"Three times every day in a prayer they consider more important than others, the Jews curse the clergy of the Church, the kings, and all other people. In that context, we find one of the nastiest assaults on the Jewish liturgy leveled by the disputant and apostate, Nicholas Donin, who writes of Birkat ha-Minim that because, despite their Jewishness, they preach that Jesus is the Christ, the opposite of those who are still Jews, for they have not accepted Jesus."Īs Ruth Langer's masterful new book Cursing the Christians? amply documents, the frequency and vehemence of the Church’s condemnations of the prayer ebbed and flowed over centuries, tending to escalate during eras of heightened religious tensions-notably throughout the period of anti-Jewish theological disputations in 13th-century Spain and France. Three times a day they say, 'God curse the Nazoreans.' For they harbor an extra grudge against them. His complaint echoes even harsher early Christian polemics, such as that of the Church Father Epiphanius (315-403): "Not only do Jewish people have a hatred of their enemies they even stand up at dawn, at midday, and toward evening, three times a day when they recite their prayers in the synagogue, and curse and anathemize them.
Over the centuries, three contentious blessings in the morning prayer service have been interpreted, revised, translated, excised, and, in varying ways, restored. Three Blessings Yehudah Mirsky, Jewish Ideas Daily.
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