Old Aleppo rite The Aleppo Musta'arabim in Syria originally had a distinct way of worship, set out in a distinct prayer book called
Maḥzor Aram Soba. This ritual is thought to reflect Palestinian rather than Babylonian traditions in certain respects, particularly in the prominence of
piyyut (see
below). In a broad sense, it falls within the "Sephardi" rather than the "Ashkenazi" family of rituals, but has resemblances to non-standard Sephardi rites such as the Catalan rather than to the normative Castilian rite. It also contains some archaic features which it shares with the
Siddur of Saadia Gaon and
Maimonides' laws of prayer. The following are some of the differences that stand out in the Maḥzor Aram Soba. • The order of the Psalms in the morning service is different. • The following prayers are worded differently (while still preserving the same message of the prayer): Baruch She’Amar,
Kaddish, Kedushah, certain blessings of the
Amidah,
Tachanun, and the
Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals). • The Kaddish has a long set of “messianic references in the second verse” (unlike the
Sephardic rite where it is much shorter and the
Ashkenazic rite where it is absent). • Psalm 8 was recited each night before the
Evening Service, a practice no longer in place anywhere else. • There was a tradition to recite 72 different verses from the Bible immediately after the Amidah of the Morning Services. • There is a tradition, still followed by many
Syrian Jews, called Alpha-Beta, which consists of reciting Psalm 119–134 before the Evening Services on Motzaei Shabbat: this also appears in the prayer book of the
Spanish and Portuguese Jews. • There was also an important tradition pertaining to the month of
Elul, the month of repentance before the
Days of Judgment. At dawn of Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, special Seliḥot prayers were recited. There were different seliḥot prayers, piyyutim, and Biblical verses to be recited for each week of that month. Syrian Jews, like other Sephardim, still recite
Seliḥot during the entire month of Elul. However, the seliḥot recited by the Syrian Jews are standardized and do not vary from day to day as do the seliḥot of the Aram Soba Maḥzor. • On
Tisha B'ab, they only read Megillat
Eicha at night and not in the morning: Syrian Jews still recite it before rather than after Arbit. • The
Kiddush for the three pilgrim festivals is very long, and resembles that found in the
Siddur of Saadia Gaon and the
Baladi Yemenite tradition. A facsimile edition has recently been published by Yad HaRav Nissim, using pages from the best surviving copies of the 1527 edition.
Influence of the Sephardic rite After the immigration of Jews from
Spain following the expulsion, a compromise
liturgy evolved containing elements from the customs of both communities, but with the Sephardic element taking an ever-larger share. One reason for this was the influence of the
Shulchan Aruch, and of the
Kabbalistic usages of
Isaac Luria, both of which presupposed a Sephardic (and specifically Castilian) prayer text; for this reason a basically "Sephardic" type of text replaced many of the local Near and Middle Eastern rites over the course of the 16th to 19th centuries, subject to a few characteristic local customs retained in each country. (See Sephardic law and customs#Liturgy for more detail.) In
Syria, as in
North African countries, there was no attempt to print a Siddur containing the actual usages of the community, as this would not generally be commercially viable. Major publishing centres, principally Livorno, and later Vienna, would produce standard "Sephardic" prayer books suitable for use in all communities, and particular communities such as the Syrians would order these in bulk, preserving any special usages by oral tradition. (For example, Ḥacham Abraham Hamaoui of
Aleppo commissioned a series of prayer-books from Livorno, which were printed in 1878: these were "pan-Sephardic" in character, with some notes referring to "minhag Aram Soba".) As details of the oral tradition faded from memory, the liturgy in use came still nearer to the "Livorno" standard. Nevertheless, a distinction persisted between the "Sephardic" rite (based on the Livorno siddurim) and the "Musta'arabi" rite (basically similar, but retaining some features derived from the older tradition). In the early years of the twentieth century, the "Sephardic" rite was almost universal in Syria. The only exception (in Aleppo) was a "Musta'arabi" minyan at the
Central Synagogue of Aleppo, but even their liturgy differed from the "Sephardic" in only a few details such as the order of the hymns on Rosh Hashanah. Some differences between the two main prayer books published in Aleppo in the early twentieth century may reflect Sephardi/Musta'arabi differences, but this is not certain: current Syrian rite prayer books are based on both books.
Use of piyyut Approximately 30% of the
Mahzor Aram Soba is composed of
piyyutim. The use of
piyyutim, which was very prominent on the holidays and
Shabbat, was not limited to the Syrian Musta'arabi community, but occurred in most Jewish communities. The earliest
piyyutim however, were “overwhelmingly [from] [Eretz Israel] or its neighbor Syria, [because] only there was the Hebrew language sufficiently cultivated that it could be managed with stylistic correctness, and only there could it be made to speak so expressively.” The earliest Palestinian prayer manuscripts, found in the
Cairo Genizah, often consist of
piyyutim, as these were the parts of the liturgy that required to be written down: the wording of the basic prayers was generally known by heart. The use of
piyyut was always considered a Palestinian speciality: the Babylonian
Geonim made every effort to discourage it and restore what they regarded as the statutory wording of the prayers, holding that "any [hazzan] who uses
piyyut thereby gives evidence that he is no scholar". Accordingly, scholars classifying the liturgies of later periods usually hold that, the more a given liturgy makes use of
piyyutim, the more likely it is to reflect Palestinian as opposed to Babylonian influence. This, if correct, would put the
Mahzor Aram Soba firmly in the Palestinian camp. However, the
piyyutim in the
Mahzor Aram Soba resemble those of the Spanish school rather than the work of early Palestinian
payyetanim such as
Eleazar Kalir: for example, they are in strict Arabic metres and make little use of
Midrash. Also, they are generally placed in a block at the beginning of the service, like today's
Baqashot, rather than expanding on and partially replacing core parts of the prayers. Accordingly, the prevalence of
piyut does not of itself establish a link with the
old Palestinian rite, though such a link may be argued for on other grounds. Following the dominance in Syria of the Sephardic rite, which took the Geonic disapproval of
piyyut seriously, most of these
piyyutim were eliminated from the prayer book. Some of them survive as
pizmonim, used extra-liturgically. ==Today==