[Avodah] Praying to angels

[Jonathan Baker]

RZS:
> Micha Berger wrote:
> > RZS:
 
> > : majority concluded that it should be said.  My bottom line is that
> > : if R Amram Gaon and R Shrira Gaon wrote to say it, it can't be wrong.

> The piyut "shlosh esre midot", which addresses "kol midah nechonah"
> directly, asking it to put in a good word for the speaker.
 
> > All your bottom line shows is that it's appropriate RAG and RSG. What
> > about for someone who can't resolve the question? If I personally can't
> 
> Whatever RAG and RSG intended.  Just like in the yehi ratzons after
> tashlich, where we ask that what we've read go up "as if we understood
> all the secrets and combinations of Holy Names that come out of them..."
 
Hm.  I just looked into some of these things, and found some interesting
tidbits.

#1 Do you have a Siddur of R' Shrira (I thought the other Geonic siddur
was R' Saadia)?  I just went through the Seder R' Amram (1861, well,
a 1950s reprint), and his idea of slichot is very different from ours.
He has a sequence of 15 nights leading up to RH, and then slichot for
the two days of RH, Shabbat Shuva, and YK.  

  a) I didn't see the piyut "13 Middot" there, although it's in the 
Chabad online Slichos, as well as the 19th-century Vilna Kol-Bo.

  b) R' Amram doesn't have Machnisei Rachamim either.

So I don't know, really, what "RAG and RSG intended."

#2 

  a) The siddur Eizor Eliyahu says that the Gaon didn't say tashlich at
all. 

  b) The siddur of the Alter Rebbe with Raskin's notes attributes 
that yehi ratzon to Chemdas Hayamim, which should instantly raise 
fish-colored flags, but at any rate, indicates that it's a late addition
to our services.  R' Raskin further notes that the Yehi Ratzon is not
present in the early Ari siddurim.

  c) the siddur Otzar Hatefillos attributes the whole sequence after
Tashlich to "Sefer Avodas Hakodesh", but I have no idea if it's the 
Rashba (probably not), the Chida, or R' Meir ibn Gabbai.

  d) the idea seems to be kinda Chassidish, too, esp. Chabad (acc.
to RYGB's explanations of Chassidish approaches to the Ari's Kavvanot),
that we don't have to use the kavvanot themselves because saying the
correct Ari Text brings the benefit of the kavvanot along automatically.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com