Amram ben Sheshna

Some of those rabbis strongly opposed it.

Amram Gaon, a prominent ninth-century Jewish scholar, criticized the custom, concerned that people might misunderstand the declaration and treat their vows too casually.

Yet Kol Nidre continued to spread.

In the twelfth century, rabbis in France and Germany helped reshape its wording to address future vows rather than simply attempting to cancel past ones.

That came much later.

The beginning of the siddur actually begins with the siddur known as the siddur of Rav Amram Gaon.

That is probably in the ninth century already.

This is when the Talmud is really more or less coming into canonization.

And he looks around and says, "We need to formalize to make sure the prayers stay unified throughout the Jewish people scattered throughout the world." And it is Rav Amram Gaon who goes and creates the basic structure for the siddur.

Now, after the siddur of Rav Amram Gaon, then it becomes diffused.

The Jewish people start to move in really two places.

In the turn of the millennia, we start to have settlements in Europe, and that gives rise to the Ashkenazi community.

Well, many people know that men go to the mikveh before Yom Kippur, but as a woman's minhag, this is actually something, it's a custom that goes back to around the 9th or 10th centuries to the time of the Gaonim.

And already Saadia and Amram Gaon mention, um, women and men going to the mikveh beforehand in order to prepare for Yom Kippur.

It's something that we do with our whole body that connects us to the ideas of teshuva and of tahara.

And, you know, when we go into this holiest day of the year, we wanna go in with purity of intention and of body, connecting to spirituality and to the source of all good.

When was the prayer book written down? Around seven hundred and fifty CE.

Rav Amram Gaon in Babylon decided he's gonna write down the prayer book.

Why did he write it down then? It was already there, but it was all verbal, oral, because it was considered part of the oral law.

The oral law of the Mishnah was only written down around eighteen hundred years ago, although it was extant for a couple of hundred years, uh, eighteen hundred odd years before that.

So they had to say by heart, so there were a lot of einu bekim.

So in the days of Rav Amram Gaon, he was the first one who wrote a siddur.

In the earlier generations, they weren't allowed to write anything down.

They didn't write down Mishnayos in Gemara.

So the Gemara said based on that pasuk, they first allowed the writing down of the Mishnayos.

Then years, years later, they allowed the writing down of the Gemara 'cause they were afraid everything will be forgotten.

Then Rav Amram Gaon allowed the writing down of the siddur, but they still didn't write down the nusach for Rosh Chodesh and Kitur.

They wrote down the siddur for every day of the Shabbos and yontif.

Geonim debated this question.

It is stated in the name of Rabbi Amram Gaon that if a chazen who recites piyutim during the chazen's repetition should be removed from post of chazen, which of course is not our case.

For many people, most of their salary comes from piyutim.

That's what they need to practice for most.

but this is Rav Amram Gaon, defending it is Raveinu Gershom, who also cites Geonim, who says that it's acceptable, it's considered part, it's apropos of the Chazar HaSashatz, every piyut really is considered to be germane to the topic where we are in the Shemana Yisra'eh, and that would be acceptable.

So once again, in Chazar HaSashatz, there's differing opinions.

Yes to say or not to say, and how do things land? Here too, the Shulchan Aruch identifies with those who says not to say piyutim.

You're not supposed to ask for anything.

And so during the Yisra'el Yom Kippur, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, yeah, you'd say it, But it was really an addition by the Gaon, Amram Gaon, to put it in there for Rosh Hashanah itself.

The Rambam says not to say it.

Now, if you don't say it, if you forget it, you don't have to repeat the Shemana Asrei.

A separate, harsher responsum from the same period, calls the whole practice a verbal evasion.

Amram Gaon, compiling the first complete Jewish prayer book not long after, called reciting it an outright foolish custom, and said it was forbidden to do.

By the end of the Gaonic period, according to the modern scholarship reconstructing this history, high gaon appears to have eventually yielded to sustained popular pressure rather than continuing to reject the practice outright he is credited with rewriting it himself turning it from a legal declaration into a plea for god's forgiveness That is not one disapproving footnote.

It is a documented argument that ran for roughly two centuries at the highest levels of Babylonian rabbinic authority, and it never ended in agreement.