("Benediction against Heretics"). Prayer dating from the Hellenistic era which constitutes the 12th benediction of the weekday Amidah. A talmudic reference to the prayer as a "benediction against Sadducees composed at the instigation of R. Gamaliel II (Ber. 28b) has led to the widespread and mistaken belief that it was first written some time after 70 CE and that it was a later addition to the 18 blessings of the daily Shemoneh Esreh (Amidah). More probably, however, it originated among the ḥasidim Rishonim in the second century BCE, during the Maccabean struggle against Jewish traitors who collaborated with the Syrian oppressor (see ḥanukkah). New historical circumstances led to various modifications of the text, especially after the destruction of the Second Temple, when informers worked for the Roman authorities (Shab. 33b), sectarian propaganda increased (Meg. 17b), and Judaism's very survival was in question. To expose and isolate dangerous elements within the Jewish camp, R. Samuel ha-Katan then enlarged and adapted the existing petition, directing it against Nazarenes (Judeo-Christians), apostates, slanderers, and other contemporary instigators of Roman persecution (Tosef Ber. 3:25). Though tolerated as a minor sect prior to the rebellion against Rome (68-70 CE), the Judeo-Christians had interpreted those calamitous events as Divine retribution, thereby antagonizing even the most liberal rabbinic opinion.
In its revised form, the Birkat ha-Minim was a malediction which no sectarians (Minim) could recite aloud in the synagogue and to which they could not possibly respond amen. It thus effectively barred them from public worship and severed their ties with the Jewish people. The text most probably read as follows: "For apostates who have rejected Your Torah let there be no hope, and may the Nazarenes and heretics perish in an instant. Let all the enemies of Your people, the House of Israel, be speedily cut down; and may You swiftly uproot, shatter, destroy, subdue, and humiliate the kingdom of arrogance, speedily in our days! Blessed are You, O Lord, who shatters His enemies and humbles the arrogant. "
After the immediate danger had passed, further textual changes were made to take account of later religious developments and historical realities. However, the Jews of medieval France and England still preserved much of the original wording in their ritual until the 13th century at least (see Jacob ben Judah of London, Ets Ḥayyim, Vol. 1, ed. Israel Brodie, p. 90). Key phrases also survive in the Yemenite prayer book and, to a lesser extent, in the Sephardi rite. Though never meant to impugn the adherents of other faiths, this malediction was denounced as an attack on Christianity: Abner of Burgos (Alfonso de Valladolid), a 14th-century Spanish apostate, had it removed from the Amidah and Christian censors elsewhere demanded various modifications in the text. Such pressures within the Ashkenazi world have resulted in the substitution of "slanderers" (malshinim) for "apostates" (meshummadim) and of "wickedness" for "heretics" (minim); a neutral term, "the arrogant" (zedim), often replaces "the kingdom of arrogance" (malkhut zadon), which originally stood for Rome; and "Your enemies" sometimes replaces "the enemies of Your people." Reform prayer books, from the mid-19th century onward, tended to omit or modify this petition.
