Rambam, Liturgical Innovation Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz | July 14 2026

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The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

I think it's safe to say that the Rambam is a fairly conservative voice in the sense that he was against he was against additional new braots that are not mentioned in the Talmud. Sometimes he had active opposition. He would say don't do it. Other times he had what you might call benign neglect. He said yeah you want to do it do it but there's no particular reason to do it. So for example, with respect to the yudim midot regarding the Torah reading on a fast day where the congregation on a fast day where the congregation says the 13 midot of raim before the balor. So the Rambam said no reason to do it but if you want to do it there's no problem. On the other hand when it came to certain additional the Rambam actually said you're not allowed to do it. It would be a blessing in vain. And I had mentioned and this is going to come out today in more detail that the Rambam had a certain tension because one of his great predecessors uh like a hundred years earlier was Ravaja Gaon and Rafajon was a person who Ravaja Gaon and Rafajon was a person who was greatly greatly greatly admired and even by the Rambam himself and Ravsaja Gaon really had the opposite orientation. He was adding things left and right uh new poems and all sorts of things and uh the Rambam obviously had a tremendous amount of respect for Abs but the Rambam totally disagreed with this approach. So essentially the Rambam I think is walking very cautiously uh in this particular area because he

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