ALEINU UNCENSORED

The Biblical Prophet Joshua is traditionally recognized as the author of Aleinu, which means that the author is anonymous, as, otherwise, Joshua’s Prayer would have been included in the TaNaKh. However, I have no intention of arguing about this point, and for all intents and purposes, Joshua may just as well have been the author.

While, in so far as the music of religious services is concerned, Reform Judaism certainly has the upper hand over the other branches of Judaism, the situation is decisively reversed in all other matters of religious authenticity, intellectual and spiritual sincerity, and factual reliability, where it is ultra-conservative Orthodox Judaism which reigns supreme, as, undoubtedly, the sole credible authority on Judaism today, with the only exception of certain sections of Judaic libraries in some of the bigger synagogues, where certain unpresentable, moldy, out-of-print treasures bequeathed to these libraries by their ancient owners quietly dying of old age, books unwanted by their younger heirs,--- and now consistently ignored on their dusty shelves by the library patrons,--- are themselves living out their shelflives, until some youthful librarian might respectfully remove them from those shelves, and put them away somewhere, where their pitiful appearance would not trouble the aesthetic sensibilities of the new improved Judenthum.

It is to their authority only that I must now apply myself, for the complete text of one of the most important prayers in the life of an observant Jew, the Aleinu.

But first, here is the full text of the Aleinu in the English translation.---

First paragraph, Aleinu:

It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to ascribe greatness to the Molder of primeval creation, for He has not made us like the goyim of the world, nor emplaced us like other families of the earth, nor assigned our portion like theirs, nor our lot like all their multitudes.
(For, they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who helps not.) But we bend our knees, bow and acknowledge our thanks before the King Who reigns over kings, the Holy One, Blessed is He.
He stretches out heaven and establishes earth’s foundation, the seat of His homage is in the heavens above and His powerful Presence is in the loftiest heights.
He is our God and there is none other. True is our King, nothing beside Him. As it is written in His Torah, “You are to know this day and take to your heart that Hashem is the only God, in heaven above and on the earth below, there is none other.”

Second paragraph, Alkein:

Therefore we put our hope in You Hashem our God that we may soon see Your mighty splendor to remove detestable idolatry from the earth, and false gods will be utterly cut off, to repair the universe (the words in the Hebrew text are letakein olam (a form of tikkun olam), as no respectable Jewish source would ever fail to mention at the first opportunity in connection with the history of this term; it is quite obvious that Luria himself made such a huge deal out of verbal symbolism, that this connection is by no means an exercise in trivial pursuit) through the Almighty’s sovereignty.
Then all mankind will call upon Your Name, to turn all the earth’s wicked toward You. All inhabitants of the world will recognize You, and know that to You every knee should bend, every tongue should swear.
Before You, Hashem, our God, they will bend every knee, and cast themselves down, and to the glory of Your Name they will render homage, and they will all accept upon themselves the yoke of Your kingship, that You may reign over them soon and for all eternity (leolam vaed).
For the kingdom is Yours, and You will reign for all eternity in glory, as written in Your Torah: “Hashem shall reign for all eternity.” And it is said (Zechariah 14:9): “Hashem shall be King over all the world. On that day Hashem will be One, and His Name will be One.”

A short summary from reliable Jewish sources (derived from Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher’s monumental work Arba’ah Turim/Sect. Orach Chayim) of the history of this monumental prayer follows below, not for mere reference, but substantially connected to my eventual commentary on it.

The prayer Aleinu, proclaiming God as King over a united humanity, has been recited as the closing prayer of the three daily services ever since the 13th century. According to tradition, Yehoshua composed it at the time he crossed the Yarden (Jordan) and entered the Land of Promise. It is generally held, however, that it was first introduced into the daily prayer service by Rav [Abba Arika (175-247) founder of the early third century Academy at Sura] as an introduction to Malchuyot, the section recited as part of the Musaf service for Rosh Hashanah. The Bach [Rabbi Joel Sirkes (1561-1640)] explains that Aleinu was added to the daily prayers to implant faith in the Oneness of God’s Kingship and the conviction that He will one day remove detestable idolatry from the earth… thus preventing Jews from being tempted to follow the beliefs and the lifestyles of the nations among whom they dwell.

As we can surmise from its authorship and its placement at the conclusion of every service, its significance is profound. Its first paragraph (Aleinu) proclaims the difference between Israel’s concept of God and that of the other nations. The second, Alkein, expresses our confidence that humanity will eventually recognize His sovereignty and declare its obedience to His commandments. It should be clear, however, that this does not imply a belief, or even a hope, that they will convert to Judaism, rather, they will accept Him as the only God and obey the universal Noachian laws (the Jews make a clear distinction between God’s laws applied to all mankind, they call them Noachian laws, and those specifically addressed to His chosen people Israel, called Mosaic laws) that are incumbent upon all nations.
In the Middle Ages the custom was formed of reciting the first paragraph every day at the end either of the morning service or of all the prayer services for the day. In the sixteenth century, Hayim Vital, a prominent Kabbalist, noting the opinions of Isaac Luria, ruled that both paragraphs should be included in all services and should end with the verse: On that day Hashem shall be one and His Name one. This was accepted in all communities, except for the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who have retained the “short Aleinu.”

Considering the great importance of both paragraphs in Aleinu, the question arises whether the excision of the second paragraph was a matter of convenience, similarly to the use of an abbreviated Shema, or it was a matter of self-censorship, which has also affected the first paragraph of the prayer in the following way:

Since the 14th century, incessant attacks were concentrated upon Aleinu on account of the words For they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god, which helps not. (It is said that Christian authorities came to believe that this line referred to the Christians worshipping Jesus, and demanded that it be dropped.) So, this passage was finally deleted from the Ashkenazic Siddurim.

However, the accusation of a deliberate anti-Christian wording is clearly without merit, as the paragraph’s most offensive line is a direct quotation from Isaiah 45:20... I guess, quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi…

While most congregations have not returned this passage to the Aleinu prayer, some prominent authorities (characteristically, within the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities) insist that it ought to be recited in its original form. (This practice has never returned to non-Orthodox Jewish denominations.)

While the original reason for omission was a clear case of overreaction to a relatively innocent profession of faith in one God (quite harmless, compared to the explicit Christian contention, prevalent to this day in all Evangelical communities, that even the rare breed of the righteous shall burn in Hell, unless they hurry up to confess Jesus as their Lord and Savior, while even the greatest sinners of this world will be pardoned on the sheer strength of such a confession), the question remains as to why a great majority of Jewish congregations have failed to restore the original splendor of their cultural gem the Aleinu prayer to their religious services, while the curtailed version is sadly accepted as its substitute in daily worship, given the respect and honors due to the real thing, and not to an impostor? Perhaps, for the same reason that the so much beloved Torah in non-Orthodox synagogues is so profusely honored in scroll-bearing processions, yet so casually dismissed as a fossil from a long-gone past, when it comes to its actual content.

Ironically, even though the large symbolic value of the Torah is generally recognized, only a small minority of the Jews attributes a lasting religious significance to it. For these Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox believers, Torah Judaism is not a thing of the past, abolished two millennia ago with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, but a suspended religious document, awaiting for the Lord’s Anointed One to return the scattered sheep of Israel to the Promised Land, to restore the Temple, and by this to bring the Temple-centered Torah Judaism, and the Torah with it, back to life. It goes without saying that these Jewish believers do not recognize the modern Mashiach-free State of Israel as a legitimate Biblically-endorsed national entity. An important implication here is that the secular Zionist claim to the land of Greater Israel thus has no substantiation in Judaism.