Biography
Rabbi Amnon of Magenza — Mainz, called in English sources Amnon of Mayence — is the figure to whom tradition ascribes the piyut Unetaneh Tokef, said in Mussaf of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The account was first set down in writing in the Or Zarua of the thirteenth century in the name of Rabbi Efraim of Bonn. Rabbi Amnon was among the great men of Magenza and close to the ruling power, and the bishop of the city pressed him hard to leave his faith. After much urging he asked for three days to consider the matter, and the moment he left the palace he was seized with remorse that he had allowed himself even the appearance of wavering.
When the third day came and he did not present himself, he was brought by force. For refusing to convert, and for having asked for time — which was taken as a doubt in his emunah — the bishop ordered the joints of his fingers and toes cut off. Rosh Hashanah arrived, and the dying Rabbi Amnon asked to be carried into the beit knesset. In the middle of the tefillah, before Kedushah, he opened and said Unetaneh Tokef, which sets out the smallness of man before the judgment of Heaven, and immediately afterward he was niftar. Three days later, the account continues, he appeared in a dream to Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshullam, taught him the piyut word by word, and charged him to spread it through all the kehillot.
The piyut itself — its picture of the day of judgment, the trembling of the malachim, mi yichyeh umi yamut — became one of the high points of the Yamim Noraim in minhag Ashkenaz, and though the account is set in Ashkenaz, the piyut was taken up in every part of Israel. The glosses on the Rosh written by Rabbi Yisrael of Krems around 1400 state that Rabbi Amnon composed it about what befell him, and give the Or Zarua as their source; the story reached a wide public through the Rosh Hashanah machzor of the Roman rite printed in 1541, from which Gedaliah ibn Yachya took it, and the later machzorim reprinted it in turn.
Where traditions differ. Sources differ over the origin of the piyut. The tradition of the Or Zarua ascribes Unetaneh Tokef to Rabbi Amnon himself; others hold it far older, reaching Ashkenaz from Eretz Yisrael by way of Italy, with Rabbi Amnon — whose name and that of Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshullam both point to Italian families — the one who brought it into the Ashkenazi order of tefillah.
רבי אמנון ממגנצא הוא דמות מרכזית בפולקלור היהודי של יהדות אשכנז בימי הביניים. הוא ידוע בעיקר כמי שמיוחס לו, על פי המסורת, חיבור הפיוט ונתנה תוקף הנאמר בתפילת מוסף של ראש השנה ויום כיפור. דמותו של רבי אמנון נחשבת לסמל של קידוש השם ומסירות נפש בתולדות עם ישראל.
Amnon of Mainz or Amnon of Mayence is the subject of a medieval legend that became very popular. It tells of Rabbi Amnon, of Mainz (Mayence), Germany, in the 11th century, whom the Archbishop of Mainz, at various times, tried to convert to Christianity. On one occasion Amnon evasively asked to be given three days' time for consideration, but when he left the Archbishop's palace he immediately regretted even appearing to waver in his Jewish faith. When he failed to appear on the appointed day, the archbishop had him brought guarded into his presence. Amnon, rebuked for his failure to keep his promise, pleaded guilty, and said that his tongue should be amputated, because it had expressed a doubt as to the truth of Judaism. The archbishop, however, pronounced the sentence that Amnon's feet, which had refused to come, and his hands, be cut off. This was accordingly done.
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