Abstract
“Ashre Yoshvei Beitekha: Joy in the Ancient Synagogue” explores the concept of joy in the world of the Talmudic sages, Hazal, through the focusing lenses of Psalm 84:6 and related verses. It explores ways that “joy” was interpreted, expressed, and deployed liturgically by late antique Jewish communities.
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Notes
- 1.
On the synagogue as liturgical space, see S. Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New “Jewish Archaeology” (Cambridge, rev. ed. 2010), 167–173.
- 2.
JT Berakhot 5:1, 8d 9a.
- 3.
Megilla 2:21-22 (ed. S. Lieberman). See Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman period (Notre Dame, 1997).
- 4.
Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tefillah 11 and Shulhan Arukh, O.H. Hilkhot Beit ha-Knesset 150.
- 5.
BT Megilla 29a, manuscript traditions.
- 6.
JT Megilla 3:1-3, 73d-74a.
- 7.
Steven Fine, Art, History and the Historiography of Judaism in Roman Antiquity (Boston: Brill, 2014), 139–160.
- 8.
For other occasions where Ashrei is recited, see Eliezer Levi, Yesodot ha-Tefillah (Tel Aviv, 1955), 131–132, 317; Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 71, 182, 214.
- 9.
Ezra Fleischer, Prayer and Prayer Customs of Palestinian Jews during the Times of the Genizah (Jerusalem, 1988), 283 (Hebrew). For example, Mahzor Vitry (ed. S. L. Horowitz [Nurnberg, 1923], 1: 63–64 precedes Ps. 84:6 with Psalms 119:1, 2; 84:6; 112:1; 89:16. See: Abraham Jacob Berkowitz, The Life of Psalms in Late Antiquity, PhD dissertation (Princeton, 2018), 193–194, 247.
- 10.
Berkowitz, The Life of Psalms, 182–184.
- 11.
See the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. happy, and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, www.ahdictionary.com, s.v. “joy” and “happy.”
- 12.
Berkowitz, The Life of Psalms, 182.
- 13.
JT Berakhot 5:1, 8d; Deuteronomy Rabba 3:1 and parallels; Fine, This Holy Place 65–66.
- 14.
Following NJPS.
- 15.
See also m. Megilla 3:1–3.
- 16.
See Steven Fine, “‘Their Faces Shine with the Brightness of the Firmament:’ Study Houses and Synagogues in the Targumim to the Pentateuch,” Biblical Translation in Context, ed. F. W. Knobloch (Bethesda, 2002), 63–92.
- 17.
Midrash Tanhuma (Jerusalem, 1953), Ki Tavo 4 (p. 120).
- 18.
JT Berakhot 5:1, 9a, b. Berakhot 6b and parallels.
- 19.
See BT Berakhot 32b.
- 20.
Berkowitz, The Life of Psalms, 183–184, 247–248.
- 21.
Fine, Art and Judaism, 108–110.
- 22.
Steven Fine, “Lernen To See: ‘Modernity,’ Torah and the Study of Jewish ‘Art,’” Milin Havivin 7 (2013–2014), 24–35.
- 23.
Siddur di rito Italiano secondo l’uso di Gerusalemme, ed. A. Piattelli (Jerusalem, 2016), 194.
- 24.
BT Sukkah 4:5.
- 25.
See Fine, Art, History, 101–122.
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Fine, S. (2023). Ashrei Yoshvei Veitekha: Joy in the Ancient Synagogue. In: Brown, E., Weiss, S. (eds) An Ode to Joy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28229-4_34
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