Exists Through His Word
“Shehakol nihyeh bidvaro”, this meat, egg, or candy I am about to eat, or juice I am getting ready to drink, they exist because Hashem is still “Saying” them.
Author: Micha Berger
Tefillah Meanings: The Great Shofar
Why do we describe Hashem’s ingathering of the exiles as a “Great Shofar”? … In this berakhah we ask Hashem to give us the wake-up call, the opportunity and the inspiration to return to our homes. Not to force us to come.
Practicing Tzimtzum
Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik zt”l describes two mitzvos as emulating Tzimtzum: … The physical emulation of Tzimtzum is the mitzvah of Hachnasas Orechim… The Middah of Anavah is an internal emulation of Tzimtzum…. We need to emulate Tzimtzum. Not just to constrict ourselves, but to make room within ourselves for the other. We need to constrict our attention to the “atzmi”, the “self” in the limited sense inhabiting this body, to grow an “I” (as Rav Shimon Shkop puts it), that is a network of relationship to other people, to Hashem, and to the world around us. To make a place where we can connect…
Tefillah Meanings: Years
Birkhas haShanim … an interesting structure. The thesis appears to be about prosperity … But why does it begin and end talking about time…? It is a berakhah that we earn that wealth. And in a way that displays honesty and integrity and provides a service to others. So that we have the wealth in the here-and-now and the growth that will get us greater happiness in the World to Come.
Tefillah Meanings: Forgive Us, Pardon Us
In Vidui, we desperately beg for whatever we can get … But the berakhos of Shemoneh Esrei are organized by cause and effect….
In this berakhah we ask that the restoration plays out to completion. Once Hashem leads us to where we can return to the path that He laid for us, we can ask Him for the secondary effects of that mess as well.
Ohr haTzafun: Chillul HaSheim and the Tzelem Elokim
The Alter of Slabodka has a very different take. (Ohr haTzafun, Bamidbar #3, “דקות תביעות התורה”)
A person is betzelem Elokim, in the “image” of the Divine. This image is Hashem’s name in this world.
When they do something inappropriate, that image is tarnished. The action removes G-dliness from the world by removing some of the fidelity of His Image and thus some of observability of His Presence in it
Chilul hasheim refers to this tarnishing as a desecration of the image and thus His name.
Tefillah Meanings: Revisiting Gevuros
Three weeks ago, I shared that the body of the berakhah “Atah Gibbor” became for me more of a request than the intended praise…. Three weeks ago, I shared that the body of the berakhah “Atah Gibbor” became for me more of a request than the intended praise. … Don’t force a meaning on the prayer. As life and our situations change, we have different things to say to our Creator.
Or haTzafun on Eternity (and the Conservation of Matter)
One of the central themes Ohr haTzafun is that “Hashem founded the world with wisdom” (Mishlei 3:19) And also, “the world is built of lovingkindness.” (Tehillim 89:3)… In particular, the human soul, but also our bodies, and the universe as a whole.
Hashem is beyond time. And thus, so is His Wisdom.
The sin of eating from the Eitz haDaas only caused us to lose sight of our inherent eternal nature. Both of the soul and the body. And mitzvos restore our ability to experience it.
Tefillah Meanings: Return Us
“הֲשִׁיבֵֽנוּ אָבִֽינוּ לְתוֹרָתֶֽךָ — Restore, our Father, to Your Torah…” Are we are asking Hashem to do our teshuvah for us? That defeats too many givens about free will!
One could argue that the act of turning to Hashem to ask for it is itself a form of teshuvah, but we are saying it in the plural. And many of the non-repentant are not going to be joining us in prayer.
Tefillah Meanings: Graciously
Now that we spent two posts (1, 2) building an approach to what it is we are asking for, the noun, I want to go to the originally intended topic of the post –...
Tefillah Meanings: Da’as, part II
So, when we ask for Da’as we are asking that what we learn, both from texts and from life experience and observation, make us smarter people at living the lives Hashem lays out for us.
Only after we ask to know how to properly use the tools He gives us to live that life it is more appropriate to ask for them.
Tefillah Meanings: Da’as
[A]ll in all, when I say this berakhah I ask Hashem to grace me with the “honey” to let me take what I know — and especially the intellectual skills I learned (Da’as), and further develop them (Binah) so that I can better embody the Torah’s truths, and emotionally react, make proper decisions and live those ideals (Haskeil).
Tefillah Meanings: And We Corrupted
A central facet of Judaism is that we are all interconnected. That my existence gets value from my ability to be of benefit to others. But that interconnectedness isn’t an unmitigated positive. It can be abused. We can use it to hurt others. Or to corrupt them.
Perhaps this is why Chazal associated הִרְשַֽׁעְנוּ – making others evil – with the connecting -וְ. Rather than being arbitrary, it was the natural sin to confess when the word “and” comes to mind.
Tefillah Meanings: The King Who Sits on the Throne of Compassion
Hashem as Melekh can “Sit” on the Throne of Rachamim because doing what is best for us wouldn’t require discipline to impose His Will.
To accept Hashem as King is to sign onto that covenant. To willingly have Him rule you. And the more we succeed in doing so, the more Rachamim and less Din will reach us.
Tefillah Meanings: Aspects of Compassion
A shortened version of that list of Middos. It is based (sometimes loosely) on Rabbenu Tam’s explanation of the 13 Middos (RH 17b). The division into four is motivated by the trop and how Hashem used the connective vavs (meaning “and”). It is particularly interesting because as we’ve seen before, four is associated with the ways we experience Hashem’s gifts. But here, it also fits the trop and the use of connective vavs.
Set 1: Before the Sin, After the Sin
Tefillah Meanings: Thirteen Middos
We need to pick up on Rabbi Yochanan’s choice of verb to understand what we are doing during Selichos every time we repeat these words, He doesn’t say “יֹאמְרוּ לְפָנַי כַּסֵּדֶר הַזֶּה – say this order before Me”, he says “יַעֲשׂוּ – perform”.
Tefillah Meanings: Three Kinds of Requests
In the previous post, I reduced the list of 13 requests in the weekday Shemoneh Esrei to four sets of three (plus the one added later into the third set): Requests for each person – (1) spiritual and (2) physical, and the Jewish People as a whole – (3) for government and justice, with which we can (4) fully realize being a holy nation.
In this post, I want to look within each set, because I think there is a pattern. The first berakhah for each area is asking Hashem to provide the ideal “space” in which we can obtain it. The second in each ask for a restoration. And in the third, we ask for the actual realization and culmination in that section’s domain.
Tefillah Meanings: Four Areas of Requests
I find it hard to keep a sequence of 12 straight in my head difficult. And only harder to deal with 13, including the late addition of VelaMalshinim (which as “VeleMeshumadim” before censorship, and how I choose to say it.) But a sequence of four groups of requests is a more manageable overview.
Tefillah Meanings: Open My Lips
This pasuq from Tehillim uses different verb conjugations in each clause. In the first: “tiftach – You will / shall open”. But the second clause has “yagid — it will declare”. The first half is about what we ask Hashem to do, the second, about we promise to do. But how is it appropriate to ask Hashem to do a mitzvah for us?
The Calf and the Hole
If the city elders realize that we are all one body, each of us playing a distinct but important role, then they would feel that a when someone is senselessly killed, it leaves a hole in our nation. The person isn’t “merely” a killed person, but a chalal, something missing from that body.
Tefillah Meanings: Three Realms of Holiness
One day, inspiration hit me a little while after Shemoneh Esrei, when saying UVa leTzion. There we say the Qedushah’s “Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh Hashem Tzevakos” together with the following Targum Yonasan…. This actually corresponds quite well. I think the berakhah was written based on the Targum.
Tefillah Meanings: Gevuros Today
The current war has impacted life in Israel in a number of ways that seem parallel to the middle of Birkhas Gevurah. It seems impossible to make the Berakhah without bringing them to mind…
Tefillah Meanings: Gevuros
Continuing on in Shemoneh Esrei… The second berakhah is Birkhas Gevuros. We already suggested one way to view the word Gevurah.
…
Gevurah is the strength to not step in when chassidim would not be tovim. To help rather than smother. Tzimtzum. Anavah.
Tefillah Meanings: Methodology
I didn’t intend these to be yet more of Micha’s philosophical ponderings using the Siddur as a text to darshen. That project is valid — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l called the Siddur “Mesechtes Emunah” because it is an effective manual of our faith. But my point here was not to have you think about davening, but to share what the words, sentences and paragraphs mean to me as I am saying them. In hopes that someone else finds them meaningful.
Tefillah Meanings: 4 are the Mothers
Moshe praises Hashem as “HaKeil haGadol vehaGibbor vehaNorah”. That is the praise Anshei Kenesses haGedolah codified into Birkhas Avos, and thus that list somehow pasts muster. R Chanina (Megillah 25a) scolds a Chazan for ad-libbing beyond those three adjectives.
But we do have many more praises in Birkhas Avos! How is that legitimate?
The Vilna Gaon says that this four-description pattern, the noun and three adjectives, is actually all we do say in this berakhah is elaborations on this four-fold theme.
Tefillah Meanings: Satisfy us with Your Good, and Gladden us through Your Salvation
There is something of a conflict between Tuvekha – Your Good, and Yeshu’asekha – Your salvation. If everything were going well, we wouldn’t need saving.
We see the same dichotomy repeatedly in Birkhas Avos…
Tefillah Meanings: The One Who Brings the Go’el (continued)
Many of the adults of our grandparents’ generation were Holocaust survivors. When I was young, it seemed to me like most people above a certain age had a number on their arm or a story to tell. A generation that were taken well beyond the normal call of duty. “Chasdei avos”!
If only Hashem would Choose to bring His redeemer to us, the literal “children’s children”!
Tefillah Meanings: The One Who Brings the Go’el
A lot is hiding in the word “וּמֵבִיא – and brings”. Hashem won’t send the Melekh haMoshiach. He will come with (so to speak), bringing the person who will help us bring His Plan to culmination.
The Jewish People established a relationship with Hashem, even before Sinai, with avos who acted with chessed….
Tefillah Meanings: Of Avraham, of Yitzchaq, and of Yaaqov
Rabbi Y.B. Soloveitchik takes the possessive in “Elokei Avraham, Elokei Yitzchaq, vEilokei Yaaqov — the G-d of Avraham, the G-d of Yitzchaq, and the G-d of Yaaqov” in a sort of mystical way: that one can somehow take possession of the Creator.
I want to say something similar, but with a more rationalist presentation:
The posessive could be used to show that two things exist in relation to each-other in a number of different ways.
6 Days and 12 Days
There is a general sense that there is something much more muted in our response to the miraculous quick turn-around in this recent Twelve Day War than there was after the Six Day War....
As Yourself
I noticed that parshanim explaining the chumash on the one hand, and shas and posqim showing how the pasuq is associated with halakhah on the other, often end up giving different explanations of pesuqim...
Bribery
This past week I learned a piece in Or haTzafun (Shemos #30 “ההשתתפות שבין אדם לחבירו”) which focuses on the insidious nature of bribery, and from there, negi’os in general. … But I was thinking… It could be that tzadiqim are more vulnerable to bribery. Because bribery as a motivator has another element.
Sim Shalom
Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt”l (whose 31st yahrzeit is today) often spoke about the connection between shaleim as wholeness, and that of another conjugation, “shalom“, peace. Shalom is not simply a cessation of violence. That wouldn’t be an expression...
Behar: Money and Human Dignity
Parashas Behar is a list of mitzvos. The first section is all about shemittah and yovel. A family’s ancestral land cannot be sold into perpetuity. Instead, if someone is forced to sell their holdings,...
Tiqanta Shabbos
This week I’d like to discuss three seemingly unrelated questions about the words of the tephillah: The focus of Shabbos Mussaf davening is the paragraph that begins “Tiqanta Shabbos…” What most readily jumps to...
The Possible Origin of the Schlissel Challah
The week after Pesach, it’s hard to obtain yeast. Sourdough was gotten rid of before the holiday. Fleischman didn’t invent a way to make dry active yeast yet. You had to get rid of all your starter dough.
Easiest thing to do is skim the yeast off of beer. (The term for this yeast layer is “barm”, for what it’s worth.) Problem is, that’s way too much. So, you put some metal into the dough, as metal slows down yeast. Likely a key — right size, handy.
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