He Who Breaks Enemies…

Before we finish looking at the Shemonah Esrei, and I leave you to learn from the book on your own, we need to look at the prayer which deals with the ‘slanderers’. There is an important and interesting bit of history involved in this prayer. It is one that we should all know about.

…hvqt yht la ,ynyslmlv

And for the slanderers let there be no hope, and may all evil be instantly destroyed. And all of Your enemies should be quickly cut off, and the rebellious sinners You should quickly uproot, and smash, and break, and humble quickly in our day. Blessed are You, HaShem, who breaks enemies and humbles rebellious sinners.

What are we to make of this prayer? To begin with, we have simply “turned the other cheek” – for whatever reason, this is not something that we believe in, in any wholesale manner. We did this far too many times in our history and perhaps we finally earned our lesson 70 years ago in 1939. Never again! But back to the question: we ask G-d to break our enemies and to humble the sinners. Note the difference. We, as Jews, are sensitive to the difference between the person and the evil that they commit. We pray for evil to be destroyed.

Now this prayer was directed toward our fellow Jews! And we believe that he may have been caught up in the negative aspects of life that were, at that time, all around him (or her). But we will look at the historical aspect in a moment. Remember for now that when we pray we are asking for HaShem to remove the conceit or arrogance from the person so that these aspects of the Yetzer Hara will not have the influence to propel him into doing evil.

Now the background of this prayer is that it was not one of the 18 (the original 18 prayers that were instituted by the Great Assembly c3441 or about 315 BCE); however its historical basis eventually made it worthy of inclusion. And why is that? Well we find that in the Talmud there are discussions about this prayer and there is an allusion to the significance to the number 18 [which we find in Psalm 29] where it says that G-d’s name is mentioned eighteen times in reference to the Creation. So the eighteen prayers are a parallel to the number of times that we mention HaShem. So when we pray the Shemoneh Esrai we are recognizing G-d as Creator and Sustainer of everything.

Of course there is another opinion. That one says that the 18 prayers are a parallel to the eighteen times that the name of G-d is mentioned in the Sh’ma.

Then the Talmud teaches that there are really nineteen blessings in the Shemoneh Esrai. For in Psalm 29 there is a nineteenth mention of G-d (even though that is a mention of another Name!). The 19^th mention alludes to His attribute of justice and so the extra prayer [wherein we ask G-d to execute justice on His enemies and rebellious sinners].

As to the ‘other’ opinion regarding the Sh’ma: the first verse, you know reads- “Hear Israel, the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is One.” The word “One” is another (veiled?) reference to HaShem thereby making nineteen mentions of HaShem in the Sh’ma also.

The 19^th mention relates to those who oppose the Jewish people, those whom we ask G-d to destroy in this additional prayer. The Talmud further refers to this 19^th prayer as “the blessing of the Sadducees”. It is also refers to the heretics.

The Sadducees were those people who maintained that the Written Torah was given at Mt. Sinai but they maintained that the Oral Torah was not divinely given. It was not enough that they held this belief but they attempted to enforce their belief on everyone else and went to the foreign occupying government power and informed on Jews (who continued to believe in the divinity of the Oral Torah). The result being the murder and death of so many Jews! Jews informing on Jews. Jew vs. Jew. Will it ever end?

This prayer was instituted during the time of Rabbi Gamliel II in the city of Yavneh sometime after the destruction of the Second Temple. The rabbi believed that the Sadducees’s informing on believing Jews was an intolerable situation and that it was necessary to pray to G-d to take the heretics from their midst. As it turned out, it was Shmuel HaKatan (so called because of his extreme modesty) who created the structure of the nineteenth prayer.

Now the Sadducees eventually died out (which is another story in itself that we won’t go into here) and the prayer seemed to not be required anymore. However we find that the threat that they posed continues to take different forms even today. It has come from Jews who converted to Catholicism [those who were “forced” to Catholicism often continued to be “Hidden Jews” for the rest of their lives!]. At another time if come for the “Enlightened” Jews (for which you can provide different names, if you wish), as well as from the so called: Messianic Jews and Jews for Jesus and the like. And, as we have seen, in more direct forms in Germany and now is Iran. We continue to see threat from both within and without the Jewish people and we can not allow this nineteenth blessing to become obsolete. No not. Not until the Messiah comes.

Is there any wonder that we hear: “We want Moshiach Now!” For truly, Moshiach Matters.

B’Shalom,