Birkat haMinim


The Birkat haMinim is a Jewish curse on heretics. Modern scholarship has generally evaluated that the Birkat haMinim probably did originally include Jewish Christians before Christianity became markedly a gentile religion. It is the 12th of the Eighteen Benedictions or Amidah.
The writing of the benediction is attributed to Shmuel ha-Katan at the supposed Council of Jamnia which was inserted in the "Eighteen Benedictions" as the 19th blessing in the silent prayer to be said thrice daily, the Amidah. The benediction is thus seen as related to the Pharisees, the development of the Hebrew Bible canon, the split of early Christianity and Judaism as heresy in Judaism, the origins of Rabbinic Judaism, origins of Christianity, Christianity in the 1st century, and the history of early Christianity.
According to one theory, it was useful as a tool for outing minim, because no min would recite aloud or reply amen to it, as it was a curse upon minim.

Composition

According to the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Berakhot 28b–29a, Shmuel ha-Katan was responsible for the writing of the Birkat haMinim:
The blessing exists in various forms. Two medieval Cairo Genizah copies include references to both minim and Notzrim.

Identification of ''Minim''

The extent of reference to Notzrim, or application of minim to Christians is debated. In his analysis of various scholarly views on the Birkat haMinim, Pieter W. van der Horst sums up,
During the medieval period, whether the blessing included Christians or not was the subject of disputations, a potential cause for persecution and thus a matter relevant for the safety of Jewish communities. It is generally viewed in modern studies that the term "heretics" at an early point in split of early Christianity and Judaism had included Jewish Christians. It was David Flusser's view that the Birkat haMinim was added in reference to the Sadducees.
Many scholars have seen reference to the Birkat haMinim in Justin Martyr's complaint to Trypho of the Jews "cursing in your synagogues those that believe on Christ." Reuven Kimelman challenged this, noting that Justin's description places the curse in the wrong sequence in the synagogue service.
Christian awareness of this prayer as a curse against them is only attested from the time of Jerome and Epiphanius in the fifth century CE. In the subsequent anti-Judeaic literature, it was almost universally ignored until the 13th century. The one exception is the work of Agobard of Lyons, writing in 826/827 to protest what he saw was the granting of too many privileges to Jews by Louis the Pious, the Carolingian monarch.