Responsum: On the Hundred Daily Blessings

This responsum, perhaps Natronay Ga’on’s best-known literary contribution, addresses the talmudic requirement to recite one hundred blessings a day (b. Menaḥot 43b). Reportedly, Natronay sent this halakhic essay in response to a request from the Jewish community of Lucena, Spain. The list is organized according to the order of saying these hundred blessings through the day. Natronay’s rival, ‘Amram bar Sheshna, also wrote a prayer book, The Order of ‘Amram Ga’on (Seder ‘Amram Ga’on), testifying to a pressing need in the ninth century for clarification and confirmation of the text of the liturgy. Natronay’s responsum circulated widely in the medieval period and was treated as an authoritative text, coming as it did from a relatively early post-talmudic figure. From the perspective of the history of Jewish liturgy, the formulations preserved in this text show how variable the wording of many of the blessings was during this period.