their prayers: “O God, sound a mighty trumpet for our redemption (1); gather us all from the four corners of the earth into Your sanctuary. Glory be to You, O Gatherer of the scattered people (2) of Israel.” They also say in it: “Restore our judges (3) from among us as of old, and our order as at the beginning. Rebuild Jerusalem, the city of Your holiness, in our own days, and ennoble us through its rebuilding. Glory be to You, O Builder of Jerusalem.” Moses and his followers never uttered anything of this sort in their prayers.

Likewise, they are unanimous in reciting at the beginning of the year the supplication we have already cited from them.

They have also agreed to institute the fast of the burning of the Temple, the fast of the siege (4), the fast of Gedaliah (5), making these obligatory, and the fast commemorating Haman’s crucifixion. They themselves admit that they added these fasts for reasons they deemed necessary; yet in so doing they jointly violated the plain wording of the Torah: “Do not add anything to the command that I give you, nor subtract anything from it.” Thus they colluded to add, to omit, and to alter God’s rulings—just as they concurred in suspending the penalty of stoning the adulterer, though it is explicitly mentioned in the Torah (6).

In the same way, they have conspired to assert that God can never abrogate any law He has prescribed for His servants.