[Mesorah] Davening: Pesach vs. Hag Hammatzos

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 11:56:37AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: Yes, but my understanding is that the GRA made wording changes too.

: Among the more famous ones was in Birkas Hamazon, where he preferred
: the Lashon Tanach of "Boneh Yerushalayim" over the traditional "Boneh
: B'rachamav Yerushalayim."

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 12:35:13PM +0000, Mandel, Seth wrote:
> To the best of my knowledge, the GRA made no changes without having
> a earlier textual source. There were many nuschaos that I have seen
> prior to the GRA that had bone yerushalayim; this was not just a change
> because he disagreed, but a choice of one nusach among the variants.

We should also recall that the Gra didn't intend to set policy. The
shift from personal practices to communal ones didn't begin until after
his petirah.

Back to RAM:
: (I used the word "traditional" because I have no idea whether the
: Anshei Kneses Hagdola formulated only the subject matter of this bracha,
: or the exact wording as well.)

Tangent:
This berakhah is attributed in Mes' Berakhos to David and Shelomo, not
AKHG. Either take the gemara at face value, or as "written as though
it could have been David and Shelomo" (lehavdil: compare to quoting
something said by Shakespear's Julius Caesar). But neither maximalist
nor minimalist has reason to attribute an age in the middle.

Over time, we checked our memories, and realized different people had
different versions of what they wrote. It might even be possible that
David and Shelomo themselves were not consistent over their lifetimes,
and both versions are "right".

Still, that's drift, not conscious manipulation to fit a theory.

What the Gra did was give preference to which existing variant fit his
hashkafah or lomdus.

RRW is right to ask about what the limits of this liberty are -- without
it, one is well on the slippery slope out of Orthodoxy. My own answer is
the unsatistfying invocation of "daas Torah" -- the only people who one
can trust to do this right are people who have a feel for how halakhah
moves. It's a feel and an art, not a rule that can be articulating.

And it may well be that much of the answer resides in the personal vs
communal distinction I raised above. It is one thing breaking from
the norm, assuming one keeps in mind their distance from that norm and
weighs it against their motivation for the other nusach. It's quite
another thing to define a new norm. One is allowing a gray area of
acceptability for personal expression, the other is a true shift.

-Micha

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