Or: Modim, part IV

Modim ends, “בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ הַטּוֹב שִׁמְךָ וּלְךָ נָאֶה לְהוֹדוֹת – … Your name is ‘The Good’, and it is pleasant to praise You.”

Yes, I believe we are saying Hashem’s name is “HaTov“, and not that His name / reputation in the world is known to be good.*

Another note about how we refer to Hashem in this berakhah, we say “shaAtah — that The You”. Not “sheAtah – that You”. Hashem as the ultimate You in my life. For similar reasons, I generally favor nuachos that assume the patach under a prefix, meaning “the”. Such as “laMelekh – to The King Who” over “leMelekh – to a King Who”.

With “Sha’atah“, I think it’s not the original nusach. When they started publishing Siddurim using printing presses, grammarians were heavily involved to correct nequdos and detect other manuscript errors. Some of them had their own pet theories about Hebrew grammar. And one common error, held by Rabbi Zalman Hanau (whose siddur was very influential) and others, was to “fix” the siddur to biblical Hebrew. Whereas every indication is that Chazal used their era’s Hebrew. There is no “she-” in the Chumash, Hashem only uses the full “asher“. In Shemu’el’s day, though the prefix was “sha-“, not “she-” (and there are numerous examples in Shofetim, Rus, and Shemu’el). Ashkenazi manuscripts had what Sepharadim still say – “sheAtah“. But it was “corrected”.

But I like the idea of saying “shaAtah” in more recent Hebrew’s sense – “the You”, combining the distance we feel from the Infinite with the intimacy of calling Hashem “You”, so I use “shaAtah” anyway.

Using “Lakh” for “to you” in “מוֹדִים אֲנַֽחְנוּ לָךְ”, is a case where we still use Mishnaic Hebrew. In Biblical Hebrew, “lakh” is feminine. But in Mishnaic Hebrew, borrowing from Aramaic, “lakh” is used for both genders, and therefore works here even though the idiom is to use masculine for Hashem.

And getting back to where we were, the end of the berakhah is naming Hashem “The Good”. Again, with the definite article.

A bit earlier in the berakhah we introduce the concept of Hashem as “The Good” in three steps:

הַטּוֹב — כִּי לֹא כָלוּ רַחֲמֶֽיךָ
וְהַמְ֒רַחֵם — כִּי לֹא תַֽמּוּ חֲסָדֶֽיךָ

[You are] the Good One – because Your Compassion is never done,
[You are] the Compassionate One – because your Lovingkindness never ceases.

Here we describe three steps: Hashem is “the Good One”, because He always has Rachamim for us, and we acknowledge Hashem’s Rachamim because He is always treating us with Chesed.

Working backward, Chesed appears to be the visible part of the relationship. Hashem does things for us, all those things the berakhah is thanking Him for. Hashem’s Chesed allows us to know that Hashem is Compassionate and Empithetic towards us. Thus Rachamim, from “rechem – womb”, the mother physically attached and sharing everything with her baby. It speaks more to Hashem’s being “עִמּֽוֹ־אָנֹכִ֥י בְצָרָ֑ה – with me in my pain” (Tehillim 91:15) than a concept like having mercy on someone less fortunate. Rachamim is about sharing our pain, and Chesed is kindness coming from the unity of love, to alleviate that pain.

Then we go one step further and identify this Rachamim as how we experience the Divine Essence. Hashem is inherently Good. He is the Creator who gave us our very existence, after all.

And we should find it pleasant to thank the One who provides for us in every way we can experience (as represented by four-ness), because He lovingly supports us (Chessed), showing us His empathy for our needs (Rachamim) out of Hashem is not just good, but The Good. It is pleasant to confess our dependency on Hashem because of the overall nature of our relationship with Him.

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* Tangentially, the similarity between “G-d” and “good” in English, or “Gott” and “gut” in German, is believed by linguists to be coincidental, having evolved from different Proto-Indo-European roots. I don’t know enough to question that. But I do wonder if these particular words would have become the most common words for each of the two ideas if they weren’t already linked in people’s heads.