Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Differences between Eretz Yisrael and Chutz La'aretz

BZ has an interesting post up on the changes he makes in his prayers. While I don't want to focus on most of them, he mentions a couple distinctions that have always bothered me. Why are there changes in nusach ashkenaz between eretz Yisrael and chutz la'aretz.

For reference here is a list of the most common differences I'm aware of. Please list others I forgot in the comments.
  1. Baruch Hashem Le'olam is said in weekday ma'ariv chutz la'aretz. In Israel it is skipped.
  2. Barchu at the end of weekday ma'ariv and shacharit in Israel.
  3. Sim Shalom is said in Israel in the Shabbat mincha amida. Chutz la'aretz says Shalom Rav.
  4. A longer version of Birkat Hachodesh in Israel.
  5. In the prayer for Israel, there is an extra line added to the version said in Israel. This is in the paragraph that Sim Shalom drops.
  6. Changes in the leining and musaph sacrifices for Chaggim(I'm fairly sure these are a result of the second day of Yom Tov).
Presumably there was one unified tradition that diverged sometime in the past century. But what was the reasoning behind these changes? Are these differences a case of Rabbis inside/outside of Israel being more resistant of change or are there fundamental differences between eretz Yisrael and chutz la'aretz that require these changes? I've never found a decent answer to these questions, so I figured I'd throw it up to the blogosphere. Do any of you guys know the origin of these splits?

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posted by Avi BenJakob @ 10:30 AM

6 Comments:

At 3:13 PM, Blogger BZ said...

5. Are you sure this is eretz yisrael vs chu"l, rather than just variants floating around? Is there an "official" chu"l text for this prayer?

6. This is definitely for the same reason as yom tov sheni.

Thanks for the link!

 
At 7:57 PM, Blogger Avi BenJakob said...

Looks like you could be right about the prayer for Israel. I just checked my Rinat Yisrael for Israel and the line is missing, while the Koren includes the line without any note about chu"l. I guess this might just be a variant in the koren. Regardless, the question of the origin of this variant(less than 60 years old) stands.

For the curious, the line in question is:
Umal hashem elokekha et l'vavekha v'et l'vav zarekha, l'ahava et hashem elokekha b'khol l'vavekha uvekhol nafshekha l'ma'an chayekha.

Apologies on the transliteraion, I'm not sure how to do hebrew in blogger yet.

 
At 9:34 PM, Blogger BZ said...

Are you using Windows?

 
At 10:59 PM, Blogger Drew Kaplan said...

Avi,
Props for the link, but unfortunately, I do not know the answers to any of your questions. The only idea that I have is to check between nushei Ashkenaz and Sefard - maybe the nusah erez Yisrael is more nusah Sefard.... I really don't know and haven't thought about it, but thanks for raising these questions.

 
At 11:54 AM, Blogger Avi BenJakob said...

Both Windows(2K,XP) and Mac(OS X).

 
At 3:15 PM, Blogger BZ said...

In Windows XP, go to the Control Panel -> Date, Time, Regional, and Language Options -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> Details -> Add -> Hebrew. Once you've done this, you'll see an "EN" (for English) box in the Taskbar. You can click on this any time to switch it to "HE" and type in Hebrew, or you can toggle between English and Hebrew with Alt-Shift.

 

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