Prayers and Blessings
Level: Intermediate |
The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah. It is derived from the
root Pe-Lamed-Lamed and the word l'hitpalel,
meaning to judge oneself. This surprising word origin provides insight into
the purpose of Jewish prayer. The most important part of any Jewish prayer,
whether it be a prayer of petition, of thanksgiving, of praise of
G-d, or of confession, is the introspection it
provides, the moment that we spend looking inside ourselves, seeing our role
in the universe and our relationship to G-d.
The Yiddish word meaning "pray" is "daven,"
which ultimately comes from the same Latin root as the English word "divine"
and emphasizes the One to whom prayer is directed.
For an observant Jew, prayer is not simply something that happens in
synagogue once a week (or even three times
a day). Prayer an integral part of everyday life. In fact, one of the most
important prayers in Judaism, the Birkat
Ha-Mazon, is never recited in synagogue!
Observant Jews are constantly reminded of G-d'-s presence and of our relationship
with G-d, because we are continually praying to Him. Our first thought in
the morning, even before we get out of bed, is a prayer thanking G-d for
returning our souls to us. There are prayers to be recited before enjoying
any material pleasure, such as eating or wearing new clothes; prayers to
recite before performing any mitzvah
(commandment), such as washing hands or lighting candles; prayers to recite
upon seeing anything unusual, such as a king, a rainbow, or the site of a
great tragedy; prayers to recite whenever some good or bad thing happens;
and prayers to recite before going to bed at night. All of these prayers
are in addition to formal prayer services, which are performed three times
a day every weekday and additional times on
shabbat and
festivals. See
Jewish Liturgy.
Many people today do not see the need for regular, formal prayer. "I pray
when I feel inspired to, when it is meaningful to me," they say. This attitude
overlooks two important things: the purpose of prayer, and the need for practice.
One purpose of prayer is to increase your awareness of
G-d in your life and the role that G-d plays in
your life. If you only pray when you feel inspired (that is, when you are
already aware of G-d), then you will not increase your awareness of G-d.
In addition, if you want to do something well, you have to practice it
continually, even when you don't feel like doing it. This is as true of prayer
as it is of playing a sport, playing a musical instrument, or writing. The
sense of humility and awe of G-d that is essential to proper prayer does
not come easily to modern man, and will not simply come to you when you feel
the need to pray. If you wait until inspiration strikes, you will not have
the skills you need to pray effectively. Before I started praying regularly,
I found that when I wanted to pray, I didn't know how. I didn't know what
to say, or how to say it, or how to establish the proper frame of mind. If
you pray regularly, you will learn how to express yourself in prayer.
When you say the same prayers day after day, you might expect that the prayers
would become routine and would begin to lose meaning. While this may be true
for some people, this is not the intention of Jewish prayer. As I said at
the beginning of this discussion, the most important part of prayer is the
introspection it provides. Accordingly, the proper frame of mind is vital
to prayer.
The mindset for prayer is referred to as kavanah, which is generally translated
as "concentration" or "intent." The minimum level of kavanah is an awareness
that one is speaking to G-d and an intention to
fulfill the obligation to pray. If you do not have this minimal level of
kavanah, then you are not praying; you are merely reading. In addition, it
is preferred that you have a mind free from other thoughts, that you know
and understand what you are praying about and that you think about the meaning
of the prayer.
Liturgical melodies are often used as an aid to forming the proper mindset.
Many prayers and prayer services have traditional melodies associated with
them. These can increase your focus on what you are doing and block out
extraneous thoughts.
I also find it useful to move while praying. Traditional Jews routinely sway
back and forth during prayer, apparently a reference to Psalm 35, which says
"All my limbs shall declare, 'O L-rd, who is like You?'" Such movement is
not required, and many people find it distracting, but I personally find
that it helps me concentrate and focus.
The Talmud states that it is permissible to
pray in any language that you can understand; however, traditional Judaism
has always stressed the importance of praying in Hebrew. A traditional
Chasidic story speaks glowingly of the prayer
of an uneducated Jew who wanted to pray but did not speak Hebrew. The man
began to recite the only Hebrew he knew: the
alphabet. He recited it over and over again,
until a rabbi asked what he was doing. The man
told the rabbi, "The Holy One, Blessed is He, knows what is in my heart.
I will give Him the letters, and He can put the words together."
Even the more liberal movements are increasingly
recognizing the value of Hebrew prayer. My grandmother told me that fifty
years ago, you never heard a word of Hebrew in a
Reform
synagogue. Today, the standard Reform prayer
book contains many standard prayers in Hebrew, generally followed by
transliteration and an English
translation. I have heard several Reform rabbis read from the
Torah in Hebrew, also generally followed by
an English translation or explanation.
There are many good reasons for praying in Hebrew: it gives you an incentive
for learning Hebrew, which might otherwise be forgotten; it provides a link
to Jews all over the world; it is the language in which the covenant with
G-d was formed, etc. To me, however, the most
important reason to pray in Hebrew is that Hebrew is the language of Jewish
thought.
Any language other than Hebrew is laden down with the connotations of that
language's culture and religion. When you translate a Hebrew word, you lose
subtle shadings of Jewish ideas and add ideas that are foreign to Judaism.
Only in Hebrew can the pure essence of Jewish thought be preserved and properly
understood. For example, the English word "commandment" connotes an order
imposed upon us by a stern and punishing G-d, while the Hebrew word
"mitzvah" implies an honor and privilege given
to us, a responsibility that we undertook as part of the covenant we made
with G-d, a good deed that we are eager to perform.
This is not to suggest that praying in Hebrew is more important than
understanding what you are praying about. If you are in
synagogue and you don't know Hebrew well
enough, you can listen to the Hebrew while looking at the translation. If
you are reciting a prayer or blessing alone, you should get a general idea
of its meaning from the translation before attempting to recite it in Hebrew.
But even if you do not fully understand Hebrew at this time, you should try
to hear the prayer, experience the prayer, in Hebrew.
Most of our prayers are expressed in the first person plural, "us" instead
of "me," and are recited on behalf of all of the
Jewish people. This form of prayer emphasizes
our responsibility for one another and our interlinked fates.
In Judaism, prayer is largely a group activity rather than an individual
activity. Although it is permissible to pray alone and it fulfills the obligation
to pray, you should generally make every effort to pray with a group, short
of violating a commandment to do so.
A complete formal prayer service cannot be conducted without a quorum of
at least 10 adult Jewish men; that is, at least 10 people who are obligated
to fulfill the commandment to recite the prayers. This prayer quorum is referred
to as a minyan (from a Hebrew root meaning to
count or to number). Certain prayers and religious activities cannot be performed
without a minyan. This need for a minyan has often helped to keep the Jewish
community together in isolated areas.
A berakhah (blessing) is a special kind of prayer that is very common in
Judaism. Berakhot are recited both as part of the
synagogue services and as a response or
prerequisite to a wide variety of daily occurrences. Berakhot are easy to
recognize: they all start with the word barukh (blessed or praised).
 The words barukh and berakhah are both derived from
the Hebrew root Beit-Reish-Kaf, meaning "knee,"
and refer to the practice of showing respect by bending the knee and bowing.
See animation at right. There are several places in
Jewish liturgy where this gesture is performed,
most of them at a time when a berakhah is being recited.
According to Jewish tradition, a person should recite 100 berakhot each day!
This is not as difficult as it sounds. Repeating the
Shemoneh Esrei three times a day (as all
observant Jews do) covers 57 berakhot all by itself, and there are dozens
of everyday occurrences that require berakhot.
Many English-speaking people find the idea of berakhot very confusing. To
them, the word "blessing" seems to imply that the person saying the blessing
is conferring some benefit on the person he is speaking to. For example,
in Catholic tradition, a person making a confession begins by asking the
priest to bless him. Yet in a berakhah, the person saying the blessing is
speaking to G-d. How can the creation confer a
benefit upon the Creator?
This confusion stems largely from difficulties in the translation. The Hebrew
word "barukh" is not a verb describing what we do to G-d; it is an adjective
describing G-d as the source of all blessings. When we recite a berakhah,
we are not blessing G-d; we are expressing wonder at how blessed G-d is.
There are basically three types of berakhot: ones recited before enjoying
a material pleasure (birkhot ha-na'ah), ones recited before performing a
mitzvah (commandment) (birkhot ha-mitzvot)
and ones recited at special times and events (birkhot hoda'ah).
Berakhot recited before enjoying a material pleasure, such as eating, drinking
or wearing new clothes, acknowledge G-d as the
creator of the thing that we are about to use. The berakhah for bread praises
G-d as the one "who brings forth bread from the earth." The berakhah for
wearing new clothing praises G-d as the one "who clothes the naked." By reciting
these berakhot, we recognize that G-d is the Creator of all things, and that
we have no right to use things without first asking his permission. The berakhah
essentially asks permission to use the thing.
Berakhot recited before performing a mitzvah
(commandment), such as washing hands or lighting candles, praise G-d as the
one "who sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us..." to do whatever
it is we are about to do. Reciting such a blessing is an essential element
of the performance of a mitzvah. In Jewish tradition, a person who performs
a mitzvah with a sense of obligation is considered more meritorious than
a person who performs the same mitzvah because he feels like it. Recitation
of the berakhah focuses our attention on the fact that we are performing
a religious duty with a sense of obligation. It is worth noting that we recite
such berakhot over both biblical commandments and rabbinical commandments.
In the latter case, the berakhah can be understood as "who sanctified us
with his commandments and commanded us to obey the rabbis, who commanded
us to..." do whatever it is we are about to do. See
Halakhah: Jewish Law for an explanation
of the distinction between biblical and rabbinical commandments.
Berakhot recited at special times and events, such as when seeing a rainbow
or a king or hearing good or bad news, acknowledge G-d as the ultimate source
of all good and evil in the universe. It is important to note that such berakhot
are recited for both good things and things that appear to us to be bad.
When we see or hear something bad, we praise G-d as "the true Judge,"
underscoring the fact that things that appear to be bad happen for a reason
that is ultimately just, even if we in our limited understanding cannot always
see the reason.
Many of the berakhot that we recite today were composed by Ezra and the Men
of the Great Assembly nearly 2500 years ago, and they continue to be recited
in the same form.
All berakhot use the phrase "Barukh atah
Ha-shem,
Elokaynu, melekh ha-olam," Blessed art thou
L-rd, our G-d, King
of the Universe. This is sometimes referred to as shem u'malkut (the name
and the sovereignty), the affirmation of G-d as king.
The use of the word "thou" is worth discussing: in modern English, many people
think of the word "thou" as being formal and respectful, but in fact the
opposite is true. Thou (and the corresponding Hebrew atah) is the informal,
familiar second person pronoun, used for friends and relatives. This word
expresses our close and intimate relationship with G-d.
Immediately after this phrase, the berakhah abruptly shifts into the third
person; for example, in the birkhot ha-mitzvot, the first two phrases are
blessed art thou, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who sanctifies us with
his commandments and commands us... This grammatical faux pas is intentional.
The use of the third person pronoun while speaking to a person in Hebrew
is a way of expressing extreme respect and deference. This shift in perspective
is a deliberately jarring way of expressing the fact that G-d is simultaneously
close to us and yet far above us, intimately related to us and yet transcendent.
This paradox is at the heart of the Jewish relationship with G-d.
One of the most important prayers in Judaism, one of the very few that the
Bible commands us to recite, is never recited in
synagogue. That prayer is birkat ha-mazon,
grace after meals.
In Deuteronomy 8:10, we are commanded that when we eat and are satisfied,
we must bless the L-rd, our
G-d. This commandment is fulfilled by reciting
the birkat ha-mazon (blessing of the food) after each meal. Reciting birkat
ha-mazon is commonly referred to as bentsching, from the
Yiddish word meaning "to bless." Although
the word "bentsch" can refer to the recitation of any
berakhah, it is almost always used to refer
to reciting birkat ha-mazon.
The grace after meals is recited in addition to the various berakhot over
food recited before meals.
Birkat ha-mazon actually consists of four blessings, three of which were
composed around the time of Ezra and the Great Assembly and a fourth which
was added after the destruction of the Temple. These blessings are:
-
Birkat Hazan (the blessing for providing food), which thanks G-d for giving
food to the world,
-
Birkat Ha-Aretz (the blessing for the land), which thanks G-d for bringing
us forth from the land of Egypt, for making His covenant with us, and for
giving us the land of Israel as an inheritance,
-
Birkat Yerushalayim (the blessing for Jerusalem), which prays for the rebuilding
of Jerusalem and the coming of the moshiach;
and
-
Birkat Ha-Tov v'Ha-Maytiv (the blessing for being good and doing good), was
added after the destruction of the Temple, although it existed before that
time. It emphasizes the goodness of G-d's work, that G-d is good and does
good.
In addition to these four blessings, the full birkat ha-mazon incorporates
some psalms and additional blessings for various special occasions (holidays,
guests, etc.)
If you would like to hear the Birkat Ha-Mazon, check out this
RealPlayer recording of
Cantor Pinchas Rabinovicz
chanting Birkat Ha-Mazon from
613.org, the best source of Jewish
Torah Audio on the net! (Please note: This recording uses
Ashkenazic pronunciation).
As I said above, Jewish prayer is ordinarily
a group activity done with a quorum of 10 people called a minyan. If you
are interested in finding an Orthodox minyan
in your area to pray with, check out Go
Daven, a searchable worldwide database of Orthodox minyans. Just tell
them where you want to daven (pray), and they'll find you an Orthodox minyan,
complete with service times and even a link to a map!
If you would prefer a Conservative synagogue,
try the USCJ's Find
a Synagogue page. If you prefer Reform,
try the URJ's Directory of
Congregations. For
Reconstructionist synagogues, try
the JRF's directory of
Reconstructionist
Congregations and Havurot.
© Copyright 5757-5762 (1996-2001), Tracey
R Rich
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