addish Prayer
T-S 6H6.6, folio 4

Date: Late 11th century

MATERIAL:Paper

LANGUAGE: Aramaic and Hebrew

CONTENT:
Part of a very small codex apparently brought by Jews from Eretz Yisrael when they fled the Crusaders at the end of the eleventh century. In the section introducing the sabbath morning prayers, it includes a text of the qaddish which appeals for the arrival of the messianic age not only during the lifetime of the present congregation, as has commonly been the custom over the centuries, but specifically in the lifetimes of three leading rabbis of the generation. The second half of the qaddish uses Hebrew and not, as became standard in most rites, Aramaic.

IMPORTANCE:Since the Babylonian rabbinic leaders ensured that their liturgical traditions became dominant in most areas, and most of the competing prayer texts of the Jewish community of the Holy Land were lost when that community fled or perished during the Crusades, all versions of that ancient Palestinian rite recovered from the Genizah have special significance. They often reflect otherwise forgotten customs and formulations, at times at odds with the halakhic rulings made in Babylonia.

QUOTE: "May the divine kingdom and the messianic age come about in your lifetime, our master, Eviatar the Priest, director of rabbinic studies in the land of Israel, and in the lifetime of our teacher, Solomon the Priest, head of the academy, and in the lifetime of our teacher, Zadoq, the third member of the rabbinic court’"

READING: Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Geniza Documents, by Ezra Fleischer (Hebrew), Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1988, p. 245