Prayer and Religious Articles

Why do we face east when we pray? What is special about that direction? Jews face toward Jerusalem when they pray; for Jews in Europe and the Americas this means that they face east, but Jews in the far east…

When was the Torah reading divided into parshiyos and aliyahs? Moses ordained that the Torah be read every Sabbath (Talmud Yerushalmi, Megillah 3:1), but he didn’t specify how much should be read each week. The custom in Babylonia was to…

What is the history of the synagogue? The Targum and Midrash on Ex.18:20 (and the new Testament: Acts 15:21) attribute the first establishment of a synagague to Moses. The terms “House of the people” (Jeremiah 39:8) and “Meeting places of…

How do changes in the prayers come about? The post-Talmudic evolution of the Siddur (and the Torah Readings) resulted almost entirely from developments and divergences in custom, not from Rabbinic decisions or “decrees”. Orthodox Rabbis occasionally try to add things…

Do we hold hands when we pray? Holding hands when people pray as a group is definitely not a Jewish custom; in fact, people who are praying shouldn’t stand too close to one another so they don’t interfere with each…

What is the origin of the Kedushah? The core of the Kedushah (in every amidah) consists of the two verses from Isaiah 6:3 and Ezekiel 3:12. The earliest source that mentions these verses is Tosefta Berachos 1:11. The introductory passage,…

Why was the sentence “She-hem mishtachavim…” deleted from the Aleinu prayer? The historians tell us that the phrase was deleted under repeated pressure from Christian censors during the 14th to 17th centuries. The connection (by Gematria) to Christianity is in…

What is the origin of the word "daven"? It may be derived from the Latin "divinare"; the Oxford English Dictionary has a quotation in which "divine" refers to "sacred song". Another possibility is that it derives from the Arabic "diwan",…