Draft. This siddur is waiting for a rav's review. For a halachic question, ask your rav.
Hebrew, then English. Open "What it means" under any line for the explanation.
קדושת השם
Title: The holiness of the Name
The holiness of the Name. (The title of this blessing.)
אַתָּה קָדוֹשׁ וְשִׁמְךָ קָדוֹשׁ וּקְדוֹשִׁים בְּכָל יוֹם יְהַלְלוּךָ סֶּלָה.
You are holy, and Your Name is holy, and holy ones every day praise You, forever.
You are holy, and Your Name is holy, and holy ones praise You every day, forever.
Abudarham (a commentary on the prayers, Spain, about 1340) ties each part to a verse. "You are holy" echoes Yeshayahu (the prophet Isaiah) 5:16, "the holy God is made holy through righteousness." "Your Name is holy" echoes Yeshayahu 57:15. The "holy ones," he says, are Israel: "You shall be holy" (Vayikra, the book of Leviticus, 19:2).
Abudarham, Weekday Prayers, Amidah; Yeshayahu 5:16, 57:15; Vayikra 19:2כִּי אֵל מֶלֶךְ גָּדוֹל וְקָדוֹשׁ אָתָּה.
For God, a great King, and holy are You.
For You are God, a great and holy King.
Abudarham ties "a great King" to Malachi (a prophet) 1:14, where God says "For I am a great King."
Abudarham, Weekday Prayers, Amidah; Malachi 1:14All year, except the Ten Days of Repentance:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ הָאֵל הַקָּדוֹשׁ.
Blessed are You, Hashem, the holy God.
Abudarham gives the ending a verse from Vayikra: "For I am holy." He also says the endings of the first three blessings hint at the three fathers. This one points to Yaakov, whose bed was whole and holy, because none of his children was unfit.
Abudarham, Weekday Prayers, Amidah; Vayikra 19:2Ten Days of Repentance (Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur): end the blessing this way instead.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ הַמֶּלֶךְ הַקָּדוֹשׁ.
Blessed are You, Hashem, the holy King.
In the Ten Days, "the holy God" becomes "the holy King." The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions) records a dispute and rules like Rabba: say "King." The Mishnah Berurah (the standard commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law) says why: now God sits and judges the whole world and shows that He is King.
Berakhot 12b; Mishnah Berurah 582:2In the Ten Days, if you catch a slip right away, say the right ending on the spot. If you notice later, or are not sure which ending you said, go back to the start of the Amidah.
Siddur Sefard instruction; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 582:1; Mishnah Berurah 582:3Beit Yosef (Rabbi Yosef Karo's commentary on a law code; he also wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law) copies an old story of the angels saying each blessing at a moment in the fathers' lives. When Avraham was saved from Ur Kasdim, the angels said "Shield of Avraham." When Yitzchak was bound, "Revives the dead." When Yaakov met the gates of mercy and made God's name holy, "the holy God."
Beit Yosef, Orach Chaim 112The Avot prayer shows that the Mishnah (the first written collection of Jewish law, finished around the year 200) already names this blessing Kedushat HaShem, third in line. The same Mishnah has a dispute about it. On Rosh Hashanah there is an extra blessing about God's kingship. Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri says it goes inside this one. Rabbi Akiva says it goes with the next blessing.
Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 4:5The Gemara (the record of the rabbis' debates, about 1,500 years old) asks where the first three blessings come from. It finds them in one psalm, Tehillim 29. "Give to Hashem, sons of the mighty" is the Fathers. "Give to Hashem glory and strength" is the Powers. "Give to Hashem the glory of His name; bow to Hashem in holy splendor" is the Holiness of the Name. That third verse is about God's name, and this is the blessing that says "Your Name is holy."
Rosh Hashanah 32a; Tehillim 29:1-2The Rambam (Maimonides, a great medieval rabbi and doctor who wrote a full code of Jewish law, died 1204) says the common custom was to say a longer third blessing on Rosh Hashanah, and some did the same on Yom Kippur. After "You are holy and Your Name is holy," it adds paragraphs that begin "U'vechen," meaning "And so." The first asks God to put His awe on everything He made. The blessing ends with the verse from Yeshayahu 5:16 and then "the holy King."
Rambam, Order of Prayer 3:8In Nusach Sefard the blessing has a line that the Ashkenaz version of this paragraph leaves out: "For You are a great and holy God and King." Abudarham (a commentary on the prayers, Spain, about 1340) says that in his day ordinary people did not say it. But it is in the old prayer books of the Geonim (the heads of the great Babylonian academies, roughly the years 600 to 1000), and he says it is right to say. The Rambam's written text of this blessing does not have it.
Abudarham, Weekday Prayers, Amidah; Rambam, Order of Prayer 2:4The prayer says it in one breath: You are holy, and Your Name is holy. It never says what holy means. The verse that tells us to be holy like God (Vayikra 19:2) does not stop to define the word.
One explanation is in the Sifra (an early collection of rabbinic teachings on the book of Vayikra). On this verse it says only: be holy means be parush. On a similar verse earlier in Vayikra (11:44), it spells it out: just as I am holy, so you be holy. Just as I am parush, so you be parush. Parush means set apart, held back. In this reading, holy means in a class of its own, and for people it means holding yourself back.
Rashi (the main medieval commentator on the Torah) reads the verse more narrowly. For him it means staying away from forbidden sexual relationships and from sin. He notices that wherever the Torah fences off a forbidden relationship, it also uses the word holiness.
The Ramban (Nachmanides, a medieval Torah commentator from the 1200s) reads it differently. He says this holding back is not about forbidden relationships, since the Torah already forbids those. A person could break nothing the Torah forbids, and still overeat, drink too much, and talk in a crude way. He would be, in the Ramban's words, a scoundrel with the Torah's permission. So the command to be holy asks you to hold back even from some things that are allowed.
None of this sounds warm. But the prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah) uses the same word for God: "the high and lifted-up One, who lives forever, whose name is holy." The verse keeps going: "I live in a high and holy place, and also with the crushed and the low in spirit" (Yeshayahu 57:15).
So the sources give two pictures at once. Holy means set apart, one of a kind. And the same verse that says it puts God close to people who feel small. The sources do not try to remove that tension.
Vayikra 19:2,Sifra, Kedoshim 1:1,Sifra, Shemini, chapter 12,Rashi on Vayikra 19:2,Ramban on Vayikra 19:2,Yeshayahu 57:15The line says holy ones praise God every day. A fair question: why would a God who needs nothing want praise at all?
The Yerushalmi (the Gemara of the Land of Israel) records Hillel the Elder, a great teacher from about 2,000 years ago, asking the same thing. When he saw people acting carelessly, he said: does God need their praise? Thousands upon thousands already serve Him (Daniel 7:10). When he saw them doing it properly, he said the opposite. Even with all that praise before Him, the praise of Israel is dearer to Him than any of it.
The Yerushalmi backs this with two verses about the songs and praises of Israel. The second comes from a verse that begins with the same words as our prayer: "And You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel" (Tehillim 22:4).
The Midrash on Tehillim (a collection of rabbinic teachings on that book) reads the verse this way: every time Israel praises God, His glory sits among them. The word for enthroned, yoshev, also means sits. The same Midrash adds that God is also above every praise, as Nechemiah 9:5 says, "exalted above every blessing and praise."
Abudarham says that in our line, the holy ones who praise God every day are Israel. Avot DeRabbi Natan (an early collection of rabbinic teachings that grew out of Pirkei Avot, the Mishnah's book of sayings) sets the song of the angels beside the song of Israel and says Israel's praise is the better one.
None of this says God is missing something. The picture is closer to this: God does not need praise, and still sits inside it. Hillel is recorded saying both. These are answers from the sources, not the only possible answers.
Talmud Yerushalmi, Sukkah 5:4,Midrash Tehillim 22:13,Avot DeRabbi Natan, version B, 44:16,Abudarham, Weekday Prayers, AmidahIn the Ten Days of Repentance, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, this blessing ends differently. All year it ends "the holy God." In these days it ends "the holy King." If you say the usual ending out of habit, the Shulchan Aruch rules that you go back to the beginning of the Amidah (Orach Chaim 582:1). The printed instruction in our siddur adds that if you catch it right away and fix it, you can keep going.
That seems like a lot for one word, and the Gemara knew it. Rabbi Elazar said the old ending still counts (Berakhot 12b). The ruling went with Rabba, who said the change is required.
Tosafot (a medieval commentary on the Gemara by French and German scholars) gives the reason in one line: anyone who changes the form the Sages fixed has not done what he owes. The Hebrew word for form is the word for a minted coin. A coin has a fixed design. In this view, a blessing has a fixed form too.
Why go back to the beginning, and not just redo this blessing? The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, written around 1900) answers in a few words: the first three blessings of the Amidah count as one (582:4). So a mistake in the third one sends you to the start of the first. In another place he explains what the three have in common: they are all praise, like a servant setting out praise before his master, so personal requests do not belong in them (112:1).
The reasons given are about what counts as having said the blessing the Sages set. They are not about punishment.
Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 582:1,Berakhot 12b,Tosafot on Berakhot 12b,Mishnah Berurah 112:1 and 582:4Short ideas from the Chassidic masters, the Kabbalah and the Mussar teachers.
The Zohar asks the obvious question. If you just said "You are holy," why add "Your Name is holy"? Isn't God's Name just another way of saying "You"? Its answer: wherever things are joined, we need holiness and then added holiness, and the added part matters most. So "You are holy" is the holiness, and "Your Name is holy" is the addition. Now read the two halves again.
בכל אתר דאשתכח יחודא וקשורא, בעינן קדושה, ותוספת קדושה
Zohar, Parashat PekudeiThis line comes right after the blessing that says God lifts the fallen, heals the sick and revives the dead. Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain of Sochatchov (a Chassidic rebbe in Poland who died in 1926) cites the Kuzari (a medieval book that explains Jewish belief) for the reason: dealing with such lowly things could look beneath God, so the next words say God stays holy and set apart through all of it. He adds that Israel has a share of this too: set apart even while busy with physical things, which he calls a holiness beyond the angels.
שנראה כאלו הוא ח"ו השפלה בהשי"ת שעוסק בדברים נמוכין כאלו, לזה מזכירין קדושה לומר שבכל אלה נבדל וקדוש
Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain of Sochatchov, Shem MiShmuel, Parashat KedoshimThe Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, a Chassidic rebbe in Poland who died in 1905) hears three holinesses here. "You are holy" is God, set apart from everything. "Your Name is holy" is the Torah, the names of God, which he calls the go-between: through it God shrank the holiness so that those below could take it in. The third is the holiness of those who receive it, which includes the angels, and also Israel, who have a share in the Torah's holiness. Now count the three in the line.
ושמך קדוש הוא התורה שמותיו של הקב"ה שהוא הממוצע שצימצם הקב"ה קדושתו שיוכלו התחתונים לקבל קדושה בכח התורה
Sefat Emet, Parashat EmorRabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (the Piaseczner Rebbe, a Chassidic rebbe in Poland who was murdered in the Holocaust in 1943) wrote a book about educating young people. In it he says: when you say "You are holy and Your Name is holy," your soul should be moved and feel that it is standing in front of the Source of holiness, speaking to God directly as "You." He adds that this takes practice, and a strong faith that you are standing in God's presence even when you cannot see Him. Now read the word "You" again.
וכשתאמר לד׳ אתה קדוש ושמך קדוש, תתפעל נפשך ותרגיש איך היא עומדת לפני מקור הקדושה ומדברת אליו בלשון נוכח
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Chovat HaTalmidim, chapter 9The practical laws. For a final ruling, ask your rav.
Not if you fix it fast. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) rules that if you said HaEl HaKadosh and corrected it to HaMelech HaKadosh right away, you do not go back. The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, around 1900) says right away means within the time of about three words, and only if you have not begun the next blessing. After that you go back to the start of the Amidah, because the first three blessings count as one unit.
Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 582:1-2; Mishnah Berurah 582:4 and 582:7Go back to the start of the Amidah. The Shulchan Aruch rules this for a doubt as well as for a mistake, and the Mishnah Berurah explains that you are presumed to have said your all-year habit. Saying the line 90 times to build the habit, which helps with the rain line, fails here: the Magen Avraham (a major commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, 1600s) says it would mean saying God's name for nothing. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s) notes that some disagree, but advises not to rely on it.
Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 582:1; Mishnah Berurah 582:3; Magen Avraham 582:1; Kaf HaChaim, Orach Chaim 582:3The leader is held to the same rule. The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (a short guide to daily Jewish law, 1860s) rules that a leader who realizes too late, during the out-loud repetition of the Amidah, goes back to the beginning of the repetition, and the community says Kedushah (the call-and-response said with the leader just before this blessing) a second time. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s) says the same and cites earlier authorities for it.
Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 129:3; Kaf HaChaim, Orach Chaim 582:5Nothing happens. You do not go back. The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch says that in the rest of the year, if you said HaMelech HaKadosh by mistake, you do not need to repeat. The Sefard siddur's own instruction under this blessing says the same. So the rule is not symmetrical: skipping the king wording in the Ten Days forces you to start over, but saying it out of season does not.
Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 129:3; Siddur Sefard, Weekday Shacharit, AmidahYes. The short blessing the leader says after the Friday night Amidah, Magen Avot, has the words HaEl HaKadosh in its middle, and in the Ten Days they become HaMelech HaKadosh. But the rule is gentler there. The Arukh HaShulchan (a law code from around 1900) rules that if you said HaEl HaKadosh there, you have fulfilled it. The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch adds that a leader who notices right away fixes it, and one who notices later does not go back.
Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 129:4; Arukh HaShulchan, Orach Chaim 582:6אומר אבות וגבורות וקדושת השם, וכולל מלכיות עמהן
He says the Fathers, the Powers and the Holiness of the Name, and he includes the blessing of Kingship with them.
מנין שאומרים אבות שנאמר הבו לה׳ בני אלים ... ומנין שאומרים קדושות שנאמר הבו לה׳ כבוד שמו השתחוו לה׳ בהדרת קדש
From where do we know that people say the Fathers? Because it says, "Give to Hashem, sons of the mighty." ... And from where do we know that people say the Holinesses? Because it says, "Give to Hashem the glory of His name; bow to Hashem in holy splendor."
כל השנה כולה אדם מתפלל האל הקדוש ... חוץ מעשרה ימים שבין ראש השנה ויום הכפורים שמתפלל המלך הקדוש
All year a person prays "the holy God," except for the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when he prays "the holy King."
והתקדשתם והייתם קדושים כי קדוש אני ... כשם שאני קדוש כך אתם קדושים; כשם שאני פרוש כך אתם היו פרושים
"Make yourselves holy and be holy, for I am holy." Just as I am holy, so you be holy. Just as I am set apart, so you be set apart.
התורה הזהירה בעריות ובמאכלים האסורים והתירה הביאה איש באשתו ואכילת הבשר והיין ... והנה יהיה נבל ברשות התורה
The Torah warned against forbidden relationships and forbidden foods, but allowed a man to be with his wife and to eat meat and drink wine. ... And so a person could be a scoundrel with the Torah's permission.
כי כה אמר רם ונשא שכן עד וקדוש שמו מרום וקדוש אשכון ואת דכא ושפל רוח
For this is what the high and lifted-up One says, who lives forever and whose name is holy: I live in a high and holy place, and also with the crushed and the low in spirit.
ולקילוסן הוא צריך. והכתיב אלף אלפין ישמשוניה ... שאף על פי שיש לפניו כמה קילוסין חביב הוא קילוסן של ישראל יותר מכל
Does He need their praise? Isn't it written, "A thousand thousands serve Him"? ... Even though many praises stand before Him, the praise of Israel is dearer to Him than all of them.
אתה קדוש על שם והאל הקדוש נקדש בצדקה. ושמך קדוש על שם וקדוש שמו וכנגד זה וקדושים בכל יום יהללוך סלה אלו ישראל שנא' קדושים תהיו
"You are holy" is based on "the holy God is made holy through righteousness." "Your Name is holy" is based on "and holy is His name." And matching that, "holy ones praise You every day" means Israel, as it says, "You shall be holy."
כשבא יעקב ופגע בשערי רחמים והקדיש שמו של הקב"ה אמרו האל הקדוש
When Yaakov came and met the gates of mercy and made the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, holy, they said "the holy God."
דכל המשנה ממטבע שטבעו חכמים אינו יוצא ידי חובתו
Anyone who changes the form (literally, the coin) that the Sages minted has not done what he owes.
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