The Exclusion of Musical Instruments from the Ancient Synagogue

Abstract

We are remarkably well-informed about the liturgy of the Second Temple at Jerusalem in the years which preceded its destruction by the Romans in AD 70; the same is not the case, as will be seen below, with the contemporary Synagogue. The central source of our knowledge about Temple liturgy is the Talmud, that massive compendium of rabbinic learning and lore which had its first redaction in the Mishnah of about AD 200. There are numerous remarks on Temple liturgy scattered throughout the sixty-three tractates of the Mishnah, but two in particular give us as detailed a description of its daily services as do theordines romaniof the seventh-century Roman pontifical Mass. These are the tractates Middoth, literally measurements, which gives a description of the Temple with its dimensions, and Tamid, literally perfect or perpetual, which goes step by step through the daily sacrificial rites.

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