Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour throughout the entire Talmud, and we are continuing our exploration of tractate Brachos. And today we are talking about the actions and the practices that emerge from this tractate. And undoubtedly that the heart of this tractate is the concept of making blessings. Making blessings whether that is prayer, every single day we make blessings, as well as blessings that we make on food or drink.
As we highlighted last week, the formulation of a blessing is very interesting and important to recognize. This is something that all of the commentaries pick up on and highlight, and that is the blessing switches tenses. We always start a blessing: Baruch Atah, “You,” as if God is right in front of us, and then it switches from a You, the immanence of God, to a description of God: Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, “the sovereign God of the world.” And this is at the heart of what blessings are all about. We’re trying to draw down and train ourselves to have moments of divine immanence, where God is right in front of us.
This is what tractate Brachos is literally trying to teach us how to do, especially following the destruction of the Temple, when we had a world where there was prophecy and miracles, and there was an instinctive sense that the world is divine. It was obvious. If you were alive during that period, there was almost an obviousness that like, of course the world was created, of course the world has a purpose, of course there is a reason why I am alive. And as modernity grows and grows and grows, and we have all of these other explanations, which can be equally true, in science. But the mystery and the wonder of existence itself can get lost on us. We kind of wander through our existence and through life itself.
What allows us to kind of stop and return all of the multiplicity and all of the chaos of the world, our day-to-day lives, and return these moments and our very existence back to God, is through the vehicle of blessing, where we begin by saying Atah, “You,” God right in front of us, and then we draw back and then describe as if God is not in the room with us. You know, I wouldn’t say if I’m talking about somebody and I say “you,” you wouldn’t then have to describe who they are. If they’re right there in front of you, you’d say, “Oh, what do you think? God bless you.” I wouldn’t need to say, “God bless you,” and then have a description, “You wearing the red sweater or orange shirt,” whatever it is.
No. We’re doing this in blessings. We say Baruch Atah, “bless You,” and then we shift backwards and describe God, because that is the very dance of tractate Brachos, finding that immanence even in a world where God does not feel or we don’t have that recognition of God literally peeking through the sky with open miracles and with prophecy.
Now there are different forms of blessings, and I want to cover a bunch of them. The tell-all blessing that works for drinks or if you’re not really sure what blessing [to make] on a food, or a lot of candies that are not really made, they’re made from more like synthetic, they’re not really made from fruits and vegetables, that is the blessing of shehakol nihyeh bidvaro, “everything is sustained,” everything is created through Your word, meaning the word of God.
I’ll just pause. I think one of the greatest innovations of Judaism is the idea, and this is the idea that comes right from the beginning of the Torah, that God creates the world through language. Language is what creates the world, and it is through our own language that we’re able to give the world meaning. It’s a very profound idea. If you go back. Go to the beginning of Genesis. Look at how the creation of the world is described. God creates the world with language.
There are so many other types of brachos, and I want to highlight a few things. We have blessings on fruit, that is the blessing that ends borei peri ha’eitz, “fruit of the tree.” An apple, an orange. Then we have blessings that we make on vegetables: borei peri ha’adamah, “the fruits of the ground.” A carrot. I’m like having trouble thinking of vegetables. Broccoli? Broccoli is a vegetable, sure.
And then there is a special blessing that we make on bread and on wine. On bread we make the blessing: Baruch Atah Hashem Eloheinu Melech ha’olam hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz, “Who brings bread forth from the ground.” And on wine we make the blessing: borei peri hagefen, “God blesses the fruit of the vine,” of the vine.
Now, it makes a lot of sense that wine kind of has a special character and a blessing of its own. Wine was always considered a more impressive drink. It always has a unique status of its own. It can get you drunk. It has a power. It transforms your very conscious. It was a little bit more expensive, even back then, so wine has its own special [blessing].
I want to just note that it’s very strange how bread and the blessing of bread functions differently than any other blessing. If one is eating a meal, and let’s say they’re eating a sandwich, the only blessing they have to make is the blessing on the bread, and that fulfills your obligation to make a blessing on everything inside the sandwich. If you are eating bread, that is the only blessing you have to make and it fulfills all the blessings of everything else that you’re going to have.
Now, why does bread kind of have this, such a unique status? And the blessing is very strange, Hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz, “Who delivers bread from the ground.” Bread does not grow from the ground.
And that is really exactly the point. The reason why bread has such a unique status in Jewish law—it is what we make a blessing on to welcome in Shabbos, it is the one blessing that can fulfill all the other blessings. You’re having bread and candy, just make a blessing on the bread. You’re having bread and broccoli, just make a blessing on the bread. Having bread and tuna fish, just make a blessing on the bread. Why is that? Because bread is the ultimate blessing, because bread can only be created through human creativity. It can only be created through our work. It doesn’t grow from the ground, and what we’re recognizing when we make a blessing on bread is how human creativity is the vehicle, is the pipeline for divinity to come into this world. When we recognize that our own efforts, our own work, is still a part of God’s blessing, that is the ultimate blessing. That is the one blessing that we make on food, and that is why bread has its own status.
I want to mention one other thing that I think is very, very important. You know, I mentioned all of these blessings: the blessings that you make on drink, which is that the “world is sustained through your word,” shehakol nihyeh bidvaro. The blessing that I would make on this delicious Coke Zero. But we would also make blessings on God who blesses fruits, and then vegetables.
Now, it’s very strange. The blessing that we make, kind of the catch-all blessing, it seems to be much more grandiose, much more impressive. Why don’t we use that blessing on all food? Shehakol nihyeh bidvaro. We’re telling God, “Everything is sustained through Your word,” through language itself. Why don’t we make that blessing on fruits and on vegetables and on bread? It seems to be the most magnificent of all the blessings, rather than, “Blessed are You, our God, who creates the fruits of the tree.” I mean, that’s nice, but like “sustains the entire world” is so much greater.
But this really gets to the absolute heart and training of the daily practice of what we are trying to do, and what Jewish life and Jewish law is. How it’s trying to focus our eyes in our own life.
When you want to compliment somebody, and you want to talk about how amazing they are, the more specific you get, the more beautiful of a blessing it is. You tell somebody, “You’re great. You’re wonderful. You’re so important.” You know, it’s nice. It might feel good. It’s a good catch-all, you know, compliment, “Hey, you know, keep at it. You’re wonderful.” I say these things all the time. But usually they are a replacement for the specificity. Jewish life and Jewish practice is trying to train, discipline us, to sanctify specifically, the specificity. Not only fruits and vegetables versus the world is sustained through Your word, but it’s trying to train us to look at the specificity of our own life as the center of the world. To not get lost in the vastness of the universe.
In a purely materialist view of the world, you feel insignificant in a moment. There’s no significance to your life, really. You’re blips of neurons just firing back and forth. A reductionist, materialist view of the world, you are insignificant. That’s the bad news.
The good news is there’s a different approach, and Jewish life and Jewish practice is trying to flip that on its head and say what is most important in this world is the details, the crevices, the nooks and crannies of your own life. So when we look for words to bless God, we don’t just speak in grandiose terms. We have a specific language that we’ve been given to bring that blessing and to recognize that blessing within the specificity of our own life. And that is the blessing of making blessings every single day.
Thank you so much for listening to Talmud Daily, and let’s keep making Torah sweet.