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| Purim Service, HUC 944 |
Burton L. Padoll, zl, was a bimah rabbi who wrote a master's thesis in 1957 on the Kaifeng liturgy for Purim, using HUC MS 944, A Study of a Liturgy of the Jews of Kai Feng Fu. It is one of the few (if only?) detailed comparative investigation of a Kaifeng siddur. We will look at this work in some detail.
The rabbi makes some statements about the larger about the Kaifeng community that are not true, or too general to be wholly ture. He writes that missionaries visited "these Jews for the express purpose of 'revitalizing' the community." The missionaries visited the Kaifeng Community to buy or procure some or all of their books. Only Bishop White in the early twentieth century showed an interest in revitalizing the community.
He examined the Purim service manuscript, and writes that at "...the time of the writing of this manuscript the standard of Hebrew knowledge was very low..." Low compared to who, where, and when? Knowledge of anything is a comparative exercise. We would need to study a Jewish population at that time to make such a statement. I have never seen such a comparative study. What would even be the criteria?
Regardless, the rabbi examines this text against Seder R. Abram, the Ashkenazi ritual, the Spanish-Portuguese ritual, the Sephardic ritual, the Roman Machzor and the Persian rite. The good rabbi compared these rites with the Kaifeng Purim text, and "on the basis of these comparisons, page after page of notes were accumulated."
He found that despite similarities found in all the services, the differences were "so extensive that it became apparent that none of them could be rightfully considered the prototype of the Chinse liturgy."
However, the rabbi examines a Yemeni siddur from 1329 that has is remarkably similar to the Kaifeng service. He calls this manuscript, MS Y.
HUC 944 has a title page written in Judeo Persian:
Translated as: "Megillah, one day of Purim. One says the prayer of Tamid of the two days of Sukkah"
This text, although for Purim, does not contain instructions for reading the Scroll of Esther. The rabbi quotes Cecil Roth's speculation that this was the case because the scroll was lost in the Flood of 1642. This is an interesting idea, but only a theory. We have no idea if the Scroll of Esther was in Kaifeng at any time - although it most certainly was at sometime.
The text begins with Hatzi Kaddish; it does not begin with the Psalm and Morning Benedictions. The rabbi speculates that these parts of the service could been said at home before arriving to the synagogue for service, or perhaps another book was used. This too, is speculation.
For the Shema and its Blessings, there some minor variations, but the text lines up with MS Y. The rabbi notes that some words in this MS have a final nun in place of a final mem, something I have found in examination of other Kaifeng services. Why is this a pretty steady maker of Kaifeng texts? The Shema appears in HUC 944 as it does in all modern prayer books, with the exception of one possible typo.
For the Amidah, and the text has two identical versions, and both follow, with some variants, MS Y.
The rabbi concludes his survey by categorizing Kaifeng scribal errors.
A. Purely scribal errors: the slipping of the pen, the omission of a letter, the insertion of a wrong letter
B. Dittography: repeating the same letter twice.
C. Indications of oral transmission: the MS is written from memory.
D. Poor Hebrew knowledge as seen in vocalization
Again, the rabbi stresses the poor Hebrew of both the scribe and "whoever endeavored to correct some of the error made by the scribe." Again, it is a difficult thing to judge Hebrew comprehension. It is far better to find the ancestors of the Kaifeng manuscripts than to try and judge their level of Hebrew comprehension.
We will turn to the "Specific Relationship to MS Y" to HUC 944. The resemblance between the two texts, he writes, is astonishing:
"In instance after instance, words and passage found in no other ritual occur side by side in these two rites. Examined together, with very few exceptions, they would seem to be one and the same; but because of these exceptions, as insignificant as they appear, a show is cast over their marked similarity."
Although the rabbi notes that the similarities between MS Y and HUC 944 are overwhelming, the differences point to other sources at play. He believes that it is the Cochin liturgy holds the key. He was unable to examine Cochin manuscripts for this thesis. Future investigations should focus on this:
"...drawing particular attention to the early Indian (Chochin) liturgy as well as others which might be closely related to the Yemen rite. For, with certainty, the ultimate answer must lie therein."
Unfortunately, the rabbi does not provide helpful bibliographical information about MS Y:
Is it at the HUC?
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