Judaism & Spirituality: The Path of Blessing
Rabbi Toba Spitzer
January 21, 2007

Today I want to talk with you about what I think is a distinctly Jewish approach to spiritual practice. To do that, I need to go back in history a bit: to the year 70 of the Common Era, in the area known as Judea, in the land of Israel. In that year, the Roman Empire destroyed the Temple of the Jewish people, and exiled the majority of the population of Jerusalem and the towns around it. It was the decisive catastrophe in the life of the Jewish people at that time, and the end of a system of religion that had begun over 1,000 years earlier. The Temple and its priesthood had stood at the center of Israelite religion. Through the rituals of sacrifice and other celebrations at the Temple, the Jewish people sought atonement, marked the sacred calendar, ordered their religious lives. What would they do now?

Nearly 150 years later, a collection of teachings was written down, called the Mishnah. The Mishnah was divided into six sections, or “orders,” and each of these orders contained instructions for different aspects of creating a holy community. The Mishnah is hard to describe, but it’s more or less a record—almost in shorthand—of the discussions and decisions of a small group of rabbis. These rabbis were the group of leaders who emerged in the wake of the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent irrelevance of the priests, the erstwhile leaders of the Jewish community.

This was the challenge that these early rabbis faced:

How were they to recreate and to maintain holy community in the aftermath of the massive destruction and displacement that followed the Roman conquest of Jerusalem? How were they going to re-establish a sacred order, a new center for the religious life of their community? The Mishnah appears to be the record of their attempt to do just that. In its cryptic way, it contains instructions for almost all aspects of life. It deals with holy time, with holy places, with eating and sex and work; with civil law and family relations.

These rabbinic conversations and decisions were initially an entirely oral tradition. But at some point the decision was made to write it all down, and what emerged was the Mishnah. Somewhat intriguingly, the first order of the written Mishnah is called “Brachot,” “blessings.” For the past two thousand years, if not longer, the practice of blessing has been a core Jewish spiritual practice, and this is what I’d like to explore with you this morning.

This is a record of early rabbinic teachings on morning blessings, a teaching from the Talmud, the commentary on the Mishnah:

When a person wakes s/he says: ‘My God, the soul which You have placed in me is pure. You have fashioned it in me, You have breathed it into me, You preserve it within me and You will one day take it from me and restore it to me in the time to come. So long as the soul is within me I give thanks to You, Adonai my God, and the God of my ancestors, sovereign of all worlds, master of all souls. Blessed art You, Adonai, who restores souls to dead bodies.’

When you hear the cock crowing you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who has given the rooster understanding to distinguish between day and night.’
When you open your eyes you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who opens the eyes of the blind’.
When you stretch and sit up you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who loosens the bound’.
When you get dressed you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who clothes the naked’.
When you stand up you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who raises the bent over’.
When you step on to the ground you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who spreads the earth on the waters.’
When you commence to walk you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who makes firm a person’s steps.’
When you tie your shoes you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who has supplied all my wants’.
When you fasten your belt you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who girds Israel with might’.
When you put on your head-covering you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who crowns Israel with glory.’

When you wash your face you should say: ‘Blessed is the One who has removed the bands of sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids. And may it be Your will, Adonai my God, to train me in Your Torah and make me cleave to Your mitzvot, and do not bring me into sin or into transgression or into temptation or into contempt. Shape my yetzer to serve You, and keep me far from a bad person and an evil companion, and make me cleave to the good inclination and to a good companion in Your world. Give me this day and every day grace, loving kindness and compassion in Your eyes and in the eyes of all who see me, and show me Your good loving kindness. Blessed are You, Adonai, who bestows loving kindness upon your people Israel’. (Brachot 60b)

So, what does it mean to accompany every moment, every action, of our waking moments with a blessing? What is the effect of this practice?

The act of blessing encapsulates two core themes of Jewish spiritual practice: the expression of praise and of gratitude. The act of reciting a blessing is a simple mechanism for awakening a sense of gratitude, an urge to praise, within us.

The early rabbis assumed—correctly, I think—that most of us don’t wake up every day with that particular mindset. On the contrary, we tend to wake up grudgingly, perhaps with a sense of dread or anxiety of what the day might bring. Or we’re just sleepy and distracted. To arouse a different kind of mind state, we are instructed to begin our day with specific words and intentions.

One tradition says that we should begin every morning with what I read earlier: “My God, the soul you have placed in me is pure…” Here, I acknowledge and give thanks for my soul, I remember the pure essence, the point of purity, within me. No matter how shmutzy I feel, there is something Godly at my core.

The blessing goes on, “You created my soul, you have shaped it, you have breathed it into me, and you will take it from me.” This is a moment of humility, a moment to acknowledge that I don’t really have control over whether or not I wake up in the morning—there is a Power far beyond my control which makes that determination. The blessing goes on, “For as long as”—or—“for every moment that my soul is within me, I am grateful before You.” Just being alive, just having an awareness of my own life force, is an occasion for gratitude.

Another tradition instructs me to say these words upon awakening: “I am grateful to you, living and enduring Power, that you have returned my soul to me in love—how great is your faithfulness.”

This blessing derives from an ancient notion that our souls leave us during the night, and return to us when we awake in the morning. When I say this in the morning—and I do try to say it every morning before I get out of bed—I understand it a bit less literally. To me it is a reminder of a certain kind of awareness—a reminder that I should experience waking up for the little miracle it is, that I should have gratitude for just being alive today. And even more—that I should experience waking up this morning as a gesture of love from the Universe.

The final two words of this blessing are perhaps the most powerful: “Rabah emunatecha--How great is your faithfulness.” The “you” here is God—how great is God’s faithfulness in giving me the gift of another morning. Meaning—my waking up, my being brought out of sleep into a new day of living, is in some way an act of faith on the part of the Universe—an act of faith in me. I understand this to mean that there must be something I need to do this day, some reason that I’m here for another 24 hours. What is my task today?

There is a statement elsewhere in the Talmud, attributed to Rabbi Meir, that a person is obligated to say 100 blessings a day (Menachot 43b). To reach this goal, rabbinic tradition developed blessings for almost every aspect of life. As I read earlier, there are blessings to accompany each action that we take in the morning. There is a blessing to be said after going to the bathroom. There are specific blessings for every type of food that I eat, each time that I eat. There is a blessing for studying Torah, a blessing to say when I see a rainbow or hear thunder. There is a blessing for trees when they first blossom in the spring, and a blessing to be said upon wearing new clothes. There are blessings that accompany special ritual acts—like lighting Shabbat candles—and blessings said as part of the morning and evening liturgy. There are blessings for hearing good news, and a blessing to say when hearing of a death.

So what is a blessing, exactly? What does it do?

According to rabbinic tradition, a Jewish blessing has a certain formula. Most blessings begin: Baruch atah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha-olam – which means, “Blessed are you, Adonai, our God, sovereign of the universe…” And then the blessing continues: Blessed are you, creator of the fruit of the earth. Or: Blessed are you, who heals the sick. Or: Blessed are You, who has given us life, and sustained us, and brought us to this moment.

A blessing, it seems, is an acknowledgment of the connection between this moment or this particular action and the ultimate Power of the Universe. In Judaism, that Power is represented by the Hebrew letters Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay—four letters that when put together are like a string of vowels, essentially unpronounceable. They are letters from the root of the verb “to be,” although an impossible construction of that verb, continuing elements of past, present, and future. Since this name is unpronounceable, Jewish tradition is to say “Adonai” in its place—which translates as “my Lord.”

For some people, Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay represents a name of God. For others, it points to the Source of Life, or the Power that animates the universe. Some call it Reality. Whatever you call it, it is that which brings us all into being, and that which gives the universe—and each of us—our direction and purpose.

When I say a blessing, when I say “Baruch atah...”, I make a personal connection between myself and that awesome Power. I say “Blessed are You” not so much because I actually think of God as a “You,” as another person, but because the power of saying “Blessed are You” brings me into a moment of direct encounter. I can only say “you” to someone, to something, that is right in front of me. It is a moment of humility, a moment to acknowledge a Source beyond myself that has given me the ability to have food to eat, to have clothes to wear, to have use of my body and mind.

Chet Raymo, who used to write a weekly science column for the Boston Globe, has a beautiful definition of prayer, based on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion of prayer. Raymo writes that prayer is “To intrude ourselves into the fabric of the world; to quiet the insistent murmurings of self long enough to understand that we all exist in a greater matrix of life, and that all life exists in a yet greater matrix of matter and energy.”

This could also serve as a definition of blessing. To “intrude” ourselves, to connect myself, to the “greater matrix of life,” by taking a moment to acknowledge the matrix of which I am a part when I take a bite of food, or wake up in the morning, or do the simple actions that begin my day.

Or to use a different metaphor: If we think of Godliness as a power like electricity—a force which we need appropriate channels to connect to, if we want to use its power in a constructive way—so if God is the electricity, then a blessing is a bit like the wall socket. And when I say a blessing, I am plugging in. That act of “plugging in” illuminates a moment in time, a moment or an act that otherwise might be quite mundane—whether it’s putting on my clothes or washing my face in the morning, or eating my lunch, or going to the bathroom. Suddenly, I am connected to more than just myself, more than just this moment.

In Buddhist terms, we could call the act of blessing a kind of mindfulness practice. Saying a blessing functions as a pause before doing, an opportunity to stop and become a bit more mindful of where I am in the present moment.

Food blessings are particularly useful this way, because each kind of food has its own particular blessing. In traditional Jewish practice, there are separate blessings for fruits and vegetables that grow in the ground and fruits that grow on trees, for foods made from grain and foods derived from animals. The wonderful effect of needing to figure out which blessing to say over which food is the pause that it requires before I put anything in my mouth—that moment when I need to stop and think for a moment about where this came from. This moment is an opportunity, if I am open to taking it, to reflect on the journey of that particular item of food:

• From which part of the world has this traveled to arrive on my plate?
• Who was involved in getting it to my table? What conditions did those people work in?
• Can I say a blessing over it with a whole heart, knowing what I know?

Blessing practice is an invitation to live more mindfully in a world which does not necessarily encourage such reflection.

There was one time in my life when I approached a blessing with great trepidation. The Mishnah teaches that we must bless the bad just as we bless the good. The blessing said upon hearing of the death of someone we know is Baruch dayan ha-emet, “Blessed is the true judge,” or, “Blessed is the judge of truth.”

This is a blessing that I have said many times with Jewish people who have lost a loved one, in the moment before the funeral begins. It is a difficult blessing. It reflects a belief in a God who orders the world in a way that is mysterious to us, yet that is true on some level that we cannot understand. God has judged in truth, and the sentence of death, for whatever reason, has been given. It’s a theology that I don’t really accept, and yet there is a deep, very powerful truth in this formulation.

I often wondered what it would be like to say this blessing not as a rabbi, but as a mourner, upon experiencing the death of someone I loved. Then, four years ago, my father dropped dead suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was 64 years old. Two days after his death, I stood in the funeral home and said that blessing. Baruch dayan ha’emet. And it felt astoundingly, painfully right. That blessing said to me: “This is the truth. It is a horrible truth, but it is the truth of this moment, and I need to accept it.” It was the practice of trying to be fully present to that which was overwhelmingly painful, to the truth of a moment that I desperately wished wasn’t true. It was perhaps the most powerful experience of saying a blessing that I have ever had.

What are the obstacles to blessing?

One obstacle is the illusion of self-sufficiency, and the notion that the human mind can grasp—has indeed already grasped—all that can be known about Reality. No one has written about this more beautifully than Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The true source of prayer…is not an emotion but an insight. It is the insight into the mystery of reality, the sense of the ineffable…As long as we refuse to take notice of what is beyond our sight, beyond our reason; as long as we are blind to the mystery of being, the way to prayer is closed to us. If the rise of the sun is but a daily routine of nature, there is no reason to say [this blessing, which is said every morning in Jewish liturgy] In compassion You give light to the earth and all who dwell upon it, making new each day the work of Creation. If bread is nothing but flour moistened, kneaded, baked and then brought forth from the oven, it is meaningless to say Blessed are You…who brings forth bread from the earth. The way to prayer leads through acts of wonder and radical amazement. The illusion of total intelligibility, the indifference to the mystery that is everywhere, the foolishness of ultimate self-reliance are serious obstacles on the way…”

Heschel here is not suggesting that we live without our reason, that we reject the insights of science and the human mind and live instead in some kind of mystical stupor. Rather, he is suggesting that blessing is a way towards a deeper kind of insight into the nature of reality—a way of living in the world that continually calls us, in his words, to “acts of wonder and radical amazement” in response to this Creation of which we are a part.

Another significant obstacle is the pace of our lives. The discipline of blessing calls us to take regular time out from our daily, hectic rush; to pause—whether for a moment before and after eating, or for a bit longer throughout the day, at regular intervals. The early rabbis understood that we can’t leave blessing for those random moments when we spontaneously experience wonder and amazement—those may be few and far between. The practice of blessing is precisely for the rest of our lives—for the hours that are mundane, for the time (which is most of the time) when we’re distracted or caught up in details or anxious or depressed. The practice of blessing may or may not yield, in the moment, any profound sense of wonder or gratitude, but as a discipline it orients us in a particular way, it subtly but profoundly shifts our awareness.

And what is that shift? I’d like to close with one of my favorite blessings, which I think begins to describe what we’re after here. This blessing is found in the daily liturgy, in the “standing” silent prayer that is traditionally said three times a day—a prayer that is made up of a series of blessings.

This is the gratitude blessing, said just before the final blessing, the blessing of peace. It begins with an acknowledgment of the great Source of life, and then goes on to say:

“We thank you for our lives entrusted to your hand, our souls placed in your care, for your miracles that greet us every day, for your wonders and the good things that are with us every moment, morning, noon, and night.”

What I love about this blessing is the phrase: “for your miracles that greet us every day.” This whole notion of daily miracles—not the parting of the sea, not loaves and fishes—but the simple moments of living. To walk in the world with an awareness of daily miracles—that each day in some way is itself a miracle—is an exalted awareness indeed. This is perhaps the ultimate goal of the practice of blessing: to live fully in this awareness, to able to see and experience and appreciate the good things that are with us every hour, morning, noon and night.

May each of us be blessed with glimpses of this awareness, and may we experience the gratitude and joy that it brings. May we walk through this day with an appreciation of the many Godly moments it holds in store. And may all of us be blessed with shalom—with wholeness and peace. Amen!