Siddur

The little I know: Nobody says that any of the omissions I spoke of were forgeries. They have their roots in poskim that well predated the Gra and Baal HaTanya. If you wish, you can believe that everyone in all of Europe davened traditional Ashkenaz until the Gra and Baal HaTanya came along a took a bunch out and then they switched. But, I think that would be like believing everyone in America kept Chalav Yisroel perfectly until Reb Moshe came and gave them a heter. It may sound nicer, but it’s naive.

What were the “original” tefillos? The way the avos davened?

NCB:

The omissions of the GRA and Baal Hatanya were not necessarily because of the forgeries, though some were. I can cite specifics if you wish. More importantly, they were both extremely entrenched in Kaballah, and they applied their Torah knowledge to nusach.

The reality is that the prevailing Nusach Ashkenaz is considerably closer to “most accurate” than the common Nusach Sfard. It is more directly based on Rav Heidenheim’s siddur, and is much closer to the Ashkenazic foundations in halacha. The Ari Zal was far closer to a Kabbalistic based nusach, and there are variations of the mesorah from the Ari Zal among various talmidim of his. Many of his established nuschaos were codified By Rav Chaim Vital, his most prolific talmid. The Baal Shem Tov adopted many of these mesoros of the Ari Zal, and these are seen in the common Nusach Sfard. Tragically, the fact that these were not codified properly, there were different mesoros, and hence the variations seen in minhagim of different chassidim who recite Nusach Sfard with specific additions or omissions of certain words. Publishers followed this chaos, and each rendered decisions of what to publish in their siddurim.

One can access a huge number of Siddurei Ha’Ari Zal, whether in seforim stores or online. The variations are interesting, and many instances of these are based on different kavanos al pi kabbalah.

As for the “most accurate” nusach, the only reaction to that is to redirect the concern to the kavanah involved in davening. HKB”H will understand what we say, even if words are omitted or mispronounced, much as a father understands his child whose speech is not fully developed. It is wise to spend time studying siddur to have a better grasp of the content of tefilah, so that our experience in standing in the presence of the Shechinah is a wholesome, emotional process, as opposed to the completion of a chore that is required to move on to whatever is next in the schedule.

Would it have been so hard to include it right after shemona esrei and aleinu just like almost all other “simple” siddurim?

What’s strange is that they do that in the Sefard siddur.

“What were the “original” tefillos? The way the avos davened?”

The Avos had no nusach, they just prayed from the heart. That’s how it was until the beginning of the 2nd Bayis. Anshei Knesses Hagedolah laid out a basic framework for how a tefillah should be structured. They prescribed 18 berachos, specifying how they should begin and end, and what their general topic should be. But it was still up to the individual shliach tzibur to improvise within that structure. Not everyone could do it, so you went to shul and listened to the shliach tzibur’s prayers and fulfilled your obligation. Chazal said “do not make your prayer fixed”. Only after the gemara’s time, in the time of the ge’onim, did prayer-leaders start writing fixed siddurim. And once that happened everyone who could afford a siddur could daven for himself.

There were several siddurim of the geonic period, but <i>all</i> of our modern nuschaos are based on Siddur Rav Amram Gaon. We don’t know what this originally looked like, because there are many manuscripts claiming to be this siddur, that all differ from each other in details, but the basic outline is the same.

My favorite siddur, alas, has not be printed in many years. It was called Minchas Yerushalayim – a small but thick siddur of about 1500 pages. It had EVERYTHING in there that would be related to davening. I wore out 4 of them. It’s my understanding that the family that holds the publishing rights no longer permits printing, and that’s a pity.

Little, the Mabit’s views are interesting but not historical. It is a historical fact that there was no such thing as a fixed nusach until the times of the geonim, and that in their days there were several *very different* nuschaos, of which only one survived, that of Rav Amram Gaon. All Jewish communities today use Rav Amram’s nusach, (with only slight variations), but 1200 years ago this was not yet the case, so how can we suppose that 3500 years ago it was?

litvishechossid,

“Avram- it’s not 5 pages extra.”

I didn’t say it was.

“Flipping one page is much easier than 100.”

Sure, and maybe the difference for you is such that you’d rather flip the page 5 times a week to avoid the big motzei Shabbos flip. That’s reasonable, and by all means use a siddur that includes it in the weekday maariv. I stand by what I wrote before. I’ve used siddurim that include it and don’t, and I personally prefer the latter.

“I know that they may have wanted to make a special section for motzei shabbos, but also including it in maariv as well would not have made the siddur that much thicker. If that’s too much they could also take out ashrei in mincha and just force everyone to flip to the ashrei in shacharis. No need to waste pages with duplicates.”

Artscroll and other siddur publishers do their best to reach a balance between avoiding thick tomes with the same tefillos copied multiple times and minimizing page flipping. Neither can be completely avoided, choices have to be made, and not everybody will be pleased 100% of the time. If having vihi noam between kaddish and aleinu is super important to you, and you can remember that by motzei Shabbos it’s a half kaddish and not a full one before vihi noam, and then you do a full kaddish afterwards, and you don’t mind not having havdala right there – all things that you get explicitly by Artscroll using the layout it does, then by all means use a siddur that puts vihi noam there. I personally would rather see the half kaddish and full kaddish spelled out and have havdala there too, and don’t mind flipping to the end of the Shabbos davening section to get it.

Do you get upset that you have to flip from the morning brachos to the Shabbos pesukei dzimra every Shabbos morning?

A lot of the comments here remind me of a famous line from R’ Shmuel Kunda z”l.

“No pizza? My, how the Yidden suffered in Golus!!”

There are so many choices of siddurim, just figure out what works for you, and use that. And for whoever complained that his shul only uses Artscroll, either ask the gabboim to take other options into consideration, or dig into your own pocket, and sponsor a few of the kind you like.

PS. DY’s comment has bothered my for years. Why does Tefilas Shlomo have Vihi Noam in weekday maariv, and Yitzchok Yair requires you to flip to 262?!

LC, I think Artscroll’s logic with the vehi noam is that, if they put it before weekday aleinu, it would look like they were condoning/supporting the practice of skipping all the other motzei Shabbos tefillos. They don’t seem to like legitimizing omissions regardless of how commonplace; I refer again the the infamous benching gray box…

As for the fact that they do have the vehi noam before aleinu in their Sphard siddur, maybe the minhag of most Chassidim is not to say the other stuff so they don’t mind condoning it there? I’m not sure.