Problems with Prayers

Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg hat Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921 2007) herausragende israelische Gelehrte in englisch- und deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen in Europa und Nordamerika bekannt gemacht. Die zu diesem Zweck von ihm begründete Reihe Studia Judaica bietet heute ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Studien und Editionen aus allen Epochen der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte.

Much of the primary research summarized here relates to Cambridge Genizah manuscripts, a thousand-year-old source that testifies to liturgical (as well, of course, as non-liturgical) developments that greatly predate other source material. When the research is concerned with pre-Genizah history, the Genizah evidence is also relevant since the historian of religious ideas must ultimately decide how to date, characterize, and conceptualize its contents and how to explain where they vary significantly from what became, or is regarded (rightly or wrongly) as having become, the standard rabbinic liturgy sanctioned by the Iraqi Jewish authorities from the ninth to the eleventh century.