[Mesorah] New Shtick

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 04:30:58PM +0000, R. Rich Wolpoe wrote:
: 1. Do we accept Nusach as is or do we roll it back to a more "authentic"
: earlier version?

Nusach evolves, that's what it does. That may be true of minhag or not,
that's an Avodah question.

The only consensus we have on nusach is the majority of Siddur Rav
Amram Gaon, which all of today's nusachos have in common. Compare the
differences between today's nusachos with those between the snippets
found in Cairo (even amongst each other) to R' Saadia Gaon to the various
versions of R' Amram Gaon. They pale in comparison; compared to the days
of the geonim, we all basically agree.

But within that basic feel, growth seems constant. I don't think there
is any slice of that evolution you could pin on the label of authenticity.

I'm with RAM on this one.

OTOH, though, given that the only think that was nispasheit was some vague
"basically like R' Amram Gaon" notion of proper nusach, I don't think
I would consider the results of trying to recreate a prior verion of
(eg) Ashkenaz to be "wrong", even if the reconstruction ends up missing
the mark. As long as it conforms to the feel of today's Amram-derived
nusachos.

The question would be what those who use this nusach would be gaining in
order to offset the loss of evolutionary continuity, minhag avos.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "'When Adar enters, we increase our joy'
micha at aishdas.org         'Joy is nothing but Torah.'
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