[Avodah] Minhagim of the Ashkenaz Synagogue ("The Luach") (5774)

[Zev Sero]

On 2/09/2013 4:27 PM, Prof. Levine wrote:
>    A friend of mine often speaks of what he terms the "American" innovation
> of saying the first selichos at 1 AM [...] after Shabbos.  He maintains that
> this was not done in Europe  and that the first selichos as well as all of the
> others were said in the morning.

That is a foolish claim.  It is certainly not an American innovation.  How
would the Americans have come up with it, and how would it have become accepted
everywhere else?  It was the dominant custom in most of  Eastern Europe.
Certainly in Litta, Reissin, and Poland.


> (My father-in-law who is from Ungvar has told me more than once that
> he never heard of saying the first selichos at 1 am until he came to
> America.)

Nu, so maybe in the Oberland they didn't do it.  How is that proof for the
rest of Europe?  Not many minhagim covered the entire European continent,
after all!  In Italy they didn't even start on a Sunday, but on a Monday or
Thursday; this year the Italians started on Thursday, a full week before
Rosh Hashana.  And of course Sefardim started on the 2nd of Elul.  But you
admit that the dominant custom in Europe was to start on Sunday; and I'm
telling  you that the dominant custom among those starting on Sunday was to
do so at midnight on "motzaei menucha".


>  Shall we say that the saying of the first selichos at 1 am is just as
>  authentic as saying them at 6:20 am on  Sunday morning as I did?  I
> personally think not.

It is absolutely *at least* as authentic.


> I really fail to see how one can maintain that the Ezras Torah calender
> is as "authentic" as the Luach put out by Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz.

Why should it not be?  It doesn't purport to reproduce the peculiar minhagim
of Frankfurt, or of Germany in general.  R Henkin was not a Yekker.  But it
does represent the authentic, mostly Litvishe, minhagim that are common in
American Ashkenazi kehillos.

> Rav Schwab commented that compared to R. Bamburger's shul KAJ is like a
> Chassidishe Shteibel.

Nu, so what's wrong with that?  How is a chassidishe shtibel less authentic
than any other shul?  Since when is all of America supposed to be Fafdam?!

-- 
Zev Sero               A citizen may not be required to offer a 'good and
zev at sero.name          substantial reason' why he should be permitted to
                        exercise his rights. The right's existence is all
                        the reason he needs.
                            - Judge Benson E. Legg, Woollard v. Sheridan