Millions of Jews around the world will conclude the Passover seder this week with the traditional refrain “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim,” usually translated as “Next Year in Jerusalem!” (Literally, it means, “to the coming year, in Jerusalem.”) First attested in the Middle Ages, the phrase has become part of not only the Passover liturgy, but also the concluding service for Yom Kippur, and has long testified to the longing of the scattered Jewish people for a homeland where they could be free from persecution. With the current conflict in Gaza, the origins, history, and meaning of this phrase could stand some examination.
The history of “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” go back to 70 CE, when the Roman general Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, destroyed the Second Temple in retribution for a revolt against Roman authority. (Why was it the Second Temple? The original Temple of Solomon was rebuilt in the sixth century BCE after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and the beginnings of the Jewish diaspora, or scattering.)
Advertisement
Subjugation by Rome began the transformation of ancient into modern Judaism: Instead of a practice led by priests and centered around the Temple and its associated rituals, it became codified into the Talmud and other written works and led by religious scholars. This form of observance was obviously amendable to the Jewish communities already scattered through the Roman Empire and ancient Near East. However, the memory of the Temple remained. “Zion,” originally a low hill to the south of the Temple Mount, became an eponym for Jerusalem and the Holy Land in general, and the Talmud is replete with references to returning from exile and rebuilding the Temple.
“Next year in Jerusalem” is the Birds’ Head Haggadah, dated around 1300 – image courtesy Sara Offenberg
The reason for such a longing is obvious: Wherever they lived, Jews were almost always seen as an alien people, subject to special taxes, required to wear clothing that marked them as different, and often forced to convert to Christianity or Islam. According to Shulamit Elizur of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” likely originated as an oral phrase, akin to “amen!” Pithy three-word phrases such as this were a common element of liturgical poetry and religious observance.
Advertisement
The first written occurrence, as “b’Yerushalayim, l’shana haba’ah,” occurs in a tenth-century poem by the Spanish rabbi Joseph ibn Abitur. The saying is found in its modern form the twelfth-thirteenth century Vitry Mahzor (High Holiday prayerbook), and the earliest occurrence in a Passover Haggadah is from the Bird’s Head Haggadah from c. 1300. The fifteenth-century Austrian rabbi Isaac Tyrnau writes of it being part of the Passover liturgy, and by the time of printed Haggadahs in the sixteenth century, it had become a standard formulation.
In the modern era, the use of “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” came into question. Antisemites who see Jews as an alien people have pointed to the phrase as evidence of divided loyalties. Herman Melville, for instance, wrote in 1876:
Some zealous Jews on alien soil Who still from Gentile ways recoil, And loyally maintain the dream, Salute upon the Paschal day With Next year in Jerusalem!
Many in the Reform movement eliminated the phrase entirely from their Haggadahs for fear of seeming disloyal to whatever country they lived in. Omitting the phrase, or glossing it as a metaphorical desire for justice and peace, persisted through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the other hand, the Zionist movement, seeing that Jews would never be welcome in European countries, revitalized of “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” as a literal hope for return, while the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s gave the medieval phrase new and urgent meaning.
Advertisement
The phrase also appears in this document from the Cairo Genizah – image courtesy Sara Offenberg
Whether or not one supports the modern state of Israel, “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” is key to Jewish identity in the sense of being a single people with a common origin. Yet, at the same time, the Jewish longing for a Promised Land become part of the global vocabulary of liberation, from The Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon” to Martin Luther King’s likening himself to Moses in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. In this way, “next year in Jerusalem” is one of the legacies of Judaism to world culture.
Thanks to Sara Offenberg of Ben Gurion University of the Negev for help with research.
Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Taboo against ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ in the American Haggadah (1837–1942),” in Zev Eleff and Shaul Seidler-Feller, eds., Emet le-Ya’akov: Facing the Truths of History – Essays in Honor of Jacob J. Schacter (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2023)
Shulamit Elizur, “Ke-ha-yom ha-ze bi-Yerushalayim: Te Origins, Distribution and Evolution of a Prayer Marking the Conclusions of Ceremonies,” Tarbiz 85, no. 2 (January–March 2018): 305 (Hebrew).
Top Image: Jerusalem depicted in the Worms Mazhor – National Library of Israel MS. heb. 4°781
By Ken Mondschein
Millions of Jews around the world will conclude the Passover seder this week with the traditional refrain “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim,” usually translated as “Next Year in Jerusalem!” (Literally, it means, “to the coming year, in Jerusalem.”) First attested in the Middle Ages, the phrase has become part of not only the Passover liturgy, but also the concluding service for Yom Kippur, and has long testified to the longing of the scattered Jewish people for a homeland where they could be free from persecution. With the current conflict in Gaza, the origins, history, and meaning of this phrase could stand some examination.
The history of “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” go back to 70 CE, when the Roman general Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, destroyed the Second Temple in retribution for a revolt against Roman authority. (Why was it the Second Temple? The original Temple of Solomon was rebuilt in the sixth century BCE after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and the beginnings of the Jewish diaspora, or scattering.)
Subjugation by Rome began the transformation of ancient into modern Judaism: Instead of a practice led by priests and centered around the Temple and its associated rituals, it became codified into the Talmud and other written works and led by religious scholars. This form of observance was obviously amendable to the Jewish communities already scattered through the Roman Empire and ancient Near East. However, the memory of the Temple remained. “Zion,” originally a low hill to the south of the Temple Mount, became an eponym for Jerusalem and the Holy Land in general, and the Talmud is replete with references to returning from exile and rebuilding the Temple.
The reason for such a longing is obvious: Wherever they lived, Jews were almost always seen as an alien people, subject to special taxes, required to wear clothing that marked them as different, and often forced to convert to Christianity or Islam. According to Shulamit Elizur of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” likely originated as an oral phrase, akin to “amen!” Pithy three-word phrases such as this were a common element of liturgical poetry and religious observance.
The first written occurrence, as “b’Yerushalayim, l’shana haba’ah,” occurs in a tenth-century poem by the Spanish rabbi Joseph ibn Abitur. The saying is found in its modern form the twelfth-thirteenth century Vitry Mahzor (High Holiday prayerbook), and the earliest occurrence in a Passover Haggadah is from the Bird’s Head Haggadah from c. 1300. The fifteenth-century Austrian rabbi Isaac Tyrnau writes of it being part of the Passover liturgy, and by the time of printed Haggadahs in the sixteenth century, it had become a standard formulation.
In the modern era, the use of “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” came into question. Antisemites who see Jews as an alien people have pointed to the phrase as evidence of divided loyalties. Herman Melville, for instance, wrote in 1876:
Some zealous Jews on alien soil
Who still from Gentile ways recoil,
And loyally maintain the dream,
Salute upon the Paschal day
With Next year in Jerusalem!
Many in the Reform movement eliminated the phrase entirely from their Haggadahs for fear of seeming disloyal to whatever country they lived in. Omitting the phrase, or glossing it as a metaphorical desire for justice and peace, persisted through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the other hand, the Zionist movement, seeing that Jews would never be welcome in European countries, revitalized of “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” as a literal hope for return, while the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s gave the medieval phrase new and urgent meaning.
Whether or not one supports the modern state of Israel, “l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” is key to Jewish identity in the sense of being a single people with a common origin. Yet, at the same time, the Jewish longing for a Promised Land become part of the global vocabulary of liberation, from The Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon” to Martin Luther King’s likening himself to Moses in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. In this way, “next year in Jerusalem” is one of the legacies of Judaism to world culture.
Thanks to Sara Offenberg of Ben Gurion University of the Negev for help with research.
Ken Mondschein is a scholar, writer, college professor, fencing master, and occasional jouster. Ken’s latest book is On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping. Click here to visit his website. You can also fellow Ken on Twitter @DrKenMondschein.
Click here to read more from Ken Mondschein
Further Readings:
Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Taboo against ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ in the American Haggadah (1837–1942),” in Zev Eleff and Shaul Seidler-Feller, eds., Emet le-Ya’akov: Facing the Truths of History – Essays in Honor of Jacob J. Schacter (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2023)
Shulamit Elizur, “Ke-ha-yom ha-ze bi-Yerushalayim: Te Origins, Distribution and Evolution of a Prayer Marking the Conclusions of Ceremonies,” Tarbiz 85, no. 2 (January–March 2018): 305 (Hebrew).
Top Image: Jerusalem depicted in the Worms Mazhor – National Library of Israel MS. heb. 4°781
Related Posts
Subscribe to Medievalverse