Baladi-rite prayer
The Baladi-rite Prayer is the oldest known prayer rite used by Yemenite Jews. A siddur is known as a tiklāl in Yemenite Jewish parlance. "Baladi", a term applied to the prayer rite, was not used until prayer books arrived in Yemen in the Sephardic rite.
The Baladi version that is used today is not the original Yemenite version that had been in use by all of Yemen's Jewry until the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, but has now evolved with various additions under the influence of Sephardi siddurs and the rulings passed down in the Shulchan Aruch. In the middle of the 18th century, Yiḥyah Salaḥ tried unsuccessfully to create a unified Baladi-rite prayerbook, since he devised a fusion between the ancient Yemenite form and Sephardic prayer forms that had already integrated into Yemenite Jewish prayers a hundred years or so years before that.
The Baladi-rite tiklāl contains the prayers used for the entire year and the format prescribed for the various blessings recited. Older Baladi-rite tikālil were traditionally compiled in the supralinear Babylonian vocalization, although today, all have transformed and strictly make use of the Tiberian vocalization. The text, however, follows the traditional Yemenite punctuation of Hebrew.
First printing
The Baladi-rite tiklāl remained in manuscript form until 1894, when the first printed edition was published in Jerusalem by the Yemenite Jewish community, which included the ʿEtz Ḥayyim commentary written by Yiḥya Salaḥ. Today, it is used primarily by the Baladi-rite congregations of Yemenite Jews in Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Baladi is an Arabic word denoting "of local use", as distinguished from the rite widely used in the northern Arab-speaking world, which is called in Arabic Shāmī "Levantine".File:Babylonian_Supralinear_Punctuation,_from_Yemenite_Siddur,_April_2015.jpg|thumb|right|Section of the "Pirkei Avot" section of a Yemeni tiklāl with Babylonian vocalization)
Comparison with the Sephardic prayer rite
The Baladi-rite prayer differs in many aspects from the Sephardic rite prayer, or what was known locally as the Shāmī-rite prayer book, which by the 18th and 19th centuries was already widely used in Yemen, although only lately introduced into Yemen by Jewish travelers. Their predilection for books composed in the Land of Israel made them neglect their own hand-written manuscripts, though they were of a more exquisite and ancient origin.The nineteenth century Jewish historiographer Hayyim Habshush gave some insights into the conflict that arose in the Jewish community of Sana'a on account of the newer Sephardic prayer book being introduced there. Yiḥya, the son of one of the community's most respectable leaders, Shalom ben Aharon HaKohen al-Iraqi, whose father served under two Zaydi Imams between the years 1733–1761 as the surveyor general of public buildings, had tried to make the Sephardic prayer book the standard prayer-rite of all Jews in Yemen in the 18th century. This caused a schism in the Jewish community of Sana'a, with the more zealous choosing to remain faithful to their fathers' custom and to continue its perpetuation since it was seen as embodying the original customs practised by Yemenite Jews. Of twenty-two synagogues in Sana'a, only three in the city chose to remain with the original Baladi-rite prayer. The others adopted the Sefardic rite tefilla introduced by Isaac Luria. By the time of the Jewish community's demise, owing to mass immigration in the mid-20th century, most synagogues in Sana'a had already returned to praying in the Baladi-rite, albeit, in the vast majority of towns and villages across Yemen they clung to their adopted Sephardic-rite as found in the printed books of Venice, Thessaloniki, Amsterdam and, especially, the Tefillath Haḥodesh and Zekhor le-Avraham tikālil printed in Livorno.
According to Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, a Chief Rabbi of Yemen, the original Yemenite version of the Amidah is the format that was prescribed by the Great Assembly, who enacted the prayer in the fourth century BCE, with the one exception of the Benediction said against sectarians, which was enacted many years later. Yiḥyah Salaḥ wrote an extensive commentary on the Baladi-rite Prayer Book in which he mostly upholds the old practices described therein, although he also compromises by introducing elements in the Yemenite tiklāl taken from the books of the Kabbalists and the Shulchan Aruch, which had already become popular in Yemen. At first, Salaḥ was inclined to follow the Shami-custom, but afterwards retracted and sought to uphold the original Yemeni custom. He is often seen praising the old Yemenite customs and encouraging their continued observance:
Textual development
Dr. Moshe Gavra, who examined more than 700 Yemenite tikālil, has concluded that there have always existed differences between those used in Yemen, just as there exist differences between various Sephardic tefillot and Ashkenazi siddurim. While the ancient format of the Amidah may have seen little changes since its enactment by the latter prophets, the history of the Yemenite Baladi-rite tiklāl—as can be said about every prayer book—is a history of recensions and later interpolations, with the addition of elements taken from the Siddur of Saadia Gaon and of Amram Gaon, the printed Sephardic tefillot, as well as elements taken from liturgies found originally in Palestine. Most of these changes began to make their way into the current Baladi-rite tiklāl over a two-hundred year period, from the time of Yiḥya Bashiri who published his Tiklāl Bashiri in 1618 to the time of Yiḥyah Salaḥ, the latter of whom incorporating in the Baladi-rite version elements taken from Kabbalah, as prescribed by Isaac Luria as well as certain liturgical poems taken from the Sephardic prayer books. In the title page of one Yemenite tiklāl completed in 1663 by the notable scribe and kabbalist, Isaac ben Abraham Wannah, the copyist makes a note of the fact that, aside from the regular customs of the people of Yemen, some of the entries in his tiklāl have been culled "from the customs of the people of Spain who have it as their practice to add in the prayers the Tikūn Ha-geshem and the Tikūn Ha-ṭal, as well as the Tikūnei Shabbat Malkah as is practised by the people of the Land of Israel,", i.e., the Psalms readings beginning with לכו נרננה, etc., and Lekha Dodi, followed by בר יוחאי, and יגדל אלהים חי. Originally, the practice was to begin the Sabbath prayer on the night of the Sabbath by reciting only “mizmor shir leyom ha-shabbath”. The first recorded mentioning of Tikūn ha-ṭal in any extant Yemenite tikālil appeared only in 1583. Included in the Tikūnei Shabbat book were the special readings for the nights of Shavuot and Hoshanna Rabbah.The texts of old Yemenite tikālil copied by Yihye Bashiri are an invaluable source for comparing the variae lectiones of liturgy before the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. For example, in all older Yemenite tikālil copied by Bashiri is found the version גואל ישראל in the second blessing after Qiryat Shema in the evening prayer and on the night of Passover, that is, in the present-progressive tense instead of in the past tense, although the requirement made by Rava in the Talmud calls for saying it in the past tense. Scholars point out that the Yemenite practice was the original custom in Yemen before Rava's interdict, the memorial of which also being brought down in the Jerusalem Talmud.
Changes to the original Yemenite text
Among the later changes made to the text of the Baladi-rite tiklāl is the wording Kether Yitenu, etc., said during the Ḳeddushah at the time of the Mussaf prayer, as is the custom of Spain with only minor variations. In spite of its wide acceptance in Yemen, among both Baladi and Shāmī congregations, Yiḥyah Qafiḥ did not accept this innovation, but rather ordained in his place of study to continue to say Naqdishakh in all of the prayers, just as had been their accepted tradition from the Great Assembly. The Yemenite adaptation of saying Kether during the Mussaf—although not mentioned in the Order of Prayers prescribed by Maimonides—is largely due to the influence of Amram Gaon's Siddur, which mentions the custom of the two Academies in Babylonia during the days of Natronai ben Hilai to say it during the third benediction of the 'Standing Prayer.' The practice of saying Kether during the Mussaf is also mentioned in the Zohar.Notable changes occurring in the Baladi-rite tiklāl during the geonic period are the additions of Adon ha-ʿolamim, which mark the opening words in the Baladi-rite tiklāl before the Morning benediction, and the praise which appears further on and known as Barukh shʾamar, which appears immediately following a short praise composed by Judah Halevi, Ha-mehulal le'olam and which is said before the recital of the selected Psalms. These, among other innovations, have long since been an integral part of the Baladi-rite tiklāl.
In subsequent generations, other additions have been added thereto, such as the Yotzer verses that are said on the Sabbath day ; and the last blessing made in the recital of Ḳiryat Shĕma on the Sabbath evening, since in the original prayer text there was no difference between Sabbaths and weekdays; Likewise, the modern practice is to chant the prosaic Song of the Sea before one recites Yishtabaḥ, although in the original Baladi-rite prayer the song came after Yishtabaḥ, seeing that it is not one of the songs of David. In today's Baladi-rite tiklāl, an interpolation of eighteen verses known as Rafa'eini Adonai we'erafei has been inserted between the prosaic Song of the Sea and Yishtabaḥ, just as it appears in the Tiklāl Mashta, compiled by Shalom Shabazi in 1655, although the same verses do not appear in the Tiklāl Bashiri compiled in 1618. Another custom which has found its way into the Yemenite tiklāl is the practice of rescinding all vows and oaths on the eve of Yom Kippur.
Moreover, in the older handwritten Baladi-rite tikālil, in the first blessing following the Ḳiryat Shĕma, or what is called in = emeth wayaṣiv, the original Yemenite custom was to say only eight waws in the opening lines of the blessing, just as the blessing appears in Maimonides' Seder Ha-Tefillah, and not as it is now commonly practised to insert seven additional waws in the blessing for a total of fifteen. These changes, like the others, are directly related to the dissemination of Sephardic tefillot in Yemen, and influenced, especially, by the writings of David Abudirham.