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Saturday, January 01, 2005
Film Noir of the Week master list
Abandoned (1949)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Act of Violence (1948)
After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
Alias Nick Beal (1949)
All the King's Men (1949)
Allotment Wives (1945)
The Amazing Mr. X (1948)
Angel Face (1952)
Angel's Flight (1965)
Apology for Murder (1945)
Appointment with Danger (1951)
Armored Car Robbery (1950)
Ascenseur pour l’echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows 1958)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
see also John Huston Part 2: The Asphalt Jungle
The Aura (2005)
Backfire (1950)
Bad Blonde (1953)
Bad Timing (1980)
The Bank Job (2008)
Bedelia (1946)
Behind Locked Doors (1948)
Behind the High Wall (1956)
Beware, My Lovely (1952)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)
The Big Clock (1948)
The Big Combo (1955)
The Big Heat (1953)
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Big Steal (1949)
Big Town (1947)
Bitter Rice (1949)
Black Angel (1946)
Black Tuesday (1954)
Blast of Silence (1961)
Blonde Ice (1948)
Blood Simple (1984)
Bluebeard (1944)
The Blue Lamp (1950)
The Blue Dahlia (1946)
A Blueprint for Murder (1953)
Bob le flambeur (1956)
Body and Soul (1947)
Body Heat (1980)
Bodyguard (1948)
Border Incident (1949)
Born to Kill (1947)
see also Born to Kill (1947)
Brainstorm (1965)
Brighton Rock (1947)
see also Brighton Rock (1947)
Broken Embraces (2009) aka Los abrazos rotos
The Brothers Rico (1957)
Brute Force (1947)
Bunco Squad (1950)
Burglar (1957)
Caged (1950)
Cape Fear (1962)
Carnival of Souls (1962)
Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)
Cat People (1942)
Cell 2455, Death Row (1955)
Champion (1949)
The Chase (1946)
Chicago Calling (1951)
Chicago Deadline (1949)
Chinatown (1974)
Chinatown at Midnight (1949)
Christmas Holiday (1944)
City That Never Sleeps (1953)
Clash by Night (1952)
Classe tous risques (AKA The Big Risk, 1960)
The Clouded Yellow (1950)
Conflict (1945)
Cop (1988)
Cornered (1945)
Count the Hours (1953)
Crashout (1955)
Crime of Passion (1957)
Crime Wave (1954)
The Crimson Kimono (1959)
Criss Cross (1949)
see also Criss Cross (1949)
Crossfire (1947)
Croupier (1998)
Cry Danger (1951)
A Cry in the Night (1956)
Cutter's Way (1981)
D.O.A. (1950)
Dark City (1950)
The Damned Don't Cry (1950)
The Dark Corner (1946)
Dark Passage (1947)
Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Dead Reckoning (1947)
Decoy (1946)
Desperate (1947)
Detective Story (1951)
Detour (1945)
Deux hommes dans Manhattan (1959)
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947)
Devil's Doorway (1950)
The Devil's Mask (1946)
Dial 1119 (1950)
Double Indemnity (1944)
A Double Life (1947)
Le Doulos (1962)
Drive (2011)
Drive a Crooked Road (1954)
Edge of Doom (1950)
Edge of Fury (1958)
Edge of the City (1957)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
Escape from Crime (1942)
Fallen Angel (1945)
see also Fallen Angel (1945)
Fat City (1972)
Fear (1946)
Fear in the Night (1947)
52 Pick-Up (1986)
The File on Thelma Jordon (1950)
First Snow (2006)
Follow Me Quietly (1949)
Force of Evil (1948)
Framed (1947)
Framed (1975)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
The Gangster (1947)
Gilda (1946)
The Girl on the Late, Late Show (1974)
The Glass Key (1942)
The Glass Wall (1953)
The Great Flamarion (1945)
The Guilty (1947)
Gun Crazy (1950)
Gunman in the Streets (1950)
Hangover Square (1945)
Hatter's Castle (1942)
Heat Wave (1954)
Heatwave (1982)
Hell is a City (1960)
He Ran All the Way (1951)
He Walked By Night (1948)
The Hidden Room (1949)
High Sierra (1941)
High Wall (1947)
Highway 301 (1950)
His Kind of Woman (1951)
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
The Hoodlum (1951)
The Hot Spot (1990)
House by the River (1950)
House of Bamboo (1955)
Human Desire (1954)
I Confess (1953)
I Love a Mystery (1945)
I See a Dark Stranger (1946)
I Walk Alone (1948)
I Want to Live! (1958)
I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (1948)
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003)
Illegal Entry (1949)
Impact (1949)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
In Cold Blood (1967)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Jeopardy (1953)
Le Jour se Lève (1939)
Journey Into Fear (1943)
Kansas City Confidential (1952)
The Killer is Loose (1956) see also The Killer is Loose (1956)
The Killer That Stalked New York (1950)
The Killers (1946)
The Killing (1956)
Kiss of Death (1947)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950)
The Lady from Shanghai (1948)
The Lady Gambles (1949)
The Lady in the Lake (1947)
Laura (1944)
see also Laura (1944)
The Limping Man (1953)
The Lineup (1958)
The Locket (1946)
The Long Memory (1952)
The Long Night (1947)
The Long Wait (1954)
Look in Any Window (1961)
Loophole (1954)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Lusty Men (1952)
M (1951)
Macao (1952)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
see also John Huston Great Film Noir Director
The Man I Love (1947)
The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
The Man with My Face (1951)
Manhandled (1949)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Ministry of Fear (1944)
Missing Women (1951)
Mona Lisa (1986)
Money Madness (1948)
Money Movers (1978)
Moonrise (1948)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Murder By Contract (1958)
Murder Is My Beat (1955)
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
The Mysterious Mr. Valentine (1946)
Mystery Street (1950)
Naked Alibi (1954)
The Naked City (1948)
The Narrow Margin (1952)
Never Let Go! (1960)
Niagara (1953)
Night and the City (1950)
Night Editor (1946)
Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
see also The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Night Moves (1975)
Nightfall (1957)
Nightmare (1956)
Nightmare Alley (1947)
Night Train (1999)
1984 (1956)
99 River Street (1953)
No Man of Her Own (1950)
Nobody Lives Forever (1946)
Nocturne (1946)
Nora Prentiss (1947)
Notorious (1946)
Odd Man Out (1947)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
see also Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
On Dangerous Ground (1952)
Our Man in Havana (1959)
Out of the Past (1947)
see also Out of the Past (1947)
The Outfit (1973)
Panic in the Streets (1950)
The Paris Express (1952)
The People Against O'Hara (1951)
Phantom Lady (1944)
The Phenix City Story (1955)
Pickup (1951)
Pickup on South Street (1953)
Pitfall (1948)
A Place in the Sun (1950)
Please Murder Me (1956)
Plunder Road (1957)
Point Blank (1967)
Port of New York (1949)
Possessed (1947)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
The Pretender (1947)
Private Hell 36 (1954)
The Prowler (1951)
The Public Eye (1992)
Pushover (1954)
Quicksand (1950)
see also Quicksand (1950)
The Racket (1951)
Raw Deal (1948)
The Reckless Moment (1949)
Red Light (1949)
Red Lights (aka Feux rouges 2004)
Repeat Performance (1947)
Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
Riffraff (1947)
Rififi (1955)
Right Hand of the Devil (1963)
Roadblock (1951)
Road House (1948)
Rogue Cop (1954)
Rolling Thunder (1977)
Romeo Is Bleeding (1993)
Le Samouraï (1967)
The Scar (Hollow Triumph) (1948)
Scandal Sheet (1952)
Scarlet Street (1945)
The Set-Up (1949)
711 Ocean Drive (1950)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
Shield for Murder (1954)
Shock (1946)
Side Street (1950)
Sirocco (1951)
Slander (1957)
Slattery's Hurricane (1949)
Small Town Murder Songs (2010)
The Sniper (1952)
Somewhere in the Night (1946)
So Evil My Love (1948)
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
Split Second (1953)
The Square (2008)
Station West (1948)
The Steel Trap (1952)
Stolen Face (1952)
Strange Alibi (1941)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
The Strange Woman (1946)
The Stranger (1946)
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Stray Dog (aka Nora inu, 1949)
Street of Chance (1942)
Street with No Name (1948)
The Strip (1951)
Sudden Fear (1952)
Sunset Blvd (1950)
Suspense (1946)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
T-Men (1947)
Take One False Step (1949)
The Tattooed Stranger (1950)
The Temp (1993)
Tension (1950)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
They Drive By Night (1940)
They Live by Night (1948)
They Made Me a Fugitive (1947)
Thieves' Highway (1949)
The Third Man (1949)
This Gun for Hire (1942)
The Threat (1949)
Tiger in the Smoke (1956)
Time Table (1956)
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951)
Too Late For Tears (1949)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
The Trap (2007) aka Klopka
Trapped (1949)
Tread Softly Stranger (1958)
Le Trou (1960)
Try And Get Me! (1950)
Two of a Kind (1951)
Under the Gun (1950)
The Unholy Wife (1957)
The Unknown (1946)
The Unsuspected (1947)
The Verdict (1946)
The Velvet Touch (1948)
Vertigo (1958)
Wanted for Murder (1946)
The Web (1947)
The Well (1951)
When Strangers Marry (1944)
Where Danger Lives (1950)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
While the City Sleeps (1956)
The Whip Hand (1951)
Whirlpool (1949)
The Whistler (1944)
Without Warning! (1952)
The Woman Chaser (1999)
The Woman in the Window (1944)
The Woman on the Beach (1947)
Woman on the Run (1950)
A Woman's Devotion (1956)
World for Ransom (1954
Thursday, March 29, 2012
POVERTY ROW FILM NOIR
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
They Live by Night (1949)
https://plus.google.com/108581152941457084791#108581152941457084791/posts
The force that drives noir stories is the urge to escape: from the past, from the law, from the ordinary, from poverty and stifling relationships and personal failure. Noir found its fullest expression in America because the American psyche harbors a passion for freedom and autonomy, forever shadowed by a corresponding fear of loneliness and exile. Both find expression in the road story and its fiercest variant, the lam story. To be on the road is to be moving forward, released from all bonds. To be on the lam is to be hunted, running away from something that is always closing in, shutting off options one by one. The “key to the highway” has its B side, the haunted persecution of a “hellhound on my trail.” As they are powered by the need to escape, noir stories are structured by the impossibility of escape, so their fierce, thwarted energy turns inward on itself.
Film noir has no monopoly on man-on-the-run stories, but noir versions emphasize the isolation of fugitives, their vulnerability to betrayal and exploitation, the ruthless closing in of the law-enforcement dragnet, the physical and mental fraying of outcasts unable to settle anywhere in safety, and the way outlaws are driven further and further out of society, until they eventually become something less than human—something to be hunted down and slaughtered with overwhelming force, like rabid animals.
The lam story is as ritualistic and full of repeated motifs as the heist movie or the prison drama. Fugitives drive all night, sleep in back seats, abandon their cars as the license plates are reported over the radio, steal new cars; hop freight trains; stay in motels and tourist cabins; get married in quickie roadside ceremonies; work menial laboring jobs, hold up gas stations, wake doctors in the middle of the night to treat wounded companions; charge roadblocks, flee cops armed with machine guns, see Wanted posters trumpeting the prices on their heads; haggle with used-car dealers, pawnbrokers, immigrant smugglers and other carrion crows of the road. The claustrophobic city may be the quintessential noir setting, but the transient, banal, melancholy world of road travel is an essential noir locale too. The in-between realm created by postwar car culture, what James Kunstler called “the geography of nowhere,” embodies the essential alienation of the noir world, where no one is ever really at home. Film noir relentlessly mapped the false lure of the highway, which promises freedom and escape but leads only deeper into danger. All roads are blind, in both senses of the word: full of twists and corners concealing the dangers beyond, and leading ultimately to a dead end.
The title of Edward Anderson’s 1937 novel Thieves Like Us sums up its theme: banks, politicians and other institutions of authority are no better than the robbers who attack them. Nicholas Ray, who adapted the book into his first film, They Live By Night (1949), was less interested in this social commentary than in the personal relationships between the characters. The pre-credit prologue introduces his favorite theme of alienated youth (“This boy and this girl were never properly introduced to the world we live in”), with a heart-melting image of Bowie and Keechie (Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell) kissing in the flickering light before a fireplace. They are so fresh-faced and softly pretty that their outcast status implies the guilt of society—since they are so plainly innocent.
Like the outsiders in other Ray films, the young lovers on the run in They Live By Night briefly find a home, this time in a tourist cabin in the mountains. They ask for a cabin far away from the others, and the proprietor assumes they want privacy because they are newlyweds: “Married people like to be alone,” he tells his son. The mistake is at once ironic and apt: the couple’s romantic bond is indistinguishable from their fugitive status.
When Bowie and Keechie decide to take a chance and spend a day in public, “just like other people,” they and we are reminded how completely they are cut off from normal life. Bowie has been advised by an older criminal of the importance of blending in and looking like other people. But the pair look and feel out of place, stiffly dressed up and clutching a briefcase full of stolen money. They observe everyday activities like anthropologists among baffling natives, disparaging habits that are unfamiliar and out of reach. They keep asking each other for reassurance: “Are you having a good time?”
Bowie was sent to prison as a young teenager for a killing in which he was barely complicit, and he remains child-like and unformed, though determined to seem tough and ready for anything. The two older, experienced convicts who help him escape want him as their driver for a series of bank hold-ups. T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen) is an old-school professional crook, steady and decent; he enlists his sister-in-law Mattie (Helen Craig) to bankroll their operation with the promise that they will supply money for her to mount an appeal for her own jailed husband. The desire to “break out,” to get free of the net woven by crime and the law, hangs over almost everyone in the film. Only the one-eyed Chicamaw (Howard Da Silva) wants not safety and a normal life but excitement and fame as an outlaw.
Chicamaw’s niece Keechie has a harder shell than Bowie, but her life—in a grimy, run-down service station owned by her drunken father—has been just as stunted and confined. The two approach each other warily, at first quarrelling and feigning indifference, but quickly giving way to their eagerness for love. When she comes to tend his wounds, her touch on his bare back evokes an intense yet delicate moment of adolescent awakening. Their relationship changes Keechie more than the terminally naïve Bowie, a malleable type who is easily led astray and just as easily redeemed. Keechie’s plain, grubby face—set throughout the early scenes in a look of defensiveness and disdain—becomes prettier and more feminine as she blossoms into a wife. She delivers a sentimental speech about how a good dog loves only its master, and a good woman is the same, but apart from this she manages to embody the film’s conscience without sanctimony. (One of the most significant differences in Robert Altman’s 1974 Thieves Like Us is its treatment of Keechie.)
The rich glow of the central love story is off-set by the portrait of a hard-scrabble world in which few people can be trusted. Ray recreated the rural areas he had explored during the Depression, when he traveled through the rural South with Alan Lomax, collecting folk music. Dingy motels and auto-courts and sleepy little towns like Zelton, where the men rob a bank on Main Street, look unchanged since earlier decades. Cars throw up trails of dust as they careen along dirt roads running through dry, empty fields. The overhead shots taken from a helicopter establish a raw, documentary look that contrasts sharply with the Rembrandt lighting of the close-ups in the scenes between Bowie and Keechie; their private world is very different from the world through which they move.
Ray’s film is truer to the Depression ambience of its source than most noir films based on thirties novels, but the Production Code required some changes in the story—the lovers had to marry, as they never do in the book. Ray’s staging of their marriage, however, is anything but reassuring. Bowie and Keechie are repelled by the seedy, neon-lit roadside wedding chapel, yet ominously drawn to it as well. The beady-eyed justice of the peace, stuffing a fresh carnation into his button hole as he greets them with forced cheer, pegs them as fugitives but marries them anyway. They take his cheapest wedding, and it’s all over in a minute, the pronouncement of “man and wife” immediately followed by the hint to tip the two glum, perfunctory witnesses a dollar each. The smarmy justice arranges the purchase of a stolen car, chiseling $500 for himself.
The car becomes their only permanent home as they travel aimlessly, their route traced on a black map. At first, just after their marriage, they look like any young newlywed couple, driving along in the sunshine with the wind in their hair, laughing as they struggle to drink cokes and eat sandwiches. The next time they’re in the car—after fighting bitterly over Bowie’s participation in another robbery, and being forced to flee their holiday cabin after he’s recognized—the vacation mood is gone. Rain streaks the windows; they sleep in the car or drive all night, wary of roadblocks, as the pregnant Keechie grows steadily weaker.
Their day of pretending to be ordinary people is their last happy interlude. They go to a nightclub where they’re entertained by “Your Red Wagon” (Ray’s working title for the film). It’s a song about minding your own business, and about being on your own. The lyrics are double-edged: to be left alone is what fugitives want most, but the tough-luck indifference expressed in the song (irresistibly performed by a beaming Marie Bryant) is reflected by the way no one in the film is willing to help the young couple. Bowie dreams of finding refuge in the anonymity of a big city, or in Mexico out of the reach of the law, but this fantasy is constantly punctured. In the men’s room of the nightclub, Bowie is recognized by a local crook who contemptuously gives him an hour to get out of town. There is no sense of loyalty in the underworld, or honor among thieves. Bowie is betrayed first by Keechie’s spiteful, greedy father and then by Mattie in exchange for the release of her own husband—who is so sickened by the deal that he can’t look at her. Sad, hungry-eyed Mattie is no stock villain; when a cop tries to reassure her that she has saved everyone a lot of trouble, she replies disconsolately, “I don’t think that will help me sleep nights.” The person who finally tells Bowie there’s no place he can run to is the crooked justice of the peace, who is decent enough not to con him with false hope.
The ending, in which Bowie is gunned down while Keechie sleeps inside their motel room, runs counter to the usual Bonnie-and-Clyde template where the couple is united in death. It is more tragic, since Keechie is left alone to grieve. For all the deaths and defeats, noir rarely breaks your heart: pessimism, fatalism and cynicism are, for one thing, a defense against heartbreak. But Nicholas Ray, with his bruised romantic temperament, created some of the most moving and wounding of all noir films, including his devastating masterpiece In a Lonely Place.
Ray’s first film fully expresses the concerns that would dominate his career: lonesome wandering, youthful alienation, the destruction of emotional bonds by misunderstanding and an uncaring world. Though he made only a few contributions to the noir canon, Ray added a new note to the heavily German-influenced style. It is often said that outsiders can see a society most clearly, and foreign directors like Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang ruthlessly laid bare American illusions and dreams. Ray’s tone is not acid but saddened, not cold but tender. He has been called, by Geoff Andrew, “the first home-grown poet of American disillusionment.”
***
Written by Imogen Sara Smith NOTE: This essay is adapted from her book In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City.
Imogen Sara Smith is an independent film scholar based in Brooklyn. Her most recent book was In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City (McFarland, 2011), and her writing appears regularly in Alt Screen, Noir City Magazine, The Chiseler, and other venues.
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
They Live by Night (1949)
https://plus.google.com/108581152941457084791#108581152941457084791/posts
The force that drives noir stories is the urge to escape: from the past, from the law, from the ordinary, from poverty and stifling relationships and personal failure. Noir found its fullest expression in America because the American psyche harbors a passion for freedom and autonomy, forever shadowed by a corresponding fear of loneliness and exile. Both find expression in the road story and its fiercest variant, the lam story. To be on the road is to be moving forward, released from all bonds. To be on the lam is to be hunted, running away from something that is always closing in, shutting off options one by one. The “key to the highway” has its B side, the haunted persecution of a “hellhound on my trail.” As they are powered by the need to escape, noir stories are structured by the impossibility of escape, so their fierce, thwarted energy turns inward on itself.
Film noir has no monopoly on man-on-the-run stories, but noir versions emphasize the isolation of fugitives, their vulnerability to betrayal and exploitation, the ruthless closing in of the law-enforcement dragnet, the physical and mental fraying of outcasts unable to settle anywhere in safety, and the way outlaws are driven further and further out of society, until they eventually become something less than human—something to be hunted down and slaughtered with overwhelming force, like rabid animals.
The lam story is as ritualistic and full of repeated motifs as the heist movie or the prison drama. Fugitives drive all night, sleep in back seats, abandon their cars as the license plates are reported over the radio, steal new cars; hop freight trains; stay in motels and tourist cabins; get married in quickie roadside ceremonies; work menial laboring jobs, hold up gas stations, wake doctors in the middle of the night to treat wounded companions; charge roadblocks, flee cops armed with machine guns, see Wanted posters trumpeting the prices on their heads; haggle with used-car dealers, pawnbrokers, immigrant smugglers and other carrion crows of the road. The claustrophobic city may be the quintessential noir setting, but the transient, banal, melancholy world of road travel is an essential noir locale too. The in-between realm created by postwar car culture, what James Kunstler called “the geography of nowhere,” embodies the essential alienation of the noir world, where no one is ever really at home. Film noir relentlessly mapped the false lure of the highway, which promises freedom and escape but leads only deeper into danger. All roads are blind, in both senses of the word: full of twists and corners concealing the dangers beyond, and leading ultimately to a dead end.
The title of Edward Anderson’s 1937 novel Thieves Like Us sums up its theme: banks, politicians and other institutions of authority are no better than the robbers who attack them. Nicholas Ray, who adapted the book into his first film, They Live By Night (1949), was less interested in this social commentary than in the personal relationships between the characters. The pre-credit prologue introduces his favorite theme of alienated youth (“This boy and this girl were never properly introduced to the world we live in”), with a heart-melting image of Bowie and Keechie (Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell) kissing in the flickering light before a fireplace. They are so fresh-faced and softly pretty that their outcast status implies the guilt of society—since they are so plainly innocent.
Like the outsiders in other Ray films, the young lovers on the run in They Live By Night briefly find a home, this time in a tourist cabin in the mountains. They ask for a cabin far away from the others, and the proprietor assumes they want privacy because they are newlyweds: “Married people like to be alone,” he tells his son. The mistake is at once ironic and apt: the couple’s romantic bond is indistinguishable from their fugitive status.
When Bowie and Keechie decide to take a chance and spend a day in public, “just like other people,” they and we are reminded how completely they are cut off from normal life. Bowie has been advised by an older criminal of the importance of blending in and looking like other people. But the pair look and feel out of place, stiffly dressed up and clutching a briefcase full of stolen money. They observe everyday activities like anthropologists among baffling natives, disparaging habits that are unfamiliar and out of reach. They keep asking each other for reassurance: “Are you having a good time?”
Bowie was sent to prison as a young teenager for a killing in which he was barely complicit, and he remains child-like and unformed, though determined to seem tough and ready for anything. The two older, experienced convicts who help him escape want him as their driver for a series of bank hold-ups. T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen) is an old-school professional crook, steady and decent; he enlists his sister-in-law Mattie (Helen Craig) to bankroll their operation with the promise that they will supply money for her to mount an appeal for her own jailed husband. The desire to “break out,” to get free of the net woven by crime and the law, hangs over almost everyone in the film. Only the one-eyed Chicamaw (Howard Da Silva) wants not safety and a normal life but excitement and fame as an outlaw.
Chicamaw’s niece Keechie has a harder shell than Bowie, but her life—in a grimy, run-down service station owned by her drunken father—has been just as stunted and confined. The two approach each other warily, at first quarrelling and feigning indifference, but quickly giving way to their eagerness for love. When she comes to tend his wounds, her touch on his bare back evokes an intense yet delicate moment of adolescent awakening. Their relationship changes Keechie more than the terminally naïve Bowie, a malleable type who is easily led astray and just as easily redeemed. Keechie’s plain, grubby face—set throughout the early scenes in a look of defensiveness and disdain—becomes prettier and more feminine as she blossoms into a wife. She delivers a sentimental speech about how a good dog loves only its master, and a good woman is the same, but apart from this she manages to embody the film’s conscience without sanctimony. (One of the most significant differences in Robert Altman’s 1974 Thieves Like Us is its treatment of Keechie.)
The rich glow of the central love story is off-set by the portrait of a hard-scrabble world in which few people can be trusted. Ray recreated the rural areas he had explored during the Depression, when he traveled through the rural South with Alan Lomax, collecting folk music. Dingy motels and auto-courts and sleepy little towns like Zelton, where the men rob a bank on Main Street, look unchanged since earlier decades. Cars throw up trails of dust as they careen along dirt roads running through dry, empty fields. The overhead shots taken from a helicopter establish a raw, documentary look that contrasts sharply with the Rembrandt lighting of the close-ups in the scenes between Bowie and Keechie; their private world is very different from the world through which they move.
Ray’s film is truer to the Depression ambience of its source than most noir films based on thirties novels, but the Production Code required some changes in the story—the lovers had to marry, as they never do in the book. Ray’s staging of their marriage, however, is anything but reassuring. Bowie and Keechie are repelled by the seedy, neon-lit roadside wedding chapel, yet ominously drawn to it as well. The beady-eyed justice of the peace, stuffing a fresh carnation into his button hole as he greets them with forced cheer, pegs them as fugitives but marries them anyway. They take his cheapest wedding, and it’s all over in a minute, the pronouncement of “man and wife” immediately followed by the hint to tip the two glum, perfunctory witnesses a dollar each. The smarmy justice arranges the purchase of a stolen car, chiseling $500 for himself.
The car becomes their only permanent home as they travel aimlessly, their route traced on a black map. At first, just after their marriage, they look like any young newlywed couple, driving along in the sunshine with the wind in their hair, laughing as they struggle to drink cokes and eat sandwiches. The next time they’re in the car—after fighting bitterly over Bowie’s participation in another robbery, and being forced to flee their holiday cabin after he’s recognized—the vacation mood is gone. Rain streaks the windows; they sleep in the car or drive all night, wary of roadblocks, as the pregnant Keechie grows steadily weaker.
Their day of pretending to be ordinary people is their last happy interlude. They go to a nightclub where they’re entertained by “Your Red Wagon” (Ray’s working title for the film). It’s a song about minding your own business, and about being on your own. The lyrics are double-edged: to be left alone is what fugitives want most, but the tough-luck indifference expressed in the song (irresistibly performed by a beaming Marie Bryant) is reflected by the way no one in the film is willing to help the young couple. Bowie dreams of finding refuge in the anonymity of a big city, or in Mexico out of the reach of the law, but this fantasy is constantly punctured. In the men’s room of the nightclub, Bowie is recognized by a local crook who contemptuously gives him an hour to get out of town. There is no sense of loyalty in the underworld, or honor among thieves. Bowie is betrayed first by Keechie’s spiteful, greedy father and then by Mattie in exchange for the release of her own husband—who is so sickened by the deal that he can’t look at her. Sad, hungry-eyed Mattie is no stock villain; when a cop tries to reassure her that she has saved everyone a lot of trouble, she replies disconsolately, “I don’t think that will help me sleep nights.” The person who finally tells Bowie there’s no place he can run to is the crooked justice of the peace, who is decent enough not to con him with false hope.
The ending, in which Bowie is gunned down while Keechie sleeps inside their motel room, runs counter to the usual Bonnie-and-Clyde template where the couple is united in death. It is more tragic, since Keechie is left alone to grieve. For all the deaths and defeats, noir rarely breaks your heart: pessimism, fatalism and cynicism are, for one thing, a defense against heartbreak. But Nicholas Ray, with his bruised romantic temperament, created some of the most moving and wounding of all noir films, including his devastating masterpiece In a Lonely Place.
Ray’s first film fully expresses the concerns that would dominate his career: lonesome wandering, youthful alienation, the destruction of emotional bonds by misunderstanding and an uncaring world. Though he made only a few contributions to the noir canon, Ray added a new note to the heavily German-influenced style. It is often said that outsiders can see a society most clearly, and foreign directors like Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang ruthlessly laid bare American illusions and dreams. Ray’s tone is not acid but saddened, not cold but tender. He has been called, by Geoff Andrew, “the first home-grown poet of American disillusionment.”
***
Written by Imogen Sara Smith NOTE: This essay is adapted from her book In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City.
Imogen Sara Smith is an independent film scholar based in Brooklyn. Her most recent book was In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City (McFarland, 2011), and her writing appears regularly in Alt Screen, Noir City Magazine, The Chiseler, and other venues.
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Sola Scriptora-necessity of adding sacred tradition
http://blackieschurchmilitant-apocalypsis.blogspot.com/2007/08/apostles-taught-study-of-sacred.html
Infallibility & How The Apostles Taught the Study of Sacred Tradition.
Quote:
Originally Asserted by a Non-Catholic:
Any church arrogant enough to claim infallibility is elevating it's self above God and is blasphemy! There are other "churches" that claim to be infallible, how shall I know which one is lying and which one is telling the truth?
I will answer this for you, by reading the bible for myself and letting the Holy Ghost interpret it for me as He does. BTW any church claiming infallability is a false church.
A rant without any support from the Word of God.
And yet Christ Himself promised that assurance of infallibility to His church when He said. 18 And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.Matthew 16.
So then you claim this infallibility for yourself? That is precisely what this statement does, while denying what Our Lord promised to His church and actually attempting to usurp that authority and promise of assurance for yourself. I wouldn't do that. So then you are telling us that you are never wrong? Yet I have already proved you wrong several times in this discussion alone.
By this statement you have logically condemned yourself.
Quote:
Originally Asserted by non-Catholic
2Ti 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
I love this verse! I don't suppose that you've noticed here that St. Paul does not say to St. Timothy. "Study the Bible", or "Study the scriptures", and so based on what this verse says (and the context nowhere changes this...) then sacred Tradition is included in what Paul is telling Timothy to study. In this he would be following the apostles.
Example: (I asked you to look all this up and apparently you dismissed my request, so now I'm going to show you why that was so important.)
Look at these verses from the letter of St. Jude, the next to last book in the New Testament. (You do accept Jude as inspired canon of scripture, right?)
Jude Chapter 1:9: But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you."
Where is that found in the Old Testament? Please show me chapter and verse.
Jude Chapter 1:14: It was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, 15: to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
Where is that in the Old Testament please? Again, I need chapter and verse?
Jude Chapter 1:9: But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you."....Jude Chapter 1:14: It was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, 15: to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
2nd Timothy Chapter 3:8: As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith;
The first 1st is quoting *****The Assumption of Moses. Not the Old Testament, yet the apostle Jude quotes it as a fact of belief.
*****
The 2nd is quoting *****The Book of Enoch. Not the Old Testament, yet the apostle Jude quotes it as a fact of belief.
*****ContentThe first part of the Book of Enoch describes the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered the Nephilim. The remainder of the book describes Enoch's visits to heaven in the form of travels, visions and dreams, and his revelations.
The book consists of five quite distinct major sections (see each section for details):
The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1 – 36)
The Book of Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37 – 71) (Also called the Similitudes of Enoch)
The Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72 – 82) (Also called the Book of the Heavenly Luminaries or Book of Luminaries)
The Book of Dream Visions (1 Enoch 83 – 90) (Also called the Book of Dreams)
The Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91 – 108)
Among most scholars is the shared view[5] that these five sections were originally independent works (with different dates of composition), themselves a product of much editorial arrangement, and were only later redacted into what we now call 1 Enoch.
Józef Milik has suggested that the Book of Giants found among the Dead Sea Scrolls should be part of the collection, appearing after the Book of Watchers in place of the Book of Parables, but for various reasons, Milik's theory has not been widely accepted.
[edit] Canonicity This section contains Ethiopic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Ethiopic characters.
[edit] JudaismAlthough evidently widely known at the time of the Development of the Hebrew Bible canon, 1 Enoch was excluded from both the formal canon of the Tanakh and the typical canon of the Septuagint and therefore, also the writings known today as the Apocrypha.[6][7] One possible reason for Jewish rejection of the book might be the textual nature of several early sections of the book that make use of material from the Torah; for example, 1 En 1 is a midrash of Deuteronomy 33.[8][9] The content, particularly detailed descriptions of fallen angels, would also be a reason for rejection from the Hebrew canon at this period - as illustrated by the comments of Trypho the Jew when debating with Justin Martyr on this subject. Trypho: "The utterances of God are holy, but your expositions are mere contrivances, as is plain from what has been explained by you; nay, even blasphemies, for you assert that angels sinned and revolted from God." (Dialogue 79) [10]
[edit] ChristianityThe book is referred to, and quoted, in Jude 14-15:
"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these [men], saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
The 3rd is quoting the *****Book of Jannes and Jambres and not the Old Testament. (Go ahead and look...their names are nowhere found in the OT!), yet here again...St. Paul refers to something as fact that is not stated in the inspired canon. So then... he is clearly telling Timothy to study both scripture and traditional sources, since that is clearly shown here as apostolic practice.
So much for the idea that the apostles taught Sola Scriptura.
Quote:
Originally Asserted by non-Catholic
You see it all the time. People don't agree on everything, even within any church, including your catholic church. At the same time, if you go to the same source of truth (the bible) and study it though the Holy Spirit, you can understand no matter who you are.
If this were actually true then all faithful believers would hold the exact same doctrines and beliefs...but that is not so among n-Cs, though with in the Catholic Church one single authority is acknowledged and there is indeed one authoritative and knowledgeable source of doctrinal interpretation.
Your comments that some Catholics might dissent or disagree does not indict that infallible authority in faith and morals but instead indicts the consciences of those who dissent or oppose those teachings.
Infallibility & How The Apostles Taught the Study of Sacred Tradition.
Quote:
Originally Asserted by a Non-Catholic:
Any church arrogant enough to claim infallibility is elevating it's self above God and is blasphemy! There are other "churches" that claim to be infallible, how shall I know which one is lying and which one is telling the truth?
I will answer this for you, by reading the bible for myself and letting the Holy Ghost interpret it for me as He does. BTW any church claiming infallability is a false church.
A rant without any support from the Word of God.
And yet Christ Himself promised that assurance of infallibility to His church when He said. 18 And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.Matthew 16.
So then you claim this infallibility for yourself? That is precisely what this statement does, while denying what Our Lord promised to His church and actually attempting to usurp that authority and promise of assurance for yourself. I wouldn't do that. So then you are telling us that you are never wrong? Yet I have already proved you wrong several times in this discussion alone.
By this statement you have logically condemned yourself.
Quote:
Originally Asserted by non-Catholic
2Ti 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
I love this verse! I don't suppose that you've noticed here that St. Paul does not say to St. Timothy. "Study the Bible", or "Study the scriptures", and so based on what this verse says (and the context nowhere changes this...) then sacred Tradition is included in what Paul is telling Timothy to study. In this he would be following the apostles.
Example: (I asked you to look all this up and apparently you dismissed my request, so now I'm going to show you why that was so important.)
Look at these verses from the letter of St. Jude, the next to last book in the New Testament. (You do accept Jude as inspired canon of scripture, right?)
Jude Chapter 1:9: But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you."
Where is that found in the Old Testament? Please show me chapter and verse.
Jude Chapter 1:14: It was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, 15: to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
Where is that in the Old Testament please? Again, I need chapter and verse?
Jude Chapter 1:9: But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you."....Jude Chapter 1:14: It was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, 15: to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
2nd Timothy Chapter 3:8: As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith;
The first 1st is quoting *****The Assumption of Moses. Not the Old Testament, yet the apostle Jude quotes it as a fact of belief.
*****
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_Moses#Relation_with_the_Epistle_of_Jude
Relation with the Epistle of JudeSome ancient writers, including Gelasius (verse 2,21,17) and Origen (De principiis, III,2,1), cite the Assumption of Moses with reference to the dispute over the body of Moses, referred to in the Epistle of Jude 1:9, between the archangel Michael and Satan.
This dispute does not appear in Ceriani's manuscript; this could lend support to the identification of the manuscript with the Testament of Moses, but could also be explained by the text's incompleteness (it is believed that about a third of the text is missing).
An alternative explanation is that Jude is compounding material from three sources:
general Jewish traditions about Michael as gravedigger for the just as Apocalypse of Moses
contrast with the accusation by Michael of Azazel in the Book of Enoch
contrast with the angel of the Lord not rebuking Satan over the body of Jeshua in Zechariah 3.
This explanation has in its favour three arguments: (1) Jude quotes from both 1 Enoch 1:9 and Zechariah 3 (2) Jeshua in Zechariah 3 is dead - his grandson is serving as high priest. The change from "body of Jesus" (Greek spelling of Jeshua) to "body of Moses" would be required to avoid confusion with Jesus, and also to reflect the historical context of Zechariah 3 in Nehemiah concerning intermarriage and corruption in the "body" of the priesthood. (3) The example of Zech.3 provides an argument against the "slandering of heavenly beings", since the Angel of the Lord does not do in Zechariah 3 what Michael is reported to do in 1En1.[4][5]
The 2nd is quoting *****The Book of Enoch. Not the Old Testament, yet the apostle Jude quotes it as a fact of belief.
*****ContentThe first part of the Book of Enoch describes the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered the Nephilim. The remainder of the book describes Enoch's visits to heaven in the form of travels, visions and dreams, and his revelations.
The book consists of five quite distinct major sections (see each section for details):
The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1 – 36)
The Book of Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37 – 71) (Also called the Similitudes of Enoch)
The Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72 – 82) (Also called the Book of the Heavenly Luminaries or Book of Luminaries)
The Book of Dream Visions (1 Enoch 83 – 90) (Also called the Book of Dreams)
The Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91 – 108)
Among most scholars is the shared view[5] that these five sections were originally independent works (with different dates of composition), themselves a product of much editorial arrangement, and were only later redacted into what we now call 1 Enoch.
Józef Milik has suggested that the Book of Giants found among the Dead Sea Scrolls should be part of the collection, appearing after the Book of Watchers in place of the Book of Parables, but for various reasons, Milik's theory has not been widely accepted.
[edit] Canonicity This section contains Ethiopic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Ethiopic characters.
[edit] JudaismAlthough evidently widely known at the time of the Development of the Hebrew Bible canon, 1 Enoch was excluded from both the formal canon of the Tanakh and the typical canon of the Septuagint and therefore, also the writings known today as the Apocrypha.[6][7] One possible reason for Jewish rejection of the book might be the textual nature of several early sections of the book that make use of material from the Torah; for example, 1 En 1 is a midrash of Deuteronomy 33.[8][9] The content, particularly detailed descriptions of fallen angels, would also be a reason for rejection from the Hebrew canon at this period - as illustrated by the comments of Trypho the Jew when debating with Justin Martyr on this subject. Trypho: "The utterances of God are holy, but your expositions are mere contrivances, as is plain from what has been explained by you; nay, even blasphemies, for you assert that angels sinned and revolted from God." (Dialogue 79) [10]
[edit] ChristianityThe book is referred to, and quoted, in Jude 14-15:
"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these [men], saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
The 3rd is quoting the *****Book of Jannes and Jambres and not the Old Testament. (Go ahead and look...their names are nowhere found in the OT!), yet here again...St. Paul refers to something as fact that is not stated in the inspired canon. So then... he is clearly telling Timothy to study both scripture and traditional sources, since that is clearly shown here as apostolic practice.
*****Information on Jannes and Jambres
Emil Schürer writes: "But among the books referring both to himself [Moses] and his time there is still another work to be mentioned, the theme of which was a single episode in the lawgiver's life, we mean the Book of Jannes and Jambres, the two Egyptian magicians who, according to Ex. vii. 8 sqq., wrought miracles before Pharaoh equal to those of Moses and Aaron, but were nevertheless beaten in the end. The names are not mentioned in the Old Testament, but they occur at a comparatively early date in the legends, and they were known not only in Jewish, but in Gentile and Christian circles as well, as the names of the two famous Egyptian magicians in question. . . . The book written about the magicians in question is mentioned by Origen, and in the Decretum Gelasii. As the name of Jannes was known even to so early a writer as Pliny, and as it is probable that those anonymous personages owed their name and individuality first of all to the apocryphal book itself, we may perhaps venture to refer the date of the composition of this work to pre-Christian times." (The Literature of the Jews in the Time of Jesus, p. 149)
A. Pietersma and R. T. Lutz write: "Possible evidence for Jannes and Jambres as a Christian book is as follows: (1) In fragment B of the Vienna papyrus (1. 8), the word chiazein occurs, the basic meaning of which is 'to form (the Greek letter) chi.' It need mean no more than 'to cross out' or 'to mark with an X' but could possibly be a reference to the cross. Unfortunately the context is no aid to interpretation, hence the evidential value of the word is slight. Furthermore, only the Vienna text but not the basically parallel text of Chester Beatty has the reading in question. (2) Chester Beatty 23e recto, line 2, reads apparently 'this one having descended to Ha[des . . .],' which may be a reference to the descent of Christ. The remainder of the sentence might run '[did not] die,' but again we cannot go beyond the realm of the possible. Other interpretations can be adduced. (3) Perhaps the best argument for Jannes and Jambres, in its present form, as a Christian book lies in its apparent literary form. If our ordering of the material is even approximately correct and if the Gelasian Decree has reference to our book, Jannes and Jambres is essentially a confession (poenitentia), a genre of literature that was manifestly Christian but not Jewish." (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, p. 433)
So much for the idea that the apostles taught Sola Scriptura.
Quote:
Originally Asserted by non-Catholic
You see it all the time. People don't agree on everything, even within any church, including your catholic church. At the same time, if you go to the same source of truth (the bible) and study it though the Holy Spirit, you can understand no matter who you are.
If this were actually true then all faithful believers would hold the exact same doctrines and beliefs...but that is not so among n-Cs, though with in the Catholic Church one single authority is acknowledged and there is indeed one authoritative and knowledgeable source of doctrinal interpretation.
Your comments that some Catholics might dissent or disagree does not indict that infallible authority in faith and morals but instead indicts the consciences of those who dissent or oppose those teachings.
Where to pray its appropriateness CONTINUED
Commentary Halacha 3
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/rambam.asp?tDate=3/26/2012&rambamChapters=3
A study hall is greater - i.e., it is a more auspicious place to pray.
than a synagogue - Other ramifications of this concept are mentioned in Chapter 11, Halachah 14, and in Hilchot Talmud Torah 4:9.
Even though [some of the] great Sages [lived in] cities where many synagogues were located, they would pray only in the place where they studied Torah. - Berachot 30b relates: "Even though there were thirteen synagogues in Tiberias, Rav Ami and Rav Assi would pray only between the pillars in the study hall."Berachot 8a interprets the phrase "the gates of Zion" in Psalms 87:2: "God loves the gates of Zion above all the dwellings of Jacob" as referring to "the gates of those who are בהלכה המצויינים (distinguished by the halachah studied there)" and states that they receive the highest degree of Divine attention.
The Talmud continues: Abbaye says: "Originally, I would study in my house and pray in the synagogue. After hearing this, I pray only where I study."
The above applies [however, only] when one can participate in communal prayer there. - The Kessef Mishneh mentions the view of certain rabbinic authorities who maintain that it is preferable for a scholar to pray in a study hall even without a minyan. However, he also mentions the opinion of Rabbenu Asher (See Responsum 4) who writes that if the scholars do not appear in the synagogue the common people will assume that their presence is also unnecessary. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 90:18) quotes the Rambam's position.
Commentary Halacha 4
What is implied by [the term,] communal prayer? One [person] prays aloud and all [the others] listen. - With this statement, the Rambam touches on a point debated both by the Sages of the Talmud and the later Rabbis. The mishnah, Rosh HaShanah 33b, states:
Just as the leader of the congregation is obligated [to pray], each individual is obligated. Rabban Gamliel states: "The leader of the congregation fulfills the obligation on behalf of the community."
The Talmud (34b) elaborates on the difference of opinion:
They asked Rabban Gamliel: "According to your opinion, why does the community pray?"
He replied: "In order to allow the leader of the community to prepare his prayers."
Rabban Gamliel asked them: "According to your opinion, why does the leader of the congregation pray aloud?"
They replied: "In order to allow those who are not knowledgeable to fulfill their obligation."
He told them: "Just as he fulfills the obligation on behalf of those who are not knowledgeable, he fulfills it on behalf of those who are knowledgeable."
The Sages of the Talmud continued to debate the issue. The ultimate decision accepted by Rav Yitzchok Alfasi, the Rambam (See Halachah 9), and Rabbenu Asher, is that during the entire year, the Sages' opinion is accepted. However, on Rosh HaShanah, because of the complexity of the blessings (See Halachah 10), Rabban Gamliel's opinion prevails.
Both Rabban Gamliel and the Sages agree that the practice of communal prayer involves two elements:
a) the silent prayers of many individuals; and
b) the chazan's repetition of the Shemoneh Esreh.
They differ, however, as to which of these elements is considered of primary importance. According to the Sages, the essential element of communal prayer is that ten or more people recite the Shemoneh Esreh at the same time. According to Rabban Gamliel, the essential element of communal prayer is, as the Rambam states in this halachah, the prayer of the leader of the congregation.
[Note Likkutei Sichot, Vol. 24, which explains that their difference of opinion revolves around a more general issue: Which is of higher priority, quantity (the prayers of the many) or quality (the prayers of the leader of the congregation)?]
The Rambam's statement here is difficult to place in perspective. Though in Halachah 9, he accepts the Sages' view (See also Chapter 9, Halachot 2-3) in this halachah, his opinion follows that of Rabban Gamliel. In one of his responsa, the Rambam explains that after the Sages instituted the silent Shemoneh Esreh to allow the leader of the congregation to prepare his prayers, even Rabban Gamliel would agree that all the individuals praying in a minyan also fulfill their obligation to pray by reciting their own prayers. Still it is difficult to understand why the Rambam would have the individuals forfeit the higher quality of communal prayer in order to pray individually.
In his notes to Rosh HaShanah, ibid., Rav Chayim Soloveichik writes that to take into consideration the Rambam's statements in this halachah, after concluding his individual prayers, each person should stand and listen to the prayer of the leader of the congregation and thus, fulfill the mitzvah of communal prayer. Note Likkutei Sichot, ibid., which compares answering to the chazan's prayer to reciting a voluntary prayer (See Chapter 1, Halachah 9). By doing so, one will have both the advantages of individual and communal prayer.
This should not be done with fewer than ten - See Halachot 4 and 5.
adult - Males who have reached the age of thirteen years and a day and manifested signs of physical maturity. (See Hilchot Kri'at Shema 3:19.)
The Kessef Mishneh explains that the Rambam derives this halachah from Berachot 47b-48a which allows for the inclusion of a child in the zimmun for the grace after meals. (See Hilchot Berachot 5:7.) We assume that this leniency was granted only in regard to grace, but not in regard to prayer. See also Bereishit Rabbah 91:3.
Many Halachic authorities do not accept this conclusion. In his siddur, Rav Sa'adia Gaon rules that a child may be counted as the tenth in a minyan. Similarly, the Ba'al HaMe'or holds that even up to four minors may be counted in a minyan for prayer
The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 55:4), rules that a minor may not be included in a minyan for prayer. The Ramah adds that under extraordinary circumstances, a minor may be counted. There are opinions that in such a case, the minor must be at least six years old, understand that prayer is service to God, and hold a chumash (Magen Avraham 55:5, Shulchan Aruch HaRav 55:5).
free males - i.e., excluding a Canaanite slave. However, a Jewish slave (עבד עברי) may be counted as part of a minyan. Berachot 47b relates that once, Rabbi Eliezer entered the synagogue and finding only nine people there, freed his slave to complete the quorum of ten.
The leader of the congregation is [counted as] one of them. - Though there is no explicit source to this effect, a number of midrashim (e.g., VaYikra Rabbah 23:4) lead to this conclusion.
One of the communal rites listed in Megillah 23b which requires a minyan is ברכת אבלים - the blessing one utters to those in mourning. For the recitation of that blessing, the presence of ten men other than the mourner himself is required. (See Hilchot Eivel 13:1.) Perhaps the Rambam feels that this statement is necessary to clearly distinguish between the different requirements of a minyan for prayer and ברכת אבלים.
Even if some of them have already prayed and fulfilled their obligation, they can complete the [quorum of] ten - Though they do not pray together with the others, their presence in the room where the others pray can complete a minyan.
provided the majority of the ten have not prayed. -Soferim 10:7 states:
Our Sages in the West say [that Kaddish and barchu may be recited] even with seven. They explain their position [based on Judges 5:2]: "In the time of tumult in Israel when the people volunteered themselves, blessed be God." [The number of people correspond] to the number of words [in the verse which describes the blessing of God].
There are those who say only six [are required], since ברכו is the sixth word [of the above verse].
The Rambam differentiates between the ruling regarding prayer and his statements in Hilchot Berachot 5:8 where he writes that it is necessary that seven people out of ten eat bread in order to constitute a minyan for zimmun, for "a noticeable majority" is required.
There are two views quoted in the name of Rabbenu Tam (Tosafot, Megillah 23b); one, requiring a minimum of seven people who have not prayed for a minyan just as seven who have eaten bread are required for a minyan in regard to grace after meals and, another, requiring, only five. However, the Rambam's opinion is universally accepted as halachah.
Similarly, we should not recite Kedushah, - See Chapter 7, Halachah 17.
In the chazan's repetition of the Shemoneh Esreh, it is customary to recite three verses in the Kedushah:
a) "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the entire earth is full of His glory" (Isaiah 6:3);
b) "Blessed be the glory of God from His place" (Ezekiel 3:12);
c) "The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations" (Psalms 146:10).
Only the first two of these verses are recited in the Kedushah of the blessings before the Shema. However, in theKedushah recited at the end of the service, a verse similar to Psalms 146:10 is also included.
The commentaries debate the definition of Kedushah and therefore, question which passage the Rambam requires to be omitted when one prays alone. The Rambam's statements in Chapter 9, Halachah 5, appear to define Kedushah as only the first of these three verses.
Even if some of them have already prayed and fulfilled their obligation, they can complete the [quorum of] ten - Though they do not pray together with the others, their presence in the room where the others pray can complete a minyan.
provided the majority of the ten have not prayed. -Soferim 10:7 states:
Our Sages in the West say [that Kaddish and barchu may be recited] even with seven. They explain their position [based on Judges 5:2]: "In the time of tumult in Israel when the people volunteered themselves, blessed be God." [The number of people correspond] to the number of words [in the verse which describes the blessing of God].
There are those who say only six [are required], since ברכו is the sixth word [of the above verse].
The Rambam differentiates between the ruling regarding prayer and his statements in Hilchot Berachot 5:8 where he writes that it is necessary that seven people out of ten eat bread in order to constitute a minyan for zimmun, for "a noticeable majority" is required.
There are two views quoted in the name of Rabbenu Tam (Tosafot, Megillah 23b); one, requiring a minimum of seven people who have not prayed for a minyan just as seven who have eaten bread are required for a minyan in regard to grace after meals and, another, requiring, only five. However, the Rambam's opinion is universally accepted as halachah.
Similarly, we should not recite Kedushah, - See Chapter 7, Halachah 17.
In the chazan's repetition of the Shemoneh Esreh, it is customary to recite three verses in the Kedushah:
a) "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the entire earth is full of His glory" (Isaiah 6:3);
b) "Blessed be the glory of God from His place" (Ezekiel 3:12);
c) "The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations" (Psalms 146:10).
Only the first two of these verses are recited in the Kedushah of the blessings before the Shema. However, in theKedushah recited at the end of the service, a verse similar to Psalms 146:10 is also included.
The commentaries debate the definition of Kedushah and therefore, question which passage the Rambam requires to be omitted when one prays alone. The Rambam's statements in Chapter 9, Halachah 5, appear to define Kedushah as only the first of these three verses.
Commentary Halacha 6
Any holy matter - e.g., the prayers and rituals mentioned in Halachot 4 and 5.
may only [be performed] in a congregation - i.e., a quorum of ten (see the previous halachah).
of Jews, as [Leviticus 22:32] states: "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel" - Megillah 23b explains as follows: Leviticus 22:32 states, "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel." A גזרה שוה (an analogy based on the use of common words) is made between this verse and Numbers 16:21, "Separate yourselves from among this congregation" and a second גזרה שוה between the latter verse and the verse, Numbers 14:27, quoted in the previous halachah. Extending our use of the principle of גזרה שוה, we conclude that just as in regard to the spies, a congregation meant a minimum of ten people, the same applies in regards to all situations in which God is "sanctified."
to appoint as the leader of the congregation, someone who has a pleasant voice - so that listening to his prayers will be enjoyable.
Throughout the generations, in their responsa, our Rabbis have chided the people for putting a pleasant voice at the top of their priorities for a chazan. [Note the Ramah (Orach Chayim 53:5) who states that it is preferable to appoint a boy of thirteen who understands his prayers as chazan rather than an older man with a pleasant voice who does not know what he is saying. See also Shulchan Aruch (ibid., 53:11).]
In particular, this applies regarding the High Holiday services. These days of sincere prayer should not be turned into concerts of ritual music. Instead, attempts should be made to find a chazan who can truly serve as a spiritual leader. If he also has a pleasant voice, it is obviously more desirable.
A person who does not have a full beard - The Rabbis have explained that this simply refers to a person of intermediate age. Therefore, in one of his responsa, the Rambam states that a person who is physically incapable of growing a beard may serve as chazan and the requirement of a beard is only mentioned as a sign of "a full state of knowledge which one [usually] reaches at the age when one's beard begins to grow." See also Shulchan Aruch (ibid. 53:8).
However, a beard is also considered a sign of commitment to Jewish practice. The Rambam (Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 12:7) associates shaving with the practices of gentile priests. Many Rabbis have strongly encouraged growing a beard even when there is no question of violating the prohibition against shaving. (See Sefer Mitzvot Gadol 7, Shibolei Leket Vol. II, 41.)
However, in communities where removing one's facial hair in a permitted manner is an accepted practice, the lack of a beard is not considered as a deterrent against a person serving as a chazan.
should not be appointed as the leader of the congregation even if he be a wise man of great stature, as a gesture of respect to the congregation. - The Shulchan Aruch (ibid.:6) states that this only refers to the appointment of a permanent chazan. However, Rabbenu Nissim interprets the Rambam's words as meaning that even on occasion, a youth should not serve as a chazan. See also Chapter 15, Halachah 4.
A person whose shoulders are uncovered - though he may recite the Shema publicly - may not serve as the leader of the congregation until he is covered by a cloak. - Soferim 14:15 understands this as a gesture of respect for the congregation. See also Rosh HaShanah 17b which states that when God taught Moses the thirteen attributes of mercy, "He robed himself as a chazan."
This does not necessarily refer to wearing a tallit gadol, but rather to a cloak or jacket that covers his shoulders and arms (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 53:13). However, in many communities, it is customary for a chazan to wear a tallit as a token of respect for the community.
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/rambam.asp?tDate=3/26/2012&rambamChapters=3
A study hall is greater - i.e., it is a more auspicious place to pray.
than a synagogue - Other ramifications of this concept are mentioned in Chapter 11, Halachah 14, and in Hilchot Talmud Torah 4:9.
Even though [some of the] great Sages [lived in] cities where many synagogues were located, they would pray only in the place where they studied Torah. - Berachot 30b relates: "Even though there were thirteen synagogues in Tiberias, Rav Ami and Rav Assi would pray only between the pillars in the study hall."Berachot 8a interprets the phrase "the gates of Zion" in Psalms 87:2: "God loves the gates of Zion above all the dwellings of Jacob" as referring to "the gates of those who are בהלכה המצויינים (distinguished by the halachah studied there)" and states that they receive the highest degree of Divine attention.
The Talmud continues: Abbaye says: "Originally, I would study in my house and pray in the synagogue. After hearing this, I pray only where I study."
The above applies [however, only] when one can participate in communal prayer there. - The Kessef Mishneh mentions the view of certain rabbinic authorities who maintain that it is preferable for a scholar to pray in a study hall even without a minyan. However, he also mentions the opinion of Rabbenu Asher (See Responsum 4) who writes that if the scholars do not appear in the synagogue the common people will assume that their presence is also unnecessary. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 90:18) quotes the Rambam's position.
Commentary Halacha 4
What is implied by [the term,] communal prayer? One [person] prays aloud and all [the others] listen. - With this statement, the Rambam touches on a point debated both by the Sages of the Talmud and the later Rabbis. The mishnah, Rosh HaShanah 33b, states:
Just as the leader of the congregation is obligated [to pray], each individual is obligated. Rabban Gamliel states: "The leader of the congregation fulfills the obligation on behalf of the community."
The Talmud (34b) elaborates on the difference of opinion:
They asked Rabban Gamliel: "According to your opinion, why does the community pray?"
He replied: "In order to allow the leader of the community to prepare his prayers."
Rabban Gamliel asked them: "According to your opinion, why does the leader of the congregation pray aloud?"
They replied: "In order to allow those who are not knowledgeable to fulfill their obligation."
He told them: "Just as he fulfills the obligation on behalf of those who are not knowledgeable, he fulfills it on behalf of those who are knowledgeable."
The Sages of the Talmud continued to debate the issue. The ultimate decision accepted by Rav Yitzchok Alfasi, the Rambam (See Halachah 9), and Rabbenu Asher, is that during the entire year, the Sages' opinion is accepted. However, on Rosh HaShanah, because of the complexity of the blessings (See Halachah 10), Rabban Gamliel's opinion prevails.
Both Rabban Gamliel and the Sages agree that the practice of communal prayer involves two elements:
a) the silent prayers of many individuals; and
b) the chazan's repetition of the Shemoneh Esreh.
They differ, however, as to which of these elements is considered of primary importance. According to the Sages, the essential element of communal prayer is that ten or more people recite the Shemoneh Esreh at the same time. According to Rabban Gamliel, the essential element of communal prayer is, as the Rambam states in this halachah, the prayer of the leader of the congregation.
[Note Likkutei Sichot, Vol. 24, which explains that their difference of opinion revolves around a more general issue: Which is of higher priority, quantity (the prayers of the many) or quality (the prayers of the leader of the congregation)?]
The Rambam's statement here is difficult to place in perspective. Though in Halachah 9, he accepts the Sages' view (See also Chapter 9, Halachot 2-3) in this halachah, his opinion follows that of Rabban Gamliel. In one of his responsa, the Rambam explains that after the Sages instituted the silent Shemoneh Esreh to allow the leader of the congregation to prepare his prayers, even Rabban Gamliel would agree that all the individuals praying in a minyan also fulfill their obligation to pray by reciting their own prayers. Still it is difficult to understand why the Rambam would have the individuals forfeit the higher quality of communal prayer in order to pray individually.
In his notes to Rosh HaShanah, ibid., Rav Chayim Soloveichik writes that to take into consideration the Rambam's statements in this halachah, after concluding his individual prayers, each person should stand and listen to the prayer of the leader of the congregation and thus, fulfill the mitzvah of communal prayer. Note Likkutei Sichot, ibid., which compares answering to the chazan's prayer to reciting a voluntary prayer (See Chapter 1, Halachah 9). By doing so, one will have both the advantages of individual and communal prayer.
This should not be done with fewer than ten - See Halachot 4 and 5.
adult - Males who have reached the age of thirteen years and a day and manifested signs of physical maturity. (See Hilchot Kri'at Shema 3:19.)
The Kessef Mishneh explains that the Rambam derives this halachah from Berachot 47b-48a which allows for the inclusion of a child in the zimmun for the grace after meals. (See Hilchot Berachot 5:7.) We assume that this leniency was granted only in regard to grace, but not in regard to prayer. See also Bereishit Rabbah 91:3.
Many Halachic authorities do not accept this conclusion. In his siddur, Rav Sa'adia Gaon rules that a child may be counted as the tenth in a minyan. Similarly, the Ba'al HaMe'or holds that even up to four minors may be counted in a minyan for prayer
The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 55:4), rules that a minor may not be included in a minyan for prayer. The Ramah adds that under extraordinary circumstances, a minor may be counted. There are opinions that in such a case, the minor must be at least six years old, understand that prayer is service to God, and hold a chumash (Magen Avraham 55:5, Shulchan Aruch HaRav 55:5).
free males - i.e., excluding a Canaanite slave. However, a Jewish slave (עבד עברי) may be counted as part of a minyan. Berachot 47b relates that once, Rabbi Eliezer entered the synagogue and finding only nine people there, freed his slave to complete the quorum of ten.
The leader of the congregation is [counted as] one of them. - Though there is no explicit source to this effect, a number of midrashim (e.g., VaYikra Rabbah 23:4) lead to this conclusion.
One of the communal rites listed in Megillah 23b which requires a minyan is ברכת אבלים - the blessing one utters to those in mourning. For the recitation of that blessing, the presence of ten men other than the mourner himself is required. (See Hilchot Eivel 13:1.) Perhaps the Rambam feels that this statement is necessary to clearly distinguish between the different requirements of a minyan for prayer and ברכת אבלים.
Even if some of them have already prayed and fulfilled their obligation, they can complete the [quorum of] ten - Though they do not pray together with the others, their presence in the room where the others pray can complete a minyan.
provided the majority of the ten have not prayed. -Soferim 10:7 states:
Our Sages in the West say [that Kaddish and barchu may be recited] even with seven. They explain their position [based on Judges 5:2]: "In the time of tumult in Israel when the people volunteered themselves, blessed be God." [The number of people correspond] to the number of words [in the verse which describes the blessing of God].
There are those who say only six [are required], since ברכו is the sixth word [of the above verse].
The Rambam differentiates between the ruling regarding prayer and his statements in Hilchot Berachot 5:8 where he writes that it is necessary that seven people out of ten eat bread in order to constitute a minyan for zimmun, for "a noticeable majority" is required.
There are two views quoted in the name of Rabbenu Tam (Tosafot, Megillah 23b); one, requiring a minimum of seven people who have not prayed for a minyan just as seven who have eaten bread are required for a minyan in regard to grace after meals and, another, requiring, only five. However, the Rambam's opinion is universally accepted as halachah.
Similarly, we should not recite Kedushah, - See Chapter 7, Halachah 17.
In the chazan's repetition of the Shemoneh Esreh, it is customary to recite three verses in the Kedushah:
a) "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the entire earth is full of His glory" (Isaiah 6:3);
b) "Blessed be the glory of God from His place" (Ezekiel 3:12);
c) "The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations" (Psalms 146:10).
Only the first two of these verses are recited in the Kedushah of the blessings before the Shema. However, in theKedushah recited at the end of the service, a verse similar to Psalms 146:10 is also included.
The commentaries debate the definition of Kedushah and therefore, question which passage the Rambam requires to be omitted when one prays alone. The Rambam's statements in Chapter 9, Halachah 5, appear to define Kedushah as only the first of these three verses.
Even if some of them have already prayed and fulfilled their obligation, they can complete the [quorum of] ten - Though they do not pray together with the others, their presence in the room where the others pray can complete a minyan.
provided the majority of the ten have not prayed. -Soferim 10:7 states:
Our Sages in the West say [that Kaddish and barchu may be recited] even with seven. They explain their position [based on Judges 5:2]: "In the time of tumult in Israel when the people volunteered themselves, blessed be God." [The number of people correspond] to the number of words [in the verse which describes the blessing of God].
There are those who say only six [are required], since ברכו is the sixth word [of the above verse].
The Rambam differentiates between the ruling regarding prayer and his statements in Hilchot Berachot 5:8 where he writes that it is necessary that seven people out of ten eat bread in order to constitute a minyan for zimmun, for "a noticeable majority" is required.
There are two views quoted in the name of Rabbenu Tam (Tosafot, Megillah 23b); one, requiring a minimum of seven people who have not prayed for a minyan just as seven who have eaten bread are required for a minyan in regard to grace after meals and, another, requiring, only five. However, the Rambam's opinion is universally accepted as halachah.
Similarly, we should not recite Kedushah, - See Chapter 7, Halachah 17.
In the chazan's repetition of the Shemoneh Esreh, it is customary to recite three verses in the Kedushah:
a) "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the entire earth is full of His glory" (Isaiah 6:3);
b) "Blessed be the glory of God from His place" (Ezekiel 3:12);
c) "The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations" (Psalms 146:10).
Only the first two of these verses are recited in the Kedushah of the blessings before the Shema. However, in theKedushah recited at the end of the service, a verse similar to Psalms 146:10 is also included.
The commentaries debate the definition of Kedushah and therefore, question which passage the Rambam requires to be omitted when one prays alone. The Rambam's statements in Chapter 9, Halachah 5, appear to define Kedushah as only the first of these three verses.
Commentary Halacha 6
Any holy matter - e.g., the prayers and rituals mentioned in Halachot 4 and 5.
may only [be performed] in a congregation - i.e., a quorum of ten (see the previous halachah).
of Jews, as [Leviticus 22:32] states: "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel" - Megillah 23b explains as follows: Leviticus 22:32 states, "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel." A גזרה שוה (an analogy based on the use of common words) is made between this verse and Numbers 16:21, "Separate yourselves from among this congregation" and a second גזרה שוה between the latter verse and the verse, Numbers 14:27, quoted in the previous halachah. Extending our use of the principle of גזרה שוה, we conclude that just as in regard to the spies, a congregation meant a minimum of ten people, the same applies in regards to all situations in which God is "sanctified."
to appoint as the leader of the congregation, someone who has a pleasant voice - so that listening to his prayers will be enjoyable.
Throughout the generations, in their responsa, our Rabbis have chided the people for putting a pleasant voice at the top of their priorities for a chazan. [Note the Ramah (Orach Chayim 53:5) who states that it is preferable to appoint a boy of thirteen who understands his prayers as chazan rather than an older man with a pleasant voice who does not know what he is saying. See also Shulchan Aruch (ibid., 53:11).]
In particular, this applies regarding the High Holiday services. These days of sincere prayer should not be turned into concerts of ritual music. Instead, attempts should be made to find a chazan who can truly serve as a spiritual leader. If he also has a pleasant voice, it is obviously more desirable.
A person who does not have a full beard - The Rabbis have explained that this simply refers to a person of intermediate age. Therefore, in one of his responsa, the Rambam states that a person who is physically incapable of growing a beard may serve as chazan and the requirement of a beard is only mentioned as a sign of "a full state of knowledge which one [usually] reaches at the age when one's beard begins to grow." See also Shulchan Aruch (ibid. 53:8).
However, a beard is also considered a sign of commitment to Jewish practice. The Rambam (Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 12:7) associates shaving with the practices of gentile priests. Many Rabbis have strongly encouraged growing a beard even when there is no question of violating the prohibition against shaving. (See Sefer Mitzvot Gadol 7, Shibolei Leket Vol. II, 41.)
However, in communities where removing one's facial hair in a permitted manner is an accepted practice, the lack of a beard is not considered as a deterrent against a person serving as a chazan.
should not be appointed as the leader of the congregation even if he be a wise man of great stature, as a gesture of respect to the congregation. - The Shulchan Aruch (ibid.:6) states that this only refers to the appointment of a permanent chazan. However, Rabbenu Nissim interprets the Rambam's words as meaning that even on occasion, a youth should not serve as a chazan. See also Chapter 15, Halachah 4.
A person whose shoulders are uncovered - though he may recite the Shema publicly - may not serve as the leader of the congregation until he is covered by a cloak. - Soferim 14:15 understands this as a gesture of respect for the congregation. See also Rosh HaShanah 17b which states that when God taught Moses the thirteen attributes of mercy, "He robed himself as a chazan."
This does not necessarily refer to wearing a tallit gadol, but rather to a cloak or jacket that covers his shoulders and arms (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 53:13). However, in many communities, it is customary for a chazan to wear a tallit as a token of respect for the community.
Where to pray its appropriateness
THE QUORUM OF 10
PROOFTEXTS THE NECESSITY OF PUBLIC PRAYER FROM RAMBAM
Commentary Halacha 1
Communal prayer is always heard - Berachot 7b-8a relates: the importance of an auspicious time
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/rambam.asp?tDate=3/26/2012&rambamChapters=3
Rav Yitzchok asked Rav Nachman: "Why did you not come pray in the synagogue?"
[Rav Nachman] answered him: "I was unable to."
He said: "Gather ten men together and pray."
He responded: "The matter is a bother to me."
[Rav Yitzchok] suggested: "Tell the leader of the congregation to let you know when it is the time for prayer."
He said: Why is all this trouble necessary?"
He replied: "Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: What is [the meaning of Psalms 69:14] 'As for me, let my prayer be to You, God, at an auspicious time'? When is an auspicious time? The time when the congregation is praying."
The Talmud continues, mentioning other prooftexts which emphasize the importance of praying together with a minyan.
Even when there are transgressors among [the congregation], - Eichah Rabbah explains this concept with the following parable. A group of people fashioned a crown for a king. Among them was a poor person who also put something of his own into the crown. Though the king noticed the poor man's contribution, since the crown as a whole found favor in his eyes, he accepted it and put it on his head. The Midrash continues: By the same token, if there are ten righteous people praying and one evildoer stands among them, will God say: Because of the evildoer, I will not accept their prayers?
Menachot 27a even attributes a positive dimension to the presence of the wicked in communal prayer:
[There are] four species in the [mitzvah of] lulav; two of which (the lulav and the etrog) bear fruit (refer to the righteous, Rashi) and two of which (the myrtle and the willow) do not bear fruit (refer to the wicked, ibid.).
The species which bear fruit require the presence of those which don't and the species which don't bear fruit require the presence of those that do. A person does not fulfill his obligation until he has all of them in one bound unit.
So, too, the Jewish people, when they seek acceptance [from God], must be one bound unit.
Accordingly, on Yom Kippur, it is customary to invite sinners to join in the prayer service. Note also the conclusion of Iggeret HaShmad where the Rambam encourages tolerance and acceptance toward sinners who come to the synagogue to pray.
[Note also the Sh'loh who writes that the word, צבור - "community" - is an acronym for the words, צדיקים - "the righteous," בינונים - "the intermediates," and רשעים, "the wicked."]
the Holy One, blessed be He, does not reject the prayers of the many. - Berachot 8a cites Psalms 55:19: "He delivered my soul in peace from the battle against me, for there were many who strove with me," as the prooftext for this concept.
Therefore, a person should include himself in the community - This phrase is quoted - somewhat out of context - from Berachot 29b-30a which explains why we recite our prayers in the plural. The Rambam borrows the concept and uses it to summarize the above teachings and derive the following directive.
and should not pray alone whenever he is able to pray with the community. - i.e., though praying without a minyan is permissible, one should do so only when he has no other alternative.
One should always spend the early morning and evening [hours] in the synagogue - i.e., one should be found in the synagogue at the times of the three Daily Prayers; Shacharit in the morning, Minchah in the late afternoon and Maariv at night.
The Rambam uses the word ישכים - to rise early. Perhaps he is alluding to Berachot 47b which states:
One should always rise early and go to the synagogue in order to merit being counted among the first ten present. Even if 100 people come after him, he receives the reward of all of them.
Alternatively, perhaps he is referring to his statement, Hilchot Kri'at Shema 1:11, that one should recite the Shema before sunrise.
for prayer will not be heard - i.e., accepted by God
at all times - The Lechem Mishneh explains: Prayer which is recited with the proper intentions outside the synagogue may be accepted, but there is no guarantee that prayer will be accepted at all times...
except [when recited] in the synagogue. - Berachot 6a derives this concept from I Kings 8:28: "...to listen to the song and the prayer." "In the place of song (i.e., the synagogue where the people sing God's praises - Rashi), prayer should be [recited]."
The Kessef Mishneh adds that based on this concept, one should pray in the synagogue even when he is praying alone. The Kessef Mishneh also rules that if one is unable to go to the synagogue he should, at least, attempt to pray at the same time as the community. He quotes both these concepts in his Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 90:9.
Though this and the following two halachot mention the importance of a synagogue, the synagogue is discussed here only within the context of the importance of communal prayer. In Chapter 11, the Rambam focuses on the sanctity of the synagogue as a subject in its own right.
Anyone who has a synagogue in his city and does not pray [together] with the congregation in it is called a bad neighbor. - Berachot 8a derives this concept based on Jeremiah 12:14: "So says God regarding all my evil neighbors that touch the inheritance (i.e., the synagogues and houses of study) that I have bequeathed to My people Israel."
When quoting this law, the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 90:11) also quotes the continuation of the above Talmudic passage:
Furthermore, they cause dispersion to themselves and their children as [the verse in Jeremiah continues]: "Behold, I will uproot them from their land."
HALACAH 2 COMMENTARY
Commentary Halacha 2
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/rambam.asp?tDate=3/26/2012&rambamChapters=3
It is a mitzvah to run to the synagogue as [Hoshea 6:3] states: "Let us know. Let us run to know God." - The Tur (Orach Chayim 90) adds that it is also a mitzvah to run to perform other commandments.
A person should not take long steps when he leaves the synagogue. Instead, he should proceed [slowly,] step by step. - Rashi (Berachot 6b) explains that hurrying away from the synagogue, suggests that one views the synagogue and the obligations contained therein to be a burden.
When one enters a synagogue he should go in the distance of two doorways and then pray, - Rashi (Berachot 8a) explains that we are obligated to enter the distance of two doorways widthwise in order not to appear anxious to leave. The Beit Yosef (Orach Chayim 90) explains that this refers to a distance of eight handbreadths.
The Hagahot Maimoniot interprets the Talmud's statement, "the measure of two doorways" as a matter of time, not distance. One should wait a few moments after entering the synagogue before he starts to pray.
The Hagahot Maimoniot also states that according to the interpretation that the "measure of two doorways" refers to actual distance, this requirement only applies when the synagogue is located near the public thoroughfare. If it is not, one may pray near the door. Rabbenu Yonah also mentions that a person whose fixed place for prayer in the synagogue is beside the door does not violate this requirement. It is obvious that he is sitting there not because of his desire to leave quickly, but because it is his seat in the synagogue.
[in order] to fulfill [the instructions of Proverbs 8:34] which states: "to guard the posts of My doors." - The Jerusalem Talmud (Berachot 5:1) points to the plural forms of "posts" and "doors" as indicating the need to enter the distance of two doorways.
Halacha 3
A study hall is greater than a synagogue. Even though [some of the] great Sages [lived in] cities where many synagogues were located, they would pray only in the place where they studied Torah.
The above applies, [however, only] when one can participate in communal prayer there.
Halacha 4
What is implied by [the term,] communal prayer? One [person] prays aloud and all [the others] listen. This should not be done with fewer than ten adult free males. The leader of the congregation is [counted as] one of them.
Even if some of them have already prayed and fulfilled their obligation, they can complete the [quorum of] ten provided the majority of the ten have not prayed.
Similarly, we should not recite Kedushah, read the Torah with its blessings before and after it, or read the haftorah from the Prophets except in [a quorum of] ten.
Halacha 5
Similarly, one [person] should not recite the blessings associated with the Shema while the others listen and answer "Amen" except [in the presence of a quorum of] ten. This is called poreis al Shema.
One only recites Kaddish with ten. The priests do not bless the people except [in the presence of a quorum of] ten. The priests [themselves] may be considered part of the quorum.
[Ten are required] because every [group of] ten Jews is called a congregation as [implied by Numbers 14:27]: "How long [must I suffer] this evil congregation." They were ten, for Joshua and Calev were not included [among them].
Halacha 6
Any holy matter may only [be performed] in a congregation of Jews, as [Leviticus 22:32] states: "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel".
Regarding all these matters, if they were begun with ten [people] and some leave - even though they are not permitted to - the remainder should conclude [the holy matter].
Halacha 7
All [ten members of a congregation] and the leader of the congregation must be in one place.
[The following rules apply when] a small courtyard opens up in its entirety into a large courtyard: If there are nine [people] in the large one and one in the small one, they may be considered as a group [to form a quorum of ten]. If there are nine [people] in the small one and one in the large one, they are not considered as a group.
If a congregation is in the large one, but the leader of the congregation is in the small one, they fulfill their obligation. If the congregation is in the small one, but the leader of the congregation is in the large one, they do not fulfill their obligation since he is separate from them and not with them in one place.
[The motivating principle is] that the walls on each side of the large courtyard separate it from the small one. [However], the smaller one is not separated from the large one, but rather, is considered as its corner.
Halacha 9
The leader of the congregation can fulfill the obligation [of prayer] on behalf of the congregation.
What is implied? When he prays and they listen and respond "Amen" after each and every blessing, it is considered as if they prayed [themselves].
To whom does this apply? To one who does not know how to pray. However, one who does know how to pray, only fulfills his obligation by praying himself.
Halacha 10
When does the above apply? Throughout the entire year with the exception of Rosh HaShanah, and Yom Kippur of the Jubilee year.
On these two days, the leader of the congregation can fulfill the obligation [of prayer] on behalf of those who know [how to pray] just as he can fulfill the obligation [of prayer] on behalf of those who do not know [how to pray] because [the Shemoneh Esreh recited on these days contains] long blessings and most people do not know them [to the extent] that they can have the same intention as the leader of the congregation.
Therefore, on these two days, even a person who knows [how to pray] is granted permission to rely on the prayers of the leader of the congregation to fulfill his obligation [of prayer] if he so desires.
Halacha 11
Only a person of great stature within the community in both wisdom and deed should be appointed as the leader of the congregation. If he is an older man, it is very praiseworthy. An effort should be made to appoint as the leader of the congregation, someone who has a pleasant voice and is familiar with reading [Biblical verses].
A person who does not have a full beard should not be appointed as the leader of the congregation even if he be a wise man of great stature, as a gesture of respect to the congregation. However, he may recite the Shema publicly after he has reached the age of thirteen and manifested signs of physical maturity
Halacha 12
Similarly, the inarticulate who pronounce an alef as an ayin or an ayin as an alef or one who cannot articulate the letters in the proper manner should not be appointed as the leader of a congregation.
A teacher may appoint one of his students to lead the prayers in his presence. A blind person may recite the Shema publicly and serve as the leader of a congregation. A person whose shoulders are uncovered - though he may recite the Shema publicly - may not serve as the leader of the congregation until he is covered by a cloak.
PROOFTEXTS THE NECESSITY OF PUBLIC PRAYER FROM RAMBAM
Commentary Halacha 1
Communal prayer is always heard - Berachot 7b-8a relates: the importance of an auspicious time
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/rambam.asp?tDate=3/26/2012&rambamChapters=3
Rav Yitzchok asked Rav Nachman: "Why did you not come pray in the synagogue?"
[Rav Nachman] answered him: "I was unable to."
He said: "Gather ten men together and pray."
He responded: "The matter is a bother to me."
[Rav Yitzchok] suggested: "Tell the leader of the congregation to let you know when it is the time for prayer."
He said: Why is all this trouble necessary?"
He replied: "Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: What is [the meaning of Psalms 69:14] 'As for me, let my prayer be to You, God, at an auspicious time'? When is an auspicious time? The time when the congregation is praying."
The Talmud continues, mentioning other prooftexts which emphasize the importance of praying together with a minyan.
Even when there are transgressors among [the congregation], - Eichah Rabbah explains this concept with the following parable. A group of people fashioned a crown for a king. Among them was a poor person who also put something of his own into the crown. Though the king noticed the poor man's contribution, since the crown as a whole found favor in his eyes, he accepted it and put it on his head. The Midrash continues: By the same token, if there are ten righteous people praying and one evildoer stands among them, will God say: Because of the evildoer, I will not accept their prayers?
Menachot 27a even attributes a positive dimension to the presence of the wicked in communal prayer:
[There are] four species in the [mitzvah of] lulav; two of which (the lulav and the etrog) bear fruit (refer to the righteous, Rashi) and two of which (the myrtle and the willow) do not bear fruit (refer to the wicked, ibid.).
The species which bear fruit require the presence of those which don't and the species which don't bear fruit require the presence of those that do. A person does not fulfill his obligation until he has all of them in one bound unit.
So, too, the Jewish people, when they seek acceptance [from God], must be one bound unit.
Accordingly, on Yom Kippur, it is customary to invite sinners to join in the prayer service. Note also the conclusion of Iggeret HaShmad where the Rambam encourages tolerance and acceptance toward sinners who come to the synagogue to pray.
[Note also the Sh'loh who writes that the word, צבור - "community" - is an acronym for the words, צדיקים - "the righteous," בינונים - "the intermediates," and רשעים, "the wicked."]
the Holy One, blessed be He, does not reject the prayers of the many. - Berachot 8a cites Psalms 55:19: "He delivered my soul in peace from the battle against me, for there were many who strove with me," as the prooftext for this concept.
Therefore, a person should include himself in the community - This phrase is quoted - somewhat out of context - from Berachot 29b-30a which explains why we recite our prayers in the plural. The Rambam borrows the concept and uses it to summarize the above teachings and derive the following directive.
and should not pray alone whenever he is able to pray with the community. - i.e., though praying without a minyan is permissible, one should do so only when he has no other alternative.
One should always spend the early morning and evening [hours] in the synagogue - i.e., one should be found in the synagogue at the times of the three Daily Prayers; Shacharit in the morning, Minchah in the late afternoon and Maariv at night.
The Rambam uses the word ישכים - to rise early. Perhaps he is alluding to Berachot 47b which states:
One should always rise early and go to the synagogue in order to merit being counted among the first ten present. Even if 100 people come after him, he receives the reward of all of them.
Alternatively, perhaps he is referring to his statement, Hilchot Kri'at Shema 1:11, that one should recite the Shema before sunrise.
for prayer will not be heard - i.e., accepted by God
at all times - The Lechem Mishneh explains: Prayer which is recited with the proper intentions outside the synagogue may be accepted, but there is no guarantee that prayer will be accepted at all times...
except [when recited] in the synagogue. - Berachot 6a derives this concept from I Kings 8:28: "...to listen to the song and the prayer." "In the place of song (i.e., the synagogue where the people sing God's praises - Rashi), prayer should be [recited]."
The Kessef Mishneh adds that based on this concept, one should pray in the synagogue even when he is praying alone. The Kessef Mishneh also rules that if one is unable to go to the synagogue he should, at least, attempt to pray at the same time as the community. He quotes both these concepts in his Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 90:9.
Though this and the following two halachot mention the importance of a synagogue, the synagogue is discussed here only within the context of the importance of communal prayer. In Chapter 11, the Rambam focuses on the sanctity of the synagogue as a subject in its own right.
Anyone who has a synagogue in his city and does not pray [together] with the congregation in it is called a bad neighbor. - Berachot 8a derives this concept based on Jeremiah 12:14: "So says God regarding all my evil neighbors that touch the inheritance (i.e., the synagogues and houses of study) that I have bequeathed to My people Israel."
When quoting this law, the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 90:11) also quotes the continuation of the above Talmudic passage:
Furthermore, they cause dispersion to themselves and their children as [the verse in Jeremiah continues]: "Behold, I will uproot them from their land."
HALACAH 2 COMMENTARY
Commentary Halacha 2
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/rambam.asp?tDate=3/26/2012&rambamChapters=3
It is a mitzvah to run to the synagogue as [Hoshea 6:3] states: "Let us know. Let us run to know God." - The Tur (Orach Chayim 90) adds that it is also a mitzvah to run to perform other commandments.
A person should not take long steps when he leaves the synagogue. Instead, he should proceed [slowly,] step by step. - Rashi (Berachot 6b) explains that hurrying away from the synagogue, suggests that one views the synagogue and the obligations contained therein to be a burden.
When one enters a synagogue he should go in the distance of two doorways and then pray, - Rashi (Berachot 8a) explains that we are obligated to enter the distance of two doorways widthwise in order not to appear anxious to leave. The Beit Yosef (Orach Chayim 90) explains that this refers to a distance of eight handbreadths.
The Hagahot Maimoniot interprets the Talmud's statement, "the measure of two doorways" as a matter of time, not distance. One should wait a few moments after entering the synagogue before he starts to pray.
The Hagahot Maimoniot also states that according to the interpretation that the "measure of two doorways" refers to actual distance, this requirement only applies when the synagogue is located near the public thoroughfare. If it is not, one may pray near the door. Rabbenu Yonah also mentions that a person whose fixed place for prayer in the synagogue is beside the door does not violate this requirement. It is obvious that he is sitting there not because of his desire to leave quickly, but because it is his seat in the synagogue.
[in order] to fulfill [the instructions of Proverbs 8:34] which states: "to guard the posts of My doors." - The Jerusalem Talmud (Berachot 5:1) points to the plural forms of "posts" and "doors" as indicating the need to enter the distance of two doorways.
Halacha 3
A study hall is greater than a synagogue. Even though [some of the] great Sages [lived in] cities where many synagogues were located, they would pray only in the place where they studied Torah.
The above applies, [however, only] when one can participate in communal prayer there.
Halacha 4
What is implied by [the term,] communal prayer? One [person] prays aloud and all [the others] listen. This should not be done with fewer than ten adult free males. The leader of the congregation is [counted as] one of them.
Even if some of them have already prayed and fulfilled their obligation, they can complete the [quorum of] ten provided the majority of the ten have not prayed.
Similarly, we should not recite Kedushah, read the Torah with its blessings before and after it, or read the haftorah from the Prophets except in [a quorum of] ten.
Halacha 5
Similarly, one [person] should not recite the blessings associated with the Shema while the others listen and answer "Amen" except [in the presence of a quorum of] ten. This is called poreis al Shema.
One only recites Kaddish with ten. The priests do not bless the people except [in the presence of a quorum of] ten. The priests [themselves] may be considered part of the quorum.
[Ten are required] because every [group of] ten Jews is called a congregation as [implied by Numbers 14:27]: "How long [must I suffer] this evil congregation." They were ten, for Joshua and Calev were not included [among them].
Halacha 6
Any holy matter may only [be performed] in a congregation of Jews, as [Leviticus 22:32] states: "And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel".
Regarding all these matters, if they were begun with ten [people] and some leave - even though they are not permitted to - the remainder should conclude [the holy matter].
Halacha 7
All [ten members of a congregation] and the leader of the congregation must be in one place.
[The following rules apply when] a small courtyard opens up in its entirety into a large courtyard: If there are nine [people] in the large one and one in the small one, they may be considered as a group [to form a quorum of ten]. If there are nine [people] in the small one and one in the large one, they are not considered as a group.
If a congregation is in the large one, but the leader of the congregation is in the small one, they fulfill their obligation. If the congregation is in the small one, but the leader of the congregation is in the large one, they do not fulfill their obligation since he is separate from them and not with them in one place.
[The motivating principle is] that the walls on each side of the large courtyard separate it from the small one. [However], the smaller one is not separated from the large one, but rather, is considered as its corner.
Halacha 9
The leader of the congregation can fulfill the obligation [of prayer] on behalf of the congregation.
What is implied? When he prays and they listen and respond "Amen" after each and every blessing, it is considered as if they prayed [themselves].
To whom does this apply? To one who does not know how to pray. However, one who does know how to pray, only fulfills his obligation by praying himself.
Halacha 10
When does the above apply? Throughout the entire year with the exception of Rosh HaShanah, and Yom Kippur of the Jubilee year.
On these two days, the leader of the congregation can fulfill the obligation [of prayer] on behalf of those who know [how to pray] just as he can fulfill the obligation [of prayer] on behalf of those who do not know [how to pray] because [the Shemoneh Esreh recited on these days contains] long blessings and most people do not know them [to the extent] that they can have the same intention as the leader of the congregation.
Therefore, on these two days, even a person who knows [how to pray] is granted permission to rely on the prayers of the leader of the congregation to fulfill his obligation [of prayer] if he so desires.
Halacha 11
Only a person of great stature within the community in both wisdom and deed should be appointed as the leader of the congregation. If he is an older man, it is very praiseworthy. An effort should be made to appoint as the leader of the congregation, someone who has a pleasant voice and is familiar with reading [Biblical verses].
A person who does not have a full beard should not be appointed as the leader of the congregation even if he be a wise man of great stature, as a gesture of respect to the congregation. However, he may recite the Shema publicly after he has reached the age of thirteen and manifested signs of physical maturity
Halacha 12
Similarly, the inarticulate who pronounce an alef as an ayin or an ayin as an alef or one who cannot articulate the letters in the proper manner should not be appointed as the leader of a congregation.
A teacher may appoint one of his students to lead the prayers in his presence. A blind person may recite the Shema publicly and serve as the leader of a congregation. A person whose shoulders are uncovered - though he may recite the Shema publicly - may not serve as the leader of the congregation until he is covered by a cloak.
Third day of Nissan The tribe of Zevulun
Eliav of Chelon,the prince of Zebulun offers his tribal gift offering in the construction of the Mishkan.
Third of Nissan
On the third day, the prince of the children of Zevulun, Eliav the son of Chelon [offered]. His offering was: one silver dish whose weight was a hundred and thirty Shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels by Sanctuary weight—both filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a meal-offering; one golden cup of ten [shekels], filled with incense. One young bullock, one ram, one lamb in its first year, for a burnt-offering; one goat for a sin-offering; and for a sacrifice of peace-offering: two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This was the offering of Eliav the son of Chelon.
Chapter 18
If one merits a public miracle, he should offer a song to God, including in his song all the miracles that have occurred since the day the world was created, as well as the good that God wrought for Israel at the giving of the Torah. And he should say: "He Who has performed these miracles, may He do with me likewise."
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/tehillim.asp?tDate=3/26/2012
1. For the Conductor. By the servant of the Lord, by David, who chanted the words of this song to the Lord on the day the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. 2. He said, "I love You, Lord, my strength. 3. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my rescuer. My God is my strength in Whom I take shelter, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 4. With praises I call upon the Lord, and I am saved from my enemies. 5. For the pangs of death surrounded me, and torrents of evil people terrified me. 6. Pangs of the grave encompassed me; snares of death confronted me. 7. In my distress I called upon the Lord, I cried out to my God; and from His Sanctuary He heard my voice, and my supplication before Him reached His ears. 8. The earth trembled and quaked; the foundations of the mountains shook-they trembled when His wrath flared. 9. Smoke rose in His nostrils, devouring fire blazed from His mouth, and burning coals flamed forth from Him. 10. He inclined the heavens and descended, a thick cloud was beneath His feet. 11. He rode on a cherub and flew; He soared on the wings of the wind. 12. He made darkness His concealment, His surroundings His shelter-of the dense clouds with their dark waters. 13. Out of the brightness before Him, His clouds passed over, with hailstones and fiery coals. 14. The Lord thundered in heaven, the Most High gave forth His voice-hailstones and fiery coals. 15. He sent forth His arrows and scattered them; many lightnings, and confounded them. 16. The channels of water became visible, the foundations of the world were exposed-at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils. 17. He sent from heaven and took me; He brought me out of surging waters. 18. He rescued me from my fierce enemy, and from my foes when they had become too strong for me. 19. They confronted me on the day of my misfortune, but the Lord was my support. 20. He brought me into spaciousness; He delivered me because He desires me. 21. The Lord rewar-ded me in accordance with my righteousness; He repaid me according to the cleanliness of my hands. 22. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not transgressed against my God; 23. for all His laws are before me, I have not removed His statutes from me. 24. I was perfect with Him, and have guarded myself from sin. 25. The Lord repaid me in accordance with my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands before His eyes. 26. With the kindhearted You act kindly, with the upright man You act uprightly. 27. With the pure You act purely, but with the crooked You act cun- ningly. 28. For the destitute nation You save, but haughty eyes You humble. 29. Indeed, You light my lamp; the Lord, my God, illuminates my darkness. 30. For with You I run against a troop; with my God I scale a wall. 31. The way of God is perfect; the word of the Lord is pure; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. 32. For who is God except the Lord, and who is a rock except our God! 33. The God Who girds me with strength, and makes my path perfect. 34. He makes my feet like deers', and stands me firmly on my high places. 35. He trains my hands for battle, my arms to bend a bow of bronze. 36. You have given me the shield of Your deliverance, Your right hand upheld me; Your humility made me great. 37. You have widened my steps beneath me, and my knees have not faltered. 38. I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back until I destroyed them. 39. I crushed them so that they were unable to rise; they are fallen beneath my feet. 40. You have girded me with strength for battle; You have subdued my adversaries beneath me. 41. You have made my enemies turn their backs to me, and my foes I cut down. 42. They cried out, but there was none to deliver them; to the Lord, but He did not answer them. 43. I ground them as the dust before the wind, I poured them out like the mud in the streets. 44. You have rescued me from the quarrelsome ones of the people, You have made me the head of nations; a nation I did not know became subservient to me. 45. As soon as they hear of me they obey me; strangers deny to me [their disloyalty]. 46. Strangers wither away, they are terrified in their strongholds. 47. The Lord lives; blessed is my Rock; exalted is the God of my deliverance. 48. You are the God Who executes retribution for me, and subjugates nations under me. 49. Who rescues me from my enemies, Who exalts me above my adversaries, Who delivers me from the man of violence. 50. Therefore I will laud You, Lord, among the nations, and sing to Your Name. 51. He grants His king great salvations, and bestows kindness upon His anointed, to David and his descendants forever."
Third of Nissan
On the third day, the prince of the children of Zevulun, Eliav the son of Chelon [offered]. His offering was: one silver dish whose weight was a hundred and thirty Shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels by Sanctuary weight—both filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a meal-offering; one golden cup of ten [shekels], filled with incense. One young bullock, one ram, one lamb in its first year, for a burnt-offering; one goat for a sin-offering; and for a sacrifice of peace-offering: two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This was the offering of Eliav the son of Chelon.
May it be Your will, Lord my God and God of my fathers, that in Your great kindness You will shine upon the holy souls that renew themselves as “birds” and sing and praise and pray on behalf of the holy people Israel. Master of the world, gather and take in those sacred “birds” to the holy place of which it is said: No eye has seen it, except You, O God. May it be Your will, Lord my God and God of my fathers, that if I, Your servant, am of the tribe of Zevulun, the Torah section of whose prince I have recited today, then may there shine upon me all the holy “sparks” and all the holy lights which are contained in the holiness of this tribe, to understand and comprehend in Your Torah and in the fear of You, to do Your will all the days of my life—I and my children and my children’s children, from now and forever. Amen.The Mishkan was the desire for abode of the Holy Blessed One in this lowest of worlds to prefigure during the redemption of its being raised to the purest of light even above the upper worlds. The torah and to comprehend it is the content of thi prayer and to be "in the fear of you"
Chapter 18
If one merits a public miracle, he should offer a song to God, including in his song all the miracles that have occurred since the day the world was created, as well as the good that God wrought for Israel at the giving of the Torah. And he should say: "He Who has performed these miracles, may He do with me likewise."
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/tehillim.asp?tDate=3/26/2012
1. For the Conductor. By the servant of the Lord, by David, who chanted the words of this song to the Lord on the day the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. 2. He said, "I love You, Lord, my strength. 3. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my rescuer. My God is my strength in Whom I take shelter, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 4. With praises I call upon the Lord, and I am saved from my enemies. 5. For the pangs of death surrounded me, and torrents of evil people terrified me. 6. Pangs of the grave encompassed me; snares of death confronted me. 7. In my distress I called upon the Lord, I cried out to my God; and from His Sanctuary He heard my voice, and my supplication before Him reached His ears. 8. The earth trembled and quaked; the foundations of the mountains shook-they trembled when His wrath flared. 9. Smoke rose in His nostrils, devouring fire blazed from His mouth, and burning coals flamed forth from Him. 10. He inclined the heavens and descended, a thick cloud was beneath His feet. 11. He rode on a cherub and flew; He soared on the wings of the wind. 12. He made darkness His concealment, His surroundings His shelter-of the dense clouds with their dark waters. 13. Out of the brightness before Him, His clouds passed over, with hailstones and fiery coals. 14. The Lord thundered in heaven, the Most High gave forth His voice-hailstones and fiery coals. 15. He sent forth His arrows and scattered them; many lightnings, and confounded them. 16. The channels of water became visible, the foundations of the world were exposed-at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils. 17. He sent from heaven and took me; He brought me out of surging waters. 18. He rescued me from my fierce enemy, and from my foes when they had become too strong for me. 19. They confronted me on the day of my misfortune, but the Lord was my support. 20. He brought me into spaciousness; He delivered me because He desires me. 21. The Lord rewar-ded me in accordance with my righteousness; He repaid me according to the cleanliness of my hands. 22. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not transgressed against my God; 23. for all His laws are before me, I have not removed His statutes from me. 24. I was perfect with Him, and have guarded myself from sin. 25. The Lord repaid me in accordance with my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands before His eyes. 26. With the kindhearted You act kindly, with the upright man You act uprightly. 27. With the pure You act purely, but with the crooked You act cun- ningly. 28. For the destitute nation You save, but haughty eyes You humble. 29. Indeed, You light my lamp; the Lord, my God, illuminates my darkness. 30. For with You I run against a troop; with my God I scale a wall. 31. The way of God is perfect; the word of the Lord is pure; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. 32. For who is God except the Lord, and who is a rock except our God! 33. The God Who girds me with strength, and makes my path perfect. 34. He makes my feet like deers', and stands me firmly on my high places. 35. He trains my hands for battle, my arms to bend a bow of bronze. 36. You have given me the shield of Your deliverance, Your right hand upheld me; Your humility made me great. 37. You have widened my steps beneath me, and my knees have not faltered. 38. I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back until I destroyed them. 39. I crushed them so that they were unable to rise; they are fallen beneath my feet. 40. You have girded me with strength for battle; You have subdued my adversaries beneath me. 41. You have made my enemies turn their backs to me, and my foes I cut down. 42. They cried out, but there was none to deliver them; to the Lord, but He did not answer them. 43. I ground them as the dust before the wind, I poured them out like the mud in the streets. 44. You have rescued me from the quarrelsome ones of the people, You have made me the head of nations; a nation I did not know became subservient to me. 45. As soon as they hear of me they obey me; strangers deny to me [their disloyalty]. 46. Strangers wither away, they are terrified in their strongholds. 47. The Lord lives; blessed is my Rock; exalted is the God of my deliverance. 48. You are the God Who executes retribution for me, and subjugates nations under me. 49. Who rescues me from my enemies, Who exalts me above my adversaries, Who delivers me from the man of violence. 50. Therefore I will laud You, Lord, among the nations, and sing to Your Name. 51. He grants His king great salvations, and bestows kindness upon His anointed, to David and his descendants forever."
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