The Three Blessings

According to historical teaching, a Jewish man should give thanks each day for "not having been made a gentile, a woman, nor a slave." Yoel Kahn's innovative study of a controversial Jewish liturgical passage traces the history of this prayer from its extra-Jewish origins across two thousand years of history, demonstrating how different generations and communities understood the significance of these words in light of their own circumstances. Marking the boundary between "us" and "them," marginalized and persecuted groups affirmed their own identity and sense of purpose. After the medieval Church seized and burned books it considered offensive, new, coded formulations emerged as forms of spiritual resistance. Owners voluntarily carefully expurgated their books to save them from being destroyed, creating new language and meanings while seeking to preserve the structure and message of the received tradition. Renaissance Jewish women ignored rabbis' objections and assertively declared their gratitude at being "made a woman and not a man." Illustrations from medieval and renaissance Hebrew manuscripts demonstrate creative literary responses to censorship and show that official texts and interpretations do not fully represent the historical record. As Jewish emancipation began in the 19th century, modernizing Jews again had to balance fealty to historical practice with their own and others' understanding of their place in the world. Seeking to be recognized as modern and European, early modern Jews rewrote the liturgy to fit modern sensibilities and identified themselves with the Christian West against the historical pagan and the uncivilized infidel. In recent decades, a reassertion of ethnic and cultural identity has again raised questions of how the Jewish religious community should define itself. Through the lens of a liturgical text in continuous use for over two thousand years, Kahn offers new insights into an evolving religious identity and recurring questions of how to honor both historical teaching and contemporary sensibility.
"Yoel Kahn's work is fascinating and significant. This work will interest not only specialists in the area and scholars of religion more broadly, but also learned readers generally. The larger issues of the construction and maintenance of social and religious identity, presented here through the vehicle of liturgical and ritual enactment, are timely and important."
--Richard S. Sarason, Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Thought, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

"What does it signify when Jews thank God for not making them gentiles or men thank God that they are not women? Kahn's sweeping study of the evolving texts and meanings of these "blessings of identity" provides insights simultaneously into the histories of Jewish liturgy, of Jewish women, and of Christian-Jewish relations."
--Ruth Langer, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Theology Department, Associate Director, Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston College

"The book is written in clear, accessible prose that should make Kahn's study available even to nonspecialists in a wide variety of settings."--Religious Studies Review

Both scholars and educated people will greatly benefit from reading The Three Blessings. It can serve as a wonderful tool for all those who wish to delve deeper into questions of liturgy and theory, the tension between the written word and religious practice, liturgical innovations as a form of linguistic resistance, and Jewish response to changing historical realities-all presented in a clear, well-documented, scholarly as well as religious voice."--Shofar

INTRODUCTION ; 1. Defining Oneself Against the Other: Sources and Parallels in Late Antiquity ; 2. Assimilation and Integration: The Classical Rabbinic Sources ; 3. From Private Piety to Public Prayer: Reconciling Practice with Teaching ; 4. Competitive Traditions: Early Palestinian Practice ; 5. Censorship in Medieval and Renaissance Liturgy ; 6. Women, Slaves, Boors and Beasts ; 7. Material and Mystical World Views ; 8. Recasting Boundaries and Identity in Nineteenth-Century European Prayer Books ; CHAPTER NINE: IDENTITY AND THE CREATION OF COMMUNITY IN MODERN AMERICAN LITURGY ; CONCLUSION ; APPENDIX ; BIBLIOGRAPHY