[Avodah] Praying to angels

[Zev Sero]

Jonathan Baker wrote:

> #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."

I'm working from the LR's notes at the back of the Kehot edition of
Selichot.  On "Machnisei Rachamim", he writes: "Siddur RAG.  Similarly
also in a teshuvah of R Shrira Gaon (Zichron Larishonim ch 373).

A footnote (which AIUI is also from the LR) expands on this: "There's
a discussion on whether to say it in ShuT Yehuda Yaaleh (of RI Assad)
vol 1 ch 21.  ShuT Shemesh Tzedaka OC 23:24 gives arguments for both
sides.   Chatam Sofer OC 166.  Anafim La`Ikarim 2:28.  Moreh Nevuchim
3:3.  Shibolei Haleket.  Tanya Rabati by R Yechiel, hil' RH, brings
a proof from Sanhedrin (44a) on the pasuk "Will your riches keep you
from trouble" (Iyov 36:19).  See also the introduction to Siddur Otzar
Hatfilot ch 3.  In the Tzemach Tzedek's Shoresh Mitzvat Hatfilah ch 7
he quotes the Korban Netanel at the end of the first chapter of RH;
but in his notes to Torah Or d"h Ner Chanukah ch 3, which were written
after he wrote Shoresh Mitzvat Hatefilah, he concludes: 'the point is
that it doesn't mean we are ch"v asking them for anything, but to be
a shliach to bring the shefa` from above to below, and so also they
convey the tefilot up, as they said in the gemara and in Zohar Parshat
Shemot.'"



-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas