ובכן תן פחדך: Universalism Vs. Particularism in Contemporary Machzorim

During the ten days of awe, from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, the third blessing of the amidah,^[1] which deals with God’s holiness, concludes by praising God not with the usual הָאֵל הַקָּדוֹשׁ “the holy God” but with הַמֶּֽלֶךְ הַקָּדוֹשׁ “the holy Sovereign,” introducing the themes of divine majesty and power.^[2] On the holidays themselves, we also add a series of three paragraphs beginning וּבְכֵן (uvechen) “and so”^[3] to this blessing.

1. Universalist

The first paragraph is unabashedly universalist, asking that God create the conditions that will encourage all creation to come into relationship with the Divine. The the word כָּל “all” echoes here six times:

וּבְכֵן

And So

תֵּן פַּחְדְּךָ יְ־הֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ עַל כָּל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ,וְאֵימָתְךָ עַל כָּל מַה שֶּׁבָּרָאתָ.

1.1 Place fear of You, Eternal our God, on all Your doings, And terror of You on all that You have created,

וְיִירָאוּךָ כָּל הַמַּעֲשִׂים, וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְפָנֶיךָ כָּל הַבְּרוּאִים.

1.2 And all the things You have done shall be in awe of You And all that You have created shall prostrate before You;

וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם.

1.3 And all of them shall be bound together to perform Your will wholeheartedly.

כְּמוֹ שֶׁיָּדַעְנוּ יְ־הֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ שֶׁהַשִּׁלְטוֹן לְפָנֶיךָ

1.4 As we have known, Eternal our God, that dominion lies before You,

עֹז בְּיָדְךָ וּגְבוּרָה בִּימִינֶךָ

1.5 Strength in Your hand, power in Your right arm,

וְשִׁמְךָ נוֹרָא עַל כָּל מַה שֶּׁבָּרָאתָ:

1.6 And Your name is revered by all that You created.^[4]

Whether this is a pluralist vision that accepts that other peoples will worship God in their own ways or an inclusivist vision that expects all to become Jews is not explicit. Either way, non-Jews, as part of all creation, will participate in this eschatological scenario.

2. Particularist

The second paragraph’s focus is particularist, asking that God restore the people Israel:

וּבְכֵן

And So

תֵּן כָּבוֹד יְ־הֹוָה לְעַמֶּךָ, תְּהִלָּה לִירֵאֶיךָ

2.1 Place glory, Eternal One, on Your people; praise on those who revere You,

וְתִקְוָה טוֹבָה לְדוֹרְשֶׁיךָ, וּפִתְחוֹן פֶּה לַמְיַחֲלִים לָךְ.

2.2 and good hope to those who seek You; and the ability to speak out to those who hope for You;

It then turns to the land of Israel, asking God to gladden the land by bringing its people back and inaugurating the messianic age:

שִׂמְחָה לְאַרְצֶךָ, וְשָׂשׂוֹן לְעִירֶךָ

2.3 [give] rejoicing to Your land and gladness to Your city;

וּצְמִיחַת קֶרֶן לְדָוִד עַבְדֶּךָ, וַעֲרִיכַת נֵר לְבֶן־יִשַׁי מְשִׁיחֶךָ בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵינוּ:

2.4 and the sprouting of the ray^[5] of David Your servant and the arrangement of the lamp of the Son of Jesse Your Messiah, speedily in our day.^[6]

The focus of this paragraph is Israel’s eschatological future; it makes no mention of non-Jews.

3. Particularist and Polemical

The third elaborates on the vision of the second, describing how in response to the advent of the eschaton, the righteous will rejoice, but the unjust, the evil ones and insolent governments—a not so hidden reference to the Gentile persecuters of Jews—will disappear:

וּבְכֵן

And So

צַדִּיקִים יִרְאוּ וְיִשְׂמָחוּ, וִישָׁרִים יַעֲלֹזוּ, וַחֲסִידִים בְּרִנָּה יָגִילוּ

3.1 The righteous will see and rejoice; and the upright will be jubilant; and the pious will celebrate with joyful song.

וְעוֹלָתָה תִּקְפָּץ פִּיהָ. וְכָל הָרִשְׁעָה כֻּלָּהּ כְּעָשָׁן תִּכְלֶה

3.2 And injustice will clamp shut its mouth, and absolutely all evil will disappear like smoke,

כִּי תַעֲבִיר מֶמְשֶׁלֶת זָדוֹן מִן הָאָרֶץ:

3.3 For You will remove the reign of insolence from the earth.

The disappearance of insolent governments, the paragraph concludes, enables God’s eternal reign over the world from Zion:

וְתִמְלוֹךְ אַתָּה יְ־הֹוָה לְבַדֶּךָ עַל כָּל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ בְּהַר צִיּוֹן מִשְׁכַּן כְּבוֹדֶךָ וּבִירוּשָׁלַיִם עִיר קָדְשֶׁךָ.

3.4 Then You alone, O Eternal, will reign over all that You have done, on Mount Zion, the dwelling place of Your Glory, and in Jerusalem, Your holy city.

כַּכָּתוּב בְּדִבְרֵי קָדְשֶׁךָ יִמְלֹךְ יְ־הֹוָה לְעוֹלָם אֱלֹהַיִךְ צִיּוֹן לְדֹר וָדֹר הַלְלוּיָהּ:

3.5 As it is written in Your holy Writings (Ps 146:10), “The Eternal will reign forever, your God, oh Zion, from generation to generation, hallelujah.”

The contrast between the three-fold iteration of rejoicing righteous, presumably but not explicitly Jews, and the threefold silencing and removal of the wicked, referred to in language that alludes to gentiles,^[7] reinforces the movement of this prayer to particularism.

Are the Three Paragraphs a Unit?

The first paragraph expresses universalistic hopes about humanity, and the latter two particularist hopes about Israel, including the desire for the insolent or evil rulers—as noted, this is code for Gentiles—to be removed from the earth. Though in some tension with each other, both of these sentiments, universalism and particularism, exist in ancient Jewish texts, though the latter was the more dominant trope for most of Jewish history.^[8]

As Hayyim (Herman) Kieval (1920–1991) argued in his commentary on the maḥzor, the origin of these paragraphs is obscure.^[9] We do not know whether they derive from multiple authors or one author, when they were written, or even when they became part of the liturgy.

Most commentaries suggest that these paragraphs are from the second or third century C.E., i.e., the end of the Tannaitic / beginning of Amoraic period. However, there is no evidence for this. They may have been known by the Geonic period, i.e., the last centuries of the first millennium C.E., but even this is uncertain.^[10] The paragraphs do appear in the Cairo Geniza, but apparently only in Babylonian-rite texts,^[11] even though the prayer’s poetic elements fit patterns characteristic of Hebrew poetry in the early Byzantine period.^[12]

The text itself varies little from one regional rite to another. Contemporary commentaries on the maḥzor read the three paragraphs as a unit, but are split on which perspective to emphasize.

Ultra-Orthodox: The Artscroll Maḥzor

The very traditional ArtScroll Maḥzor (1985) reads the three sections as a single composition.^[13] It cites the eighteenth-century Italian rabbi, Moses Chaim Luzzato (the Ramchal), as teaching that:

God’s glory on earth is revealed through the agency of Israel, because it is the nation that received His Torah and proclaims His Unity. When Israel is exiled and degraded, it is less able to be the ‘chariot’ of His holiness. As a result, not only Israel, but the entire world suffers. Thus we pray that God returns the glory of Israel, of the righteous, of Jerusalem…When that happens, all nations will be inspired to unite under the leadership of Israel in the service of God. [emphasis mine]^[14]

The universalism expressed here is at best inclusivist, expecting gentiles to accept a relationship with the God of Israel. This depends not on Jewish proselytism, but on the nations being attracted to Israel’s message, something that cannot happen fully until Israel is no longer degraded in exile. Then, in messianic times, the nations will want to serve God and to accept Israel’s direction.

ArtScroll’s reading, then, functionally reverses the flow of the prayer’s paragraphs, making the first paragraph’s (perhaps) universal vision dependent on the realization of the subsequent particularist paragraphs, including the other nations’ subservience to Israel. Indeed, its reading of the first paragraph significantly undermines its apparent universalism. ArtScroll first distinguishes between the parallel terms for God’s “doings” (ma’asim; translated here as “works”) and “creations.”

The first are “high-caliber people who have perfected themselves to the point that they deserve to be called God’s handiwork… [and] are close to God, and therefore have a more intense, personal feeling of His Awe;” the second, creations, are “of lesser stature…[with] many shortcomings…[who] who may be able to feel a dread of God from an intellectual point of view, but they recognize Him only from afar...”^[15] These groups will ultimately be bound together to create a complete society, embracing “all.” However, not all humans will count equally. This society will “[follow] the lead of Israel’s finest products.”^[16] This reinterpretation of “all” as uniquely special groups is consistent with standard rabbinic usage, where the Talmud refers over seven hundred times to “all the world” (kulei ‘alma’), usually meaning just the rabbinic elite.

While the commentary on the second paragraph refers back to this as “universal recognition of [God’s] greatness,” the commentary on the first paragraph makes it clear that, at best, select non-Jews will be joining Jews; non-Jews are not envisioned as having an independent relationship with God.

Modern Orthodox: Koren Maḥzor

The Orthodox Koren Maḥzor (2011) includes the commentary of the late Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks (1948–2020), who served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and whose other publications frequently probed the relationship of Judaism to the greater world.^[17] In contrast to ArtScroll, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks does not close off the universal horizon but points to the universal nature of Rosh Hashanah’s themes.

Sacks notes how the first of the three paragraphs uses the phrase כָּל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ “all that You have made,” referring not just to Jews but to all humanity. Rosh Hashanah, he notes, is the anniversary of creation, and God is the creator of all humans. Thus, he says, “The God of Israel is the God of all,” and God judges all humans on this day.^[18]

Sacks interprets all three passages as a unit, drawing attention to their movement “from the universal to the particular,” and comments:

This direction, beginning with the universal and progressively narrowing the focus to the particular, is characteristic of Jewish thought... This is the opposite of the Greek way of thinking, that of Plato especially, which moves from the particular to the universal. In Judaism, what is precious to God is our particularity, our uniqueness.^[19]

In this way, Sacks preserves the tension while attempting to understand the three prayers as a consistent presentation. Although the themes of the day are universal, Judaism naturally and justifiably tends to the particular.

Conservative: Maḥzor Lev Shalem

The Conservative Movement’s Maḥzor Lev Shalem (2010) offers two distinct commentaries.^[20] Its right-hand margin, dedicated to historical and philological comments, points here to the sequence of ideas between the three passages from universal to particular and the prayer’s purportedly early origins. Its left-hand margin, which seeks to inspire, offers several different readings over the various services. Appearing just once is a citation of Micah 4:1–5’s messianic vision of the nations streaming to worship God in Jerusalem, where war disappears.^[21]

Most frequently, the Maḥzor includes a quote adapted from Martin Buber, titled “May All be Bound Together,” which emphasizes human unity for the sake of building a just and peaceful society:

The purpose of creation is not division, nor separation. The purpose of the human race is not a struggle to the death between classes, between nations. Humanity is meant to become a single body... Our purpose is the great upbuilding of unity and peace. And when all nations are bound together in one association living in justice and righteousness, they atone for each other.^[22]

The focus on “humanity” suggests a universal horizon, without any explicit mention of non-Jews, and thus submerges entirely the prayer’s particularist voices.

In contrast to Buber’s view of unity and the trajectory of the prayer itself, the commentary on the repetition of this prayer in the morning on Rosh Hashanah offers an inspirational text from Heschel that is neither particularist nor universalist but rather pluralist:

… Is religious uniformity desirable or even possible?... Does not the task of preparing the Kingdom of God require a diversity of talents, a variety of rituals, soul-searching as well as opposition? Perhaps it is the will of God that in this eon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment to God.^[23]

Heschel’s quotation challenges any vision that, in the eschaton, all humanity should become Jews or under Jewish leadership. At the same time, the Maḥzor also offers “An Alternate Rendering” for the entire silent recitation of the amidah of musaf both days and ne’ilah which is almost entirely if somewhat ambiguously universal in vision.^[24]

The aggregate of Maḥzor Lev Shalem’s commentaries suggest a discomfort with Jewish particularism, but an unwillingness to abandon it entirely.

Reform: Mishkan HaNefesh

The Reform Movement’s Mishkan HaNefesh (2015) preserves the traditional Hebrew text of our prayer, but between interpretative “translations” of this text, alternative readings and study texts, marginal commentary, and introductory essays, it significantly transforms its meaning. These include not only minimizing its particularist elements, but also making its message much more human-centered.^[25]

As Lawrence Hoffman notes in an introductory essay, many of this Maḥzor’s innovations deliberately emphasize universalism, continuing a trend characteristic of American Reform liturgies. Our prayer, he says, “anticipates a world where ‘good people everywhere will celebrate’ a time when ‘evil has no voice, and the rule of malevolence fades like wisps of smoke.’”^[26]

Hoffman thus interprets the ambiguous language of the prayer’s third paragraph as expressing a universal eschatological vision. He here ignores the particularism of the second paragraph entirely and concludes, citing Edmund Fleg: “The promise of Judaism is a universal promise.”^[27]

This is reinforced by a full-page study text printed before the prayer in several services, titled “קדושת השם/K’dushat HaShem/God’s Holiness: Awe, Honor, and Righteousness” that introduces the themes of these paragraphs. Humans bring God’s holiness into the world in these three ways, it says, enabling

God’s presence [to be] felt and experienced everywhere. We sanctify God, therefore, … by realizing that vision through our actions: showing reverence for all creation, giving kavod [honor] to all people—especially those who are vulnerable and needy—and embodying righteousness in all that we do.^[28]

Mishkan HaNefesh heads each paragraph of the prayer itself with the question, “How Do We Sense God’s Holiness?” The first header continues, “Through Awe;” the second and third name “Honor” and “Righteousness” respectively. The resulting prayer expresses a significantly transformed theology, including in its dance with universalism and particularism.

The interpretative translations accompanying the traditional Hebrew texts embed these transformations. The English of the first paragraph no longer asks that all of creation come to fear God. Instead, it reads:

And so, in Your holiness, give all creation the gift of awe. Turn our fear to reverence; let us be witnesses of wonder — perceiving all nature as a prayer come alive.^[29]

Humans are to be in awe of creation, to wonder at it, and it in turn points to God.

The second paragraph still moves to the particular. It translates the Hebrew kavod as “honor,” addressing, according to the commentaries, Israel’s need to receive “Honor and respect,” precisely because of her historical reality as a “vulnerable and often despised” people.^[30] This honor no longer comes from God, but instead from other humans. Thus, this paragraph becomes one about Israel’s place among universal humanity.

The third paragraph now responds to the transformed theme of the second, addressing abstract moral values, as “evil has been vanquished by Righteousness.”^[31] Israel’s past suffering, then, does not generate a particularistic prayer but instead becomes a motivation for a universally oriented ethic.

Mishkan HaNefesh argues in multiple contexts for its universalist readings of this third paragraph, though. In the full-page study text preceding the prayer, it it asserts that these passages collectively “describe a world suffused with the holiness of God.”^[32] Its marginal comment to the prayer is more ambiguous, stating that this tripartite prayer “now culminates by envisioning a future in which good people will see the reward of having held fast to their ideals: a world in which righteousness prevails.”^[33]

Erasing the Messiah, then Reinstating Him

The editors of this volume still struggle with other non-universal elements of the second and third paragraphs. Its predecessor, the 1978 Gates of Repentance, attempted to balance the paragraph’s allusions to Israel and Jerusalem by concluding “and cause the light of redemption to dawn for all who dwell on earth” [emphasis mine].^[34] Mishkan HaNefesh restores the original Hebrew messianic conclusion,^[35] but still does not translate the last two phrases literally, writing instead, “May the sparks of David, Your servant, soon grow bright enough for us to see a beam of light in the darkness, a promise of perfection.”^[36]

Its comment apologetically explains the reintroduced reference to the Davidic messiah, admitting that it contradicts the conventional Reform Jewish “vision of a messianic age, created by human acts of tikkun olam (repairing the world)” – rather than one initiated supernaturally by a human Messiah. David thus appears here “not as the literal progenitor of the Messiah, but as an emblematic figure who shines through Jewish history as a symbol of messianic hope.”^[37]

Non-Violent End of Days Vision

This translation of the third paragraph refers explicitly to “good people everywhere” and reorganizes the prayer’s phrases, thus removing the good versus evil, particularist dichotomy. The commentaries emphasize that Judaism embeds within it an eschatological optimism about the possibilities of a transformed society in which conflict can be resolved without violence, achieving the prophetic vision of “a messianic age in which Jerusalem becomes a spiritual center with a kind of World Court for the peaceful adjudication of disputes.”^[38]

Communal Norms and the Limits of Interpretation

Since their emancipation and entry into society in the wake of the French Revolution, western Jews have lived in a tension between their heritage of particularism and a desire to adopt a more universal horizon of concern. Reformers like Abraham Geiger called for Jews to abandon national ways of thinking and instead to focus on revealing Judaism’s universal truths.^[39]

In contemporary times, with the exception of the Orthodox ArtScroll commentary, all the maḥzorim surveyed value universalism, but their community’s theological strategies and liturgical options shape their possibilities for addressing the particularistic voices in this prayer.

Orthodox Jews do not alter the Hebrew text. New ideas thus find expression through commentaries, but even then, received interpretations carry weight. The new Conservative liturgy maintains traditional texts, especially for this season, but also turns in the margins to leading twentieth-century thinkers to trigger challenges to some traditional meanings.

Reform Jews can and do change texts, although, in recent decades, they have also retrieved traditions earlier abandoned. Due to intermarriage, their communities also embrace the largest number of non-Jews. Today, they embed theological struggles into their liturgical volumes themselves, inviting congregants to engage them.^[40]

Postscript

Universalism or Particularism in the Wake of October 7^th?

Premodern prayer texts, including that discussed here, embed the prophetic-messianic belief that Jews’ persecutors would come to accept a Jewish understanding of God or themselves be vanquished. Many modern Jews have balked at the appropriateness of this particularistic triumphalistic stance, attempting to de-emphasize this message in favor of the more acceptable universalist themes of the opening uvekhen. And yet, in the wake of the evils of October 7 and its aftermath, and our new reality of surging antisemitism, are such interpretations adequate?