Untanneh Tokef, Unthanneh Toqeph, Un'taneh Tokef, or Unsanneh Tokef (ונתנה תקף) ("Let us speak of the awesomeness ") is a piyyut that has been a part of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy in some traditions of rabbinical Judaism for centuries. It introduces the Kedusha of Musaf for these days. It is chanted while the Torah ark is open and the congregants are standing. It is the "central poem of the High Holy Day [of the Day of Atonement]." The ArtScroll machzor calls it "one of the most stirring compositions in the entire liturgy of the Days of Awe."
Origin
Traditional account
The following story is recorded in the 13th-century commentary Or Zarua, who attributes the writing to Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn (a compiler of Jewish martyrologies, died ca. 1200).
According to the story, Untanneh Tokef was composed by an 11th-century sage named Rabbi Amnon of Mainz (or Mayence, in Germany) – who, apart from this one story, is unknown to history. As a friend of the (otherwise unnamed) Archbishop of Mainz (or, perhaps, the otherwise unnamed Governor), Rabbi Amnon was pressured to convert to Christianity. As a delaying tactic, he requested three days to consider the offer; immediately he regretted intensely giving even the pretense that he could possibly accept a foreign religion. After spending the three days in prayer, he refused to come to the archbishop as promised, and, when he was forcibly brought to the archbishop's palace, he begged that his tongue be cut out to atone for his sin. Instead, the archbishop ordered his hands and legs amputated — limb by limb — as punishment for not obeying his word to return after three days and for refusing to convert. At each amputation, Rabbi Amnon was again given the opportunity to convert, which he refused. He was sent home, with his severed extremities, on a knight's shield.
This event occurred shortly before Rosh Hashanah. On that holiday, as he lay dying, Rabbi Amnon asked to be carried into the synagogue, where he recited the original composition of Unetanneh Tokef with his last breath (the story contains an ambiguous phrase that some commentators interpreted as saying that he did not merely die but that his body miraculously vanished). Three days later, he appeared in a dream to Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshullam (died 1096), one of the great scholars and liturgists of Mainz, and begged him to transcribe the prayer and to see that it was included in the text of the High Holiday services. Thus, the legend concludes, Untanneh Tokef became a part of the standard liturgy.
Modern scholarship
It was once speculated that Kalonymus is the true author of the poem. However, both the language and style are different from the other poems of Kalonymus. In addition, there is evidence that a very similar piyyut was being recited in Italy in contemporary with Kalonymus.
Since then, a copy of the poem was discovered in the Cairo Geniza, Fragment Cambridge T-S H8.6, originally dated by Eric Werner to the 8th century. Ben Outhwaite thought this date unrealistic considering the paper and script, instead dating it to the 11th century.
While medieval history testifies amply to the intense persecution of Jews by Christians at the time of the Crusades, there are difficulties with the legend that it was composed by Amnon. Not least of these is its portrayal of Amnon as an illustrious Torah giant, while Jewish history of that period provides no record of a 'Rav Amnon of Mainz' at all. It seems unlikely that a person of such tremendous stature would be remembered only in a single legend. The received story has all the qualities of an urban legend - a heroic rabbi of whom there is no disparaging or even tedious information, an extremely cruel gentile villain (also without the problem of additional biographic details), the esteemed name and endorsement of Kalonymus, miraculous or extraordinary events, and supernatural instructions to include the poem in the annual liturgy. Scholars have long known that there is no historical foundation for the story of Rabbi Amnon and that this story may have been inspired or derived from the Christian legend associated with Saint Emmeram of Regensburg. Moreover, the discovery of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer within the earliest strata of the Cairo Geniza materials, dating well before the 11th century, makes it almost impossible that the prayer could have been composed as the legend claims.