Blessings of Brakhot
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Fasting on Yom Kippur, however, lacks all of this. It’s hard. It’s personal, not about family. It can’t be changed, and we don’t even really know why we do it. Why is it the second most observed ritual? Perhaps it is popular because in an age of declining Jewish literacy, fasting takes no special training or education. There is no Hebrew, no specialty objects like booths or palm fronds, and no lengthy prayers. Or maybe its popularity is precisely because it is kind of weird and cool. Fasting is something that we Jews do that the average American might not. Maybe fasting gives each of us a special feeling of piety or uniqueness that every member of this priestly nation is entitled to feel. Whatever the cause, even a quarter of Jews who say they have no religion still fast on Yom Kippur. This tradition has stuck a chord with many Jews despite our lack of a concrete reason for the fast.
The Rabbis themselves are unclear as to exactly why we fast on Yom Kippur. The Torah simply tells us that on this day we should תְּעַנּוּ אֶת-נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם “afflict our souls” (Leviticus 16:29). The Rabbis in the Talmud rightly question how we derive fasting from soul affliction. (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 74b) They ask: If we are meant to feel pain, why not simply sit out in the sun with no hat? To update for our time, we could mandate that on Yom Kippur one must ride the subway with no air conditioning, sleep on scratchy flannel sheets, or listen to the “Elmo slide” on continuous loop. (If you don’t have a toddler at home, trust me, anything but that song!) The Rabbis in the Talmud discuss a linguistic connection between the idea of afflicting souls and fasting. Building on that link, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, a medieval Spanish commentator, says that an affliction of the soul must be opposite from its delight and since our souls delight in eating, a cessation of eating provides our affliction.
There are other prohibitions for Yom Kippur that reflect other things our souls and bodies delight in, but essentially what we are restricting and refraining from today is appetite. Restricting our appetites on this day of atonement makes sense because so much of what we have done wrong this year was, I imagine, a failing of our ability to regulate our appetites. One need only look at the myriad sins in the confessional we are going to read tonight. Many of them could have been avoided if we were slightly better at regulating ourselves and our desires.
Contemporary thought bears out the rabbinic concern over self-regulation. There is much current study on the benefits that self-control and the ability to delay gratification have for an individual. The seminal study on this subject was done at Stanford 50 years ago by Dr. Walter Mischel, who lived down the street and who passed away last week. The study is known commonly as “the marshmallow test.” In this experiment, researchers offered young children a choice between eating one marshmallow immediately or waiting 15 minutes and receiving two. The researchers then left the children alone in a room with the treat to see what would happen. Some children were simply left to their own devices, while others were taught coping mechanisms to avoid eating the marshmallow. They were told to cover their eyes, to pretend the food was something else, or to get up from the table. Some children were able to delay and receive the bonus marshmallow, while others chose to eat the confection right away. The study then followed the participants for the next 20 years and found that the children who were able to delay gratification were better adjusted emotionally and had, across the board, better test scores and grades than the children who ate the marshmallow immediately.
Dr. Mischel was the first to point out the limits of his own experiment. While it might not be true that our success in life depends on our ability to abstain from sugar as a 5-year-old, it is true that this quality of self-regulation seems to be one of the royal roads to happy and productive living. Controlling our instincts, urges, and reactions allows us to focus, maintain our cool in heated situations, and make healthy decisions. This desire is at the heart of much of what we try in order to improve our lives: going to the gym, meditation, diets, planning apps, routines, even therapy. All of these are essentially meant to help us self-regulate. The marshmallow test seemed to show that children acquired the benefits of self-control even when the researchers taught them methods to help them delay gratification. Self-regulation doesn’t have to be innate, which is good news for those of us for whom it is not. We can learn skills to help us reap the benefits of greater self-regulation.
Two thousand years before the marshmallow test, the Rabbis had perhaps anticipated Dr. Mischel’s findings and were inculcating self-regulation in Jews through rituals. Specifically, the Rabbis tell us that we must say a blessing before we do a mitzvah, when we have a good experience, and before we eat. These blessings, in Hebrew brakhot, are so important that the Rabbis tell us: “Anyone who benefits from this world without saying a ברכה, it is as if they have stolen from God.” (Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 35a-b) Let’s leave the theological implications of such a statement aside for a second and read this law as saying that blessings are incredibly important. In requiring brakhot/blessings before we eat, the Rabbis here demand that we self-impose a delay between wanting to eat something and putting it in our mouths.
The practice of saying blessings before we eat, despite its Talmudic import, is not something that we contemporary rabbis often emphasize. We may do this out of a fear of pushing religious practice or perhaps because we ourselves have forgotten the profound power of a brakhah. But this custom is one that we ignore to the detriment of Judaism itself as well as to individual Jews. I do see the irony of talking about eating on Yom Kippur. But tonight, while our pre-fast meals still sit in our bellies, it is a good time to think about how we can better sanctify the act of eating and ourselves when we return to food tomorrow night.
The benefits of saying blessings are tied up in the very words that begin almost all of them: ברוך אתה ה' אלוקנו מלך העולם, Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe.” The phrase is so common that it isn’t even written down in rabbinic literature. We specify blessings by their endings: hamotzi or shehehiyanu. This opening phrase is so frequent, it is one of the first or even the only bit of Hebrew that many people learn. Yet this formula, however simple it may seem, contains within it all of the meanings and benefits the practice of saying blessings can bring to the life of a Jew. Everything we want to gain in our lives, the meaning we are searching for, all of it is wrapped up in these holy words.
Every blessing we say begins barukh atah, which we often translate as “blessed are You.” We begin each moment of consumption by invoking the idea of blessing and gratitude. This concept is integral to living a holy and kind life. One of the first things we teach our children is to say please and thank you, and in essence that is what we are doing when we begin our blessings. But there are other important layers to the phrase barukh atah. There is something theologically radical about the idea that I can say “blessed are You” to God. Who am I to bless the Creator? Where do any of us get the nerve to say that we can offer God our blessings? Rabbeinu Bachya, another medieval Spanish rabbi, is so worried about this question that he posits that we have been translating the phrase incorrectly and that brakhah actually comes from the Hebrew word breikha, which means “well” or “source.” That is to say, barukh atah, really means “You [God] are the source of blessing.” (Bahya Ben Asher, קד הקמך) The first words of our blessings remind us of the fundamental duality of human beings. On the one hand, we have tremendous power: the ability to shape the world around us, eat whatever we want, build, destroy, and even bless God. At the same time, we recall that actually, we are nothing and rely on God as the source of all blessings that we have. Especially on this day when we account for our failures of strength and our failures of weakness, we would do well to recall this dichotomy.
After barukh atah, we speak the ineffable name of God. Yud-hey-vav-hey, the four-letter word that we mispronounce as Adonai or colloquially as Hashem, “The Name.” This name, we are told, can be spoken like a spell: Moses used it to kill, King David to create; it can control and heal. This word is so potent, so special, it is only pronounced by the High Priest, and even by him only once a year, on the holiest day of the year, today, Yom Kippur. This is the name that the second commandment forbids us to take in vain. When God’s name is used in an oath, that oath must be fulfilled. To speak this word before a bite of bagel may seem almost heretical. Yet the incredible awe and power of speaking God’s name is the point, I believe. Saying Adonai is meant to give us pause – knock us out of the mundane to contemplate something higher, even if just for a moment, before we have lunch. In our world of constant distraction and with our need to continuously be busy, how much better could our lives be if we employed this device to take a beat every time we eat?
Next in our blessing formula is another name for God, eloheinu. Eloheinu is more than just a name, the additional piece of this word is its ending: nu, meaning “our God.” Who is the “our”? It is Jews. In this third piece of the blessing we are made to acknowledge our connection to the Jewish people. As I pause to bless before taking that first sip, I think about Jews everywhere doing the same thing. I think about Jews throughout time doing the same thing. My grandfather used to lead hamotzi at summer camp. My one-and-a-half-year-old son is already pretty good at filling in the final words of the blessings and usually can be counted on for an amen before we give him the string cheese. As I say eloheinu, I feel connected to both my grandfather and my son. Saying a brakhah links us to our people, past, present, and future. As the number of Jews identifying as Jews continues to drop, it would be good if we could have a few more daily reminders of who we are and the amazing chain of history to which we belong.
Finally, we conclude with melekh ha-olam, “Ruler of the world.” By invoking the entire world, we include in our blessing everything that it took to get the food into our hands: the clerk at the grocery store who sold it to us, the trucker who delivered it, the farmer who grew it, etc. Our world is so interconnected and vast that every sandwich we eat comes to us through the efforts of hundreds if not thousands of people, most of whom we will never know. We may have paid for the food, we may have cooked the food, there is even a chance we grew some of the food, but there is still no way we would be eating that food without the work of others. Our blessing acknowledges those others and our role in the web of society.
ברוך אתה ה' אלוקנו מלך העולם
Barukh atah reminds us of our great power to bless others and at the same time, our great need to receive and be thankful for the blessings we are given. Hashem, God’s name, calls us to be mindful and pause, to take a breath for the spirit; as we feed the body. Eloheinu links all Jews together and reminds us of our peoplehood. Then melekh ha-olam places us in the context of a universe larger than ourselves to which we owe something as we also take. Balance of ego, mindful meditation, connection to a larger group, and a perspective on our role in the world, as well as the requirement to pause and think about all of this before we consume something. The ritual of brakhot helps a person self-regulate, to become more able to delay gratification and work for something bigger. The Rabbis have taught us how to pass the marshmallow test: Bless the marshmallow.
But it is not simply for personal betterment that we should all make saying blessings a larger part of our lives this year. Judaism needs brakhot as a means of revitalization. The Passover seder and fasting on Yom Kippur may be the most popular rituals, but their observance, along with most observance, has been declining in recent years. We need to adopt something relevant for our day, and blessings meet the needs of today’s Jew. They are short and relatively easy Hebrew; they can be said on your schedule, anywhere and anytime, in a group or alone. A brakhah is the perfect ritual for us. It gives those who need humility, humility and those that need a little boost, that boost. It creates moments of mindfulness in an increasingly fast-paced world. A brakhah reminds us of our bonds with our fellow Jews and that we are a part of a great people while also reminding us of our place in a wider world and that we are affected daily by people we will never meet but couldn’t live without.
Today we fast to atone for the sins of our bodies and our souls, the misdeeds of self and appetite. Saying a blessing before food is a Rabbinic fence to keep our appetites in check and help us self-regulate not just once a year but daily. The Rabbis ask us to say one hundred blessings a day, but let’s start with just one. Let us, each of us, just once a day, say a blessing before we eat. Let us make that blessing a meaningful moment, calling to mind the layers of our words, and let us stick with the practice of saying brakhot until we see results. We will see our ability to control ourselves grow. We will foster a greater connection to our food, our people, and our world. We will be a part of revitalizing our tradition and its rituals. May this be our blessing for the new year, and to all of this we can certainly respond: Amen.