THIS CHAPTER examines a new attempt to begin the day, previous efforts having become embroiled in apparently insoluble problems. It includes a talmudic waking sequence and ends with a theologically compromising examination of the dangers ahead. These can be attributed in the real world to human hostility, but liturgical texts implicate God in permitting them to arise.

EXTRACT 21. A Talmudic Waking Prayer

The context makes this talmudic text acutely ambiguous. Is it the third element in a study anthology encompassing the three main genres of Torah—Scripture, Mishnah, and Talmud—assuming the previous text to have been mainly mishnaic? Or does it begin the day anew, leaving the anthology behind, a view based on the fact that the previous text contained both mishnaic and talmudic material? Indeed, neither study nor prayer has emerged unscathed from the analysis of the previous sections of the liturgy. The possibility of effective prayer has been challenged from the start of the liturgical day, leading the speaker to turn to study as a medium for intervening in the working of the world. Study was likewise found to contain the seeds of its own failure, due to the virtual impossibility of acquiring a God’s-eye view of Torah, as was demonstrated by Extract 20, which subverted textual accuracy when it was most needed.

This prayer—if we regard it as such—would form a stronger opening to the liturgical day than anything seen so far, and is the classic waking prayer cited in the Talmud and by Maimonides, appearing in Sephardi liturgies as the first statement of the day. However, as a talmudic passage it could be regarded as a continuation of the study sequence begun above, offering a route to salvation by renewing the proximity to God that was lost in sleep, and serving as a corrective to the preceding passage. While that paragraph consisted of a confection of mishnaic and talmudic fragments, this one is purely talmudic and substantially intact. Nevertheless, that textual mosaic's departure from the sources cannot be unmade, subverting this one as study, while the relevance of the text to the here and now increases its prayerful quality.