Judah Halevi called God to account by means of clever l.1terary allusions. The twelfth-century author of poem no. 6, Isaac bar Shalom, though far less artistic than Judah Halevi, is far more outspoken. In response to the persecutions of the year 1147, and to the fate of one Jewish community in particular, he not only cries out to God, in the words of Psalm 83 :2, ‘Do not keep silence!’ He does not shrink from hurling at the silent God the accusation that there is none like Him among the dumb. Perhaps it was this daring exclamation which failed to win a place for this poem in most of the current printed editions of the Ashkenazi prayerbook.

Still, the accusation, which, to some sensitive ears, might seem to border on the blasphemous, is not original with Isaac bar Shalom. It does, in fact, go back to the Talmud itself. For, pace Richard L. Rubenstein, the ancient Rabbis, confronted by the tragedy which had befallen their people, were not at all unanimous either in apportioning all blame to their people or in shielding God from all reproach. A few illustrations may help to clarify this.

The first of the Eighteen Benedictions1 invokes God as ‘great, mighty, and awe-inspiring,’ a phrase which goes back to Deuteronomy 10:17, and, therefore, as far as the Rabbis were concerned, reflects the attributes which Moses himself ascribed to the Deity. Now, the Rabbis noted that, in Jeremiah 32:17f, the attributes of ‘great’ and ‘mighty’ were mentioned, while the attribute of ‘awe-inspiring’ was omitted. On the other hand, Daniel 9 :4 describes God as ‘great’ and ‘awe-inspiring,’ but fails to list ‘mighty’ as one of God's attributes.

This led the Rabbis to question the justification of Jeremiah's and Daniel’ s evident tampering with the list of attributes transmitted on the authority of Moses. They found the justification in the following manner: