic times, as our actual knowledge of its precise text is close to nil.
Maintaining methodological rigor, Langer emphasizes time and again that “we cannot go beyond the data available,” and that “we need to be careful about overgeneralizing.” On the textual level, the most she is willing to say is that “the geniza evidence for the birkat haminim reflects a liturgy in significant flux” (64). On the interpretive level, however, she seems to have something more important to note: “What emerges from the geonic world is a blessing that barely focuses on the minim who occasioned its initial composition” (ibid.).
And it is precisely at this point that Langer's treatment of BH seems to have missed the point. For the very assumption that it was the minim who occasioned the benediction's initial composition rests on an acceptance of the talmudic story about Shmuel Ha-Katan, whose value as a historical account Langer herself denies. If one refuses to accept the historicity of the talmudic story, why should one assume, in the first place, that the minim were the benediction's initial focus? Simply because of its name?
In one branch of the Babylonian text of BH the minim are not mentioned at all. According to the data given by Langer, this version is documented in far more Genizah manuscripts than any other existing version of the benediction (see table at 46–47). Sa‘adia's text, too, does not make any mention of the minim (57). This should have caused one to pause and wonder about the nature of the benediction and its target. Perhaps, after all, BH was not a curse aimed specifically against the minim? Perhaps it needs to be viewed differently?
The Tosefta (T. Berakhot 3:25), which preserves the earliest rabbinic reference to BH, rules that the benediction concerning the minim may (or should) be incorporated into another benediction, that is, the one concerning פרושים (the precise nature of which is even less known than that of BH, and is open to different interpretations). Already this suggests that BH is only part of a broader benediction. Moreover, if one accepts Saul Lieberman's interpretation that פרושים were separatists, one would immediately notice other early rabbinic sources (such as T. Megilah, 3:37; T. Bava Meẓia 2:23; T. Sanhedrin, 13:5), in which minim are associated with separatists and other types of “internal enemies.” Among these, משומדים (apostates), to whom Langer devotes a lengthy discussion (45–55), play a prominent role in these early rabbinic texts, just as they appear, in proximity to the minim, in the texts of BH from the early Islamic period. All this would make the textual findings, which Langer so carefully delineates, far less surprising than they might seem at first.
Langer's correct observation (known in fact to anyone who actually recites BH as part of his or her daily prayers) that the benediction refers to various “enemies,” not only (and not primarily) to minim, as well as the fact that the benediction's conclusion – which usually reflects a benediction's focal point – does not refer to the minim at all, but rather to “enemies” in general, should have made it clear that BH is not a curse aimed specifically against the minim (whatever their precise identity), but rather a curse against Israel's enemies of all sorts.
Perhaps, then, despite the fact that the benediction has been given the name “birkat ha-minim,” and despite the fact that minim were frequently identified as Christians, the question we should ask is not: To what extent did Jews throughout the ages indeed understand it as a curse against Christians and Christianity? Perhaps it would have been better to ask a fundamental question about the nature of the benediction. Why, and under what discursive assumptions, was it possible for its authors to include minim, apostates, the Evil Kingdom, and various other evil-doers, within one and the same framework? Langer is surely correct in saying that “Whomever it originally cursed, it served in the medieval period, especially in Europe, as a curse of various elements of the Christian world” (184). This fact alone should not, however, decide the course of our inquiry. A different perspective would have brought us to realize that discursive associations similar to those found in medieval manuscripts are present already in the earliest strata of classical rabbinic literature, and therefore the gap between the evidence of the former and the evidence of the latter is not as great as it sometimes appears.
