What Rite or Ritual for Prayer Was in General Use Among the Jews in Lithuania?
by Rabbi Shalom Bronstein Until the invention of the printing press, the prayer ritual or Nusah used in the various Jewish communities varied a great deal. There were certain general traditions, for example, Ashkenazi, Sefardi, Italian, Yemenite, but nearly every town had its own uniqueness. Since printing had already been invented by the time the Jewish communities in Lithuania developed, there was little variation in the order of the tefillah or prayer services between the towns. One could go from one place to another and expect to find the same pattern and order of prayers followed in the synagogue service. As most of the Lithuanian Jews had migrated from the west where the Ashkenazic ritual was used, that was the prayerbook ritual used in the vast majority of the communities. By the beginning of the 19th century in Eastern Europe, however, three different versions of the prayerbook or three different Nus-haot (Nusah is the singular) had come into general use: (1) Ashkenazi – This r
