Abstract
The investiture ceremony was woven into the fabric of the Sabbath liturgy and brought together gestures and speech acts that symbolized and actualized the Exilarch's position within the community. The ceremony drew simultaneously on symbols of political authority within the Jewish tradition—specifically those associated with biblical kings, priests, and teachers of Torah—and the idiom of contemporary Islamic ceremonial. This chapter reads the investiture ceremony as a type of "performance" wherein core values of medieval Jewish culture were enacted through symbolic acts performed by the Exilarch, the Geonim, members of prominent families, the synagogue cantor, and the general community. Studies of classical and medieval ceremonies explore the role ceremonies played in articulating the organization of political orders and promoting state values. The ceremony functioned as a microcosm of the state such that aspects including processional orders, seating arrangements, offerings of obeisance, and speech acts concretized in an observable way the dynamics of administration and power.