The Birkat haMinim ( "Blessing on the heretics") is a traditional blessing on Jewish apostates, Christians and Christianity itself. which forms part of the Jewish rabbinical liturgy. It is the twelfth in the series of eighteen benedictions () that constitute the core of prayer service in the statutory daily 'standing prayer' of religious Jews.
There has been a general consensus that the eighteen benedictions generally go back to some form in the Second Temple period but the origins of this particular prayer and its earliest wording are disputed in modern scholarship, between those who argue for a very early date, either sometime prior to, or roughly contemporary with the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and those who hold that the formulation crystallized several decades or centuries later. Pinning down its date figures prominently since it is widely taken to indicate the moment when a definitive rupture arose between Judaism and Christianity.
In its premodern form in Europe, the curse was applied to the enemies of Jews generally and specifically to those who apostasized to Christianity, to Christians and to the governing authorities of the Christian world. From the 13th century, the terminology used in the prayer and rabbinical explications of their referent, Christians, began to undergo a process of censorship, imposed from outside or regulated internally, once Christian authorities learnt of them through information supplied by Jewish converts and from scholars who began to access the texts in the original language.
There is no single, uniform Ashkenazi or Sephardic liturgy, and marked differences may exist between prayer books issued by the rabbinates in, for example, England, Israel, or the United States. In modern times, Jews who regularly attend the synagogue only on the Sabbath rarely hear it, if ever since on the Sabbath and holidays an alternative version lacking Birkat haMinim is used. It is mandated for prayer every day among Orthodox Jews, and is recited five times by precentors, six days every week.
Terminology The expression Birkat haMinim, is composed of () and (plural form of ), a plurivalent umbrella term of opprobrium in rabbinic literature meaning "kinds" or "sorts". The Birkat haMinim is not specific: the term itself has been called a classic example of out-group characterisation, or the "Us versus Them" dichotomy, vis-à-vis how the in-group perceives heretics and "Others". These are one of several classes in the Tosefta and the Jerusalem Talmud, the others being ( separatists), (sinners) and (arrogant ones). In context it refers to sectarians and heretics, the generic concept being denoted by , and came to bear the latter narrow sense when Rabbinic Judaism became normative. The "benediction" is a euphemism for what is in effect a curse against those who are thought to have separated themselves, doctrinally and in practice, from beliefs and observances that came to inform the core of Judaism.
is one of several terms – , , and - used in the Talmud tractates to refer to varieties of freethinkers, religious dissidents and dissenters, or those who subscribe to the notion of the existence of "two worlds" (thought generally to be a reference to the Sadducees). In one text of the Babylonian Talmud, was even defined as a pagan who worshipped idols. The term could also be used in regards to gentiles whose practices were similar to those that Judaism defined as heretical.
Some 24 "kinds" or sects are mentioned classically as falling within this category, a calculation attributed to Amora Yohanan ben haNapah, in a context where it was claimed their existence was the cause of Israel's exile. Maimonides attempted to sort out and define precisely the distinctions between these groups but modern scholarship has failed to determine the precise original target groups denoted by this terminology.
Heresy
Heresy is "a method of converting difference into exclusion". The emergence of a concept of heresy in Judaism coincides roughly with the development in Christianity of the same concept, () – a word that is often translated as "sect". In both instances it assumed a pejorative sense. initially were those within the fold (legally), perhaps disputative Jewish insiders like the Pharisees and Sadducees, who disagreed with broader rabbinical opinions on doctrine, although probably most Jews in this period were not at all "rabbinical". Whatever happened at Yavne, where tradition assigns the composition of the prayer, many scholars, among them Shaye J. D. Cohen, hold that thereafter, the sectarianism of Jewish communities prior to 70 CE was buried, as were threshed out: a growing rabbinical "grand coalition" would have generated a non-sectarian environment with no organized internal challenges, in contrast to the heated sectarian vexations of early Christianity. The process of defining heresy in both Judaism and Christianity nonetheless, it has been argued, is virtually identical in having developed in both along similar lines.
Historical versions
The text survives in two core versions, one being that of the Babylonian Talmud. In 1898 Solomon Schechter, with Israel Abrahams, published a 9-10th century CE version of a Hebrew prayer which had been recovered from the Cairo Geniza, and his subsequent findings would revolutionize the study of Jewish liturgy. The peculiarity of this version was that, together with , referring to heretics generally, it specifically added a distinct group, Nazarenes. The Genizah actually conserved 86 manuscripts containing six versions of the Birkat haMinim. The Jerusalem Talmud version reads: For the apostates () let there be no hope, and uproot the kingdom of arrogance (), speedily and in our days. May the Nazarenes () and the sectarians () perish as in a moment. Let them be blotted out of the book of life, and not be written together with the righteous. You are praised, O Lord, who subdues the arrogant.
This is embedded in a baraita of the Berakhot 28b-29a written during the Mishnaic period. Early modern printed editions, including the Soncino edition of 1484, have a slightly different version in which the are identified as the Sadducees. The addition of Nazarenes to the standard reading suggested that, were the Talmudic accounts of the formulation of the prayer historically grounded, a Jewish consensus that Christians in their fold were heretical had consolidated itself already by the first decades after the destruction of the Second Temple.
Formal bans to expel or suspend dissidents from the community were not yet in place in this period. There were two kinds of ban, and , neither of which had been formalized in the first and second centuries: further, no good evidence survives of their use against at this time. There are no rabbinic references to in the sense of an excommunication or ban prior to the 3rd century CE, while appears to reference to disciplinary action demanding compliance in obedience in order to bring straying Jews back into the fold of the synagogue.
Historical context At precisely what stage this specific addition was introduced however is not known: hypotheses vary, from prior to the establishment of Yavne during the Second Temple period, to some time after its establishment in 73 CE, to Ephraim E. Urbach's claim that it was introduced shortly after the Bar Kokhba revolt (ca. 135 C.E.), – a hypothesis linked to the first apparent reference to a curse against Christians in a work by Justin Martyr written within some decades of that war. Others such as Pieter W. van der Horst argue for a date just prior to Jerome's time (347–420 C.E.), since, in his commentary on Amos, he first makes explicit a reference to Jewish cursing of (Jewish-Christian) Nazarenes.
The earliest rabbinic reference to the blessing is in a passage at Tosefta Berakhot 3:25 redacted in the mid 3rd century, but reflecting an earlier source, where are mentioned in a blessing of the Pharisees, implying the two were identical. The wording has long been a stumbling block, and subject to many attempts at emendation. Saul Lieberman has argued that it is to be taken as denoting "Separatists" generically, and not the particular group known by that appellation in the New Testament and Josephus.
The earliest external sources explicitly alluding to this Birkat haMinim content thus date to the 3-4th centuries. It is firmly attested as ensconced in rabbinical liturgy by the middle of the first millennium. Rabbinical texts are not reliable for accurate dating of events for this period. For one, they conflate strata of commentary from distinct historical periods. The problem has been to determine therefore what precise meaning was attached to in three distinct periods: (a) in Tannaic texts (b) in the Amoraic literature of Palestine and (c) the Amoraic works produced in Babylon in the last of which the word for Nazarenes finally emerges. In the earliest stratum, of 22 references to , most indicate broadly sectarians, Samaritans and also perhaps Jewish Gnostics. Collectively in both the Tanna and Amora references, refer almost always to Jewish heretics.
On one hand it is argued that backdating later practices and liturgy to the early post-destruction period suited the vested interest of rabbis in securing their authority by appeal to an earlier foundational moment, such as at Yavne. Gamaliel II headed the Yavne Academy from approximately 80CE to 115CE, and Martyn speaks of a consensus that the rewording of the benediction dates to around 85 CE, on the assumption that Shmuel ha-Katan must have been very old at the time, dying before 90CE or sometime thereafter in Gamaliel's time. The Mishnah in its final redaction by Judah ha-Nasi (ca.200 CE) records that Gamaliel's rule of the full 18 prayers was contested by three rabbis, who proposed a short or summary prayer in their stead.
Yavne
The Babylonian Talmud states that the benediction was instituted in Yavne, and preserves a story at Berakhot 28b-29a about the origin of the 18 benedictions, and specifically, of how the imprecation against heretics emerged:
According to this standard account of the formulation ("fixing" i.e. ), the prayer emerged after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE, when Yohanan ben Zakkai and his disciples were permitted to settle in Yavne, where they are said to have constituted a Torah academy for study, a bet din (court) to try capital cases, with the issuing of nine enactments (). The assembly gradually came to see itself as a successor to the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. The specific grounds for the curse, in this traditional view according to Shaye J. D. Cohen, arose from the atmosphere of crisis induced by the catastrophic events earlier. At Yavne, the Pharisees interdicted sectarianism, expelled all those who did not belong to their group, excommunicated Jews of Christian observance, and expunged the biblical canon of all works written in Greek and having an apocalyptic tone, in order to establish an exclusivist orthodoxy. The introduction of this form of the curse, in one view, functioned to "smoke out" the . If a reader faltered in reciting the prayer (refusal to curse oneself would be tantamount to thanking God for bringing about their own destruction), they would fall under suspicion, and risk expulsion from the congregation.
The reliability of the account has been questioned, and whether such an academy was established and a decision of this kind made at that time remain controversial. Daniel Boyarin, for one, considers it a myth. Hakola considers the interpretation of the account as a supposed "test" to draw out minim as an illogical conclusion to draw from the context of the time period.