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 –...
Author: Micha Berger
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.
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.
Compassionate Moshe
והיה רגיל להוכיח אותי על שראה שאינני משתתף בצערא דאחרינא. וכה היה דברו אלי תמיד שזה כל האדם. לא לעצמו נברא רק להועיל לאחריני ככל אשר ימצא בכחו לעשות. [My father, Rav Chaim Volozhiner,]...
Guest Post: An Introduction to Trop
Micha’s note: The following was a post written to the Mesorah email list by Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel zt”l, a rebbe-chaver of mine (more: a rebbe who insisted on treating me like a chaver)...
Looking to the Future
But as for me, where I get all messianic and hopeful is when I see pictures of Chareidim making tzitzis for soldiers. … We have taken a huge step forward towards the messianic ideal. I gave but one illustrative example of how much this disaster has prodded us forward. Maybe…
Is that a donkey’s hoofbeats I am hearing?
To Name the Creator
This week’s parashah (Lekh Likha), Bereishis 16:13, describes Hagar’s prayer to Hashem … Before praying one has to think about how one is relating to Hashem in that moment. …
PoseiqGPT?
Dear R Dr Bryode (Cc: Avodah),
Over Shabbos, I read your article about getting ChatGPT to discuss whether a kohein in a same-sex marriage may go up to duchen….
First, a large language model isn’t an AI in the sense of having a good representation of what it is talking about. Words are assigned strings of numbers, vectors, that do correlate to the word’s usage. So that king minus male will bring you to a similar vector as queen minus female. And GPT has a system for using context to distinguish the uses of the word “flies” in
“Time flies like an arrow, but
fruit flies like bananas.”
Tish’a beAv – the Mo’eid of Divine Inaction
The chaburah at Zelmele’s Kloiz is now learning Derashos haRan, the third derashah. I wanted to continue a conversation we had there, in light of today being Tish’ah beAv. The following is based on...
Derashos haRan – Derashah #3
The chaburah at Zelmele’s Kloiz started the Ran’s third derashah Thursday, June 8th, 2023. It is now ongoing at our usual time, 8pm Eastern Daylight Time.
In this derashah, the Ran discusses Moshe, Aharon, the nature of nevu’ah, Moshe’s special kind of nevu’ah, the urim vetumim, and the first mitzvos given to the Jewish People — counting months from Nissan and of Pesach.
So you shall not veer…
The Medrash about Qorach rhetorically asking of Moshe why a tallis that is made of tekheiles would need one more tekheiles thread for tzitzis ties the mitzvah of tzitzis to the next story in the Chumash – Qorach. The words of the parashah about tzitzis tie it to a slightly earlier story – the meraglim. ,,,
Derashos haRan – Derashah #2
The chaburah at Zelmele’s Kloiz finished the Ran’s second derashah… The Yaaqov – Eisav conflict plays out three times … Meanwhile the Ran continued the theme he introduced in the first derashah about Maaseh Bereishis, and the interface between the spiritual world and our physical one….
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