כיוון התפילה אל הקודש: משנה כפשוטה והדיה בספרות התלמוד

Translated title of the contribution: Directing Prayer toward the Holy Place: The Plain Meaning of the Mishnah and Its Echoes in Talmudic Literature

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Praying in the direction of Jerusalem is a custom recorded in the book of Daniel, i.n the Apocrypha of the Second Temple period, and in a Judea-Christian source written decades after the destruction of the Temple. The style of the latter source is remarkably similar to the baraita in the Sifre which establishes this custom as law, a ruling accepted by most sources from the Land of Israel. Consequently, the Mishnah (Berakhot IV, 5-6) was interpreted accordingly. However, as this article shows, the Mishnah never actually mentioned this law. Discussion of facing the Holy of Holies in the Temple and directing one's heart toward it while at prayer is related to an entirely different topic. Nonetheless, in the Land of Israel the Mishnah was taken to mean that one must pray toward Jerusalem, whereas this ruling was not applied in Babylonia. This constitutes the background of the Tosefta (Berakhot III, 14-16), which took the idea of directing one's heart from the Mishnah and connected it to the law of directing one's face towards the Holy Place. Later sources from the Land of Israel followed the Tosefta. In contrast, Babylonian sources contain quite a few discussions concerning the direction of prayer which completely ignore the Mishnah. Foremost among these is the Sugya in Bava Batra, fol. 25, which suggests various directions for prayer and totally ignores the Mishnah. The only convincing explanation for this omission is the one offered here - that according to the Babylonian sources the Mishnah never discussed this law at all.
Translated title of the contributionDirecting Prayer toward the Holy Place: The Plain Meaning of the Mishnah and Its Echoes in Talmudic Literature
Original languageHebrew
Pages (from-to)5-27
Journalתרביץ: רבעון למדעי היהדות
Volume80
Issue number1
StatePublished - 2011

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