[Avodah] Musaf Amidah on Shabbath

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 07:41:31AM +1100, David J Havin wrote:
: In the early part of last century, there were some synagogues in England and
: Australia in which the Musaf Amidah was recited quietly but with no
: repetition, apparently based on a ruling of Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler.  I do
: not know if there was a similar practice in the USA.  Is there any halachic
: basis to this?

See the Rambam's shu"t #256. The Rambam noticed that people ignored
chazaras hashatz, and it became a time for talking, stepping out for
a minute, and other loss of qedushah (and berakhos levatalah for the
chazan), so he abolished silent Mussaf.

The Rambam notes that the sho'el's community was already doing so for RH.
We see from R' Chanokh requiring Malkhios, Zikhronos and Shoferos,
that until then the norm in Spain was to say RH Mussaf silently, but a
shortened version -- perhaps the one used for the other tefillos, as it
could be remembered by more people without a siddur. (See the Rosh at
the end of Mes' RH.)

The notion that RH mussaf was more logical to omit the silent "Shemoneh
Esrei" comes from the mishnah RH 4:9 and the position in the gemara
(34b-35a) that even people who know the words are allowed follow Rabban
Gamliel on RH and YK because of the length of mussaf on those two days.

But as for not saying a silent Mussaf on Shabbos, the only Rishon I
know of is the Rambam's taqanah, which I guess could only be applied to
a zitzfleish impaired minyan that need the time shortened or else the
tefillah will suffer worse damage than the ommission.

And the only qehillos I know of who do this ad hayom hazeh are (logically
enough) Teimani.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
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