How I came to say בְּרָכוֹת every day, and the seduction of theistic language

[lethargic_man]

Eight years ago I never uttered בְּרָכוֹת (benedictions) outside of synagogue or festive meals on Shabbos or yomtov. Within about five years, I was saying בְּרָכוֹת many times a day, and davening a minimum of once a day too. I don't think I've ever blogged about how this happened, or the insidious theistical shift it resulted in in me without my even realising it at the time.

The first בְּרָכוֹת I started saying were those on food. Nowadays, we take so much of the food we eat for granted. In previous days, a failed harvest would have meant really tightening the belt; multiple failed harvests would have meant mass starvation and death. Artificial fertiliser and global markets have brought an end to that: if harvests fail in one part of the world, prices merely go up a little.

But we should not allow this to make us blasé. We still are dependent on the proper functioning of the natural world. There's a novel by John Christopher called The Death of Grass (or No Blade of Grass in Vespuccia) about a virus which kills grasses. No more rice, no more wheat or barley. As the virus spreads around the world, countries turn to potato farming... but do so too late, and civilisation collapses. I originally read this novel as science fiction as a child, without being greatly moved by it; it was only much later that I realised the scenario depicted in it is scarily possible. Think about the rise of HIV in our lifetime, and how prevalent that is, and yet still completely uncurable many years later—and that is a not strongly virulent virus.

So I came to wish to express gratitude for the food I eat. And the way to do that, for me as a Jew, is to say בְּרָכוֹת over it—it's the way my culture expresses this gratitude. Actually, this was not a forgone conclusion for me. I thought a little bit before I started about how I might wish to express this gratitude; and came to the conclusion I wished to do so orally. I would have felt foolish saying something in English, so came up with my own formulations in Hebrew, but after a little while switched to using the traditional בְּרָכוֹת. As Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs once said (possibly misquoted), "I don't put on tefillin because God commanded it; I put on tefillin because that is the language of worship of my ancestors." So it was for me. And Reconstructionist^* thinking allowed me to square that with worries about my integrity in praying to a God I wasn't sure I believed in. (I describe myself as a meta-agnostic: I'm not sure whether I'm agnostic or not.)

* Reconstructionism is a form of Judaism, founded by Mordecai Kaplan in the United States, that keeps the ritual and throws away the traditional idea of God. The Cabbalists talk about God as אֵין סוֹף, the Infinite, a being with whom mere mortals can have no relation or connection. What humans can connect to in Cabbalism (a field which, as a rationalist, I otherwise have no truck) is the Divine Attributes, such as Mercy, Justice, Lovingkindness, etc. The Reconstructionists' view is similar, only they throw away the concept of God אֵין סוֹף, and consider G-d as the spiritual energy that emerges from within a community. (Thus, rather than God making Man in God's image, they make God in the image of what they aspire to.)

Thus, it didn't strictly matter to me whether this gratitude for my food was expressed to a traditional God or not. What's important is that I express the gratitude, and do so in a way continuing yet also adapting the tradition of my ancestors. (This is, of course, how all streams of Judaism work: reinterpreting the religion for each new generation. They only differ in how much reinterpretation they do.)

Having started to say בְּרָכוֹת over food, I similarly started saying the benediction אֲשֶׁר יָצַר after going to the toilet, because I am grateful my body works—having friends who have Crohn's Disease, and so forth, the correct functioning of my body is something I felt I should not take for granted.

From there the next step was to start saying בִּרְכוֹת הַשַּׁחַר, the blessings one says first thing in the morning, which include gratefulness that one has had one's soul, and one's sight, restored to one (i.e. not died or gone blind in one's sleep), etc. Originally I started saying a subset of בִּרְכוֹת הַשַּׁחַר, and gradually expanded towards all of the blessing (but not the study passages, barring the initial one of the Priestly Blessing).

Since this constituted the start of שַׁחֲרִית, it led me on into saying bit by bit more of שַׁחֲרִית: the שְׁמַע and its בְּרָכוֹת (using the extremely cut-down version of the first one found in the earliest siddurim for use when davening בְּיָחִיד), then an (almost) halachically minimal version of פְּסוּקֵי דְּזִמְרָה beforehand (בָּרוּךְ שֶׁאָמַר, ‎ אַשְׁרֵי, Psalm 150, and יִשְׁתַּבַּח), then the עֲמִידָה with הַבִינֵנוּ at weekends, and צָרְכֵּי עַמְךָ on weekdays, and finally עָלֵינוּ.

What I didn't realise until some time after I'd been saying all this is that without realising it I'd been seduced into using theistic language. I consider myself a deist: I believe God is to be found through ratiocination, not revelation, but I also hold views that, though not tightly bound to deism, often go along with it: that God does not intervene in the running of the universe—or, at best, does so very subtly indeed. (I cannot square any other possibility with the fact of what's happened over history to my people; or at least not without resigning the axioms of God's omnipotence or benevolence, which are more deeply ingrained in me still.) And yet by praying the traditional Jewish prayers, I'd been inveigled into using theistic language in my prayers.

I suppose for me it wasn't such a big deal, given that I used this language whilst davening in shul on Shabbos anyway, but it was a bit of a shock to me to realise it. The problem is that the traditional Jewish liturgy is very highly theistical; it doesn't really hold a space for non-theistical language. (Some prayers can be rendered non-theistical through creative translation—there's a wonderful non-theistical translation of אֲשֶׁר יָצַר on the wall of the toilet of (the London) Moishe House—but this definitely does not go for all prayers.)

[ETA: Once again, a discussion around this post seems to be taking place on Facebook rather than LJ or DW; follow this link to participate in it.]

Comments

[liv]

I knew most of this but it makes a really interesting blog post to set everything down in one place. There's some old and not very well controlled psych research that suggests that if you affirm belief in a deity daily for a few weeks, you start believing in them. Which although it's not great research, does seem vaguely plausible.

I think the idea of using brachot to express gratitude for food and be mindful that always having enough to eat is not a given is a really good idea, and your explanation does make a lot of sense here. I don't do it because I'm reluctant to be seen to be reciting prayers in public. And because I haven't figured out the practicalities of making sure that every meal I eat includes a motzi and that I am in a position to wash my hands directly in conjunction with eating. I'm also not really willing to go down the route you have of wearing a capel full time, though that's more minor, I am sometimes ok with making one-off blessings without covering my head. Asher yatzar is an excellent addition to food blessings; I should get round to either printing it out small or learning it by heart so I can actually do it.

I agree that it's not necessarily praying to a personal, interventionist God. When I bless our God, king of the universe I'm not forming a mind-picture of kneeling before a very powerful king and thanking him for his generosity in providing food; I think that would be basically close to idolatry anyway, even for a traditional theist.

My approach to shacharit was kind of inverted from yours! I started out by saying the Shema with a fairly minimal version of its blessings, and the Amidah. And later added the morning blessings and Alenu. I kind of only manage pesukei dezimra on shabbat. I think this is probably me coming from a Reform background, I'm inclined to start with what I consider the most important things and work outwards, rather than starting from the beginning of the liturgy and going forwards! Part of what informed this is that I take the mitzvah of tefillin a lot more seriously than the mitzvah of reciting Ashrei however many times it's supposed to be repeated. And it felt wrong to be laying tefillin if I wasn't also going to daven, though I do know that formally they're separate things.

The other area where my Reform background differed from yours is that I was already in the habit of minimal morning and evening prayers, mostly based around the Shema, from childhood. So it was fairly natural for me to extend that to a skeleton shacharit once I was bat mitzvah. Then I stopped davening for a while because a rabbi laughed at me for trying to practise according to Mishnah without knowing any of the halachic material that interprets that. In the end I decided that it's better to take on some kind of practice, even if I'm not perfectly educated about all of the relevant halacha, and learn more whenever I have the opportunity.

Sorry for not joining in on FB; I am so completely allergic to the interface there that I can't bear to look at comment threads for long enough to actually engage in discussion. I'll go back and try to read some of what people are saying.

[lethargic_man]

There's some old and not very well controlled psych research that suggests that if you affirm belief in a deity daily for a few weeks, you start believing in them.

Interesting. I wonder if that only works in the vernacular, though. (Knowing what you're saying in Hebrew is not the same as grokking the English at a deep level; not unless you know Hebrew as a spoken language.)

I don't do it because I'm reluctant to be seen to be reciting prayers in public.

Why, if you don't mind my asking?

And because I haven't figured out the practicalities of making sure that every meal I eat includes a motzi and that I am in a position to wash my hands directly in conjunction with eating.

Pshaw; more things to aspire to, which become a stumbling block for those who want to take on something but not take on everything, if you insist on doing everything completely right. I have sandwiches for lunch at work; I don't wash my hands, and I don't bentsh unless the bread is an accompaniment for a large meal, as on festive סְעוּדוֹת. Instead, I say the one-line form of bentshing, and do so immediately after my sandwiches, so I'm not including my dessert (an apple, which gets its own בְּרָכָה) along with the bread (in which case, I'd have to do it properly, from my point of view).

I'm also not really willing to go down the route you have of wearing a capel full time, though that's more minor, I am sometimes ok with making one-off blessings without covering my head.

I don't wear one full-time; only on Shabbos and yomtov, and when I'm davening or studying or reciting בְּרָכוֹת. I occasionally will still recite בְּרָכוֹת bareheaded, such as when I'm in a vegetarian restaurant where I don't feel I should give the impression it's somewhere frum Jews would eat. (I was surprised to see two yeshiva bochurs in the Thai veggie place I at in in Berlin two weeks ago! And of course as you probably know R. Rose has given a heter to eat in Kalpna in Edinburgh.)

As you know, the custom of covering one's head whilst praying is post-Talmudic. One does it to remind one God is above one; but if you're used to doing it every time you make a בְּרָכָה, and then you make a בְּרָכָה without covering your head, it actually acts to remind you more than wearing one would. (Which is part of why R. Nathan Lopes Cardozo keeps saying he's going to take his capel off, though I've been hearing him saying this for years without ever seeing him bareheaded.)

I think this is probably me coming from a Reform background, I'm inclined to start with what I consider the most important things and work outwards, rather than starting from the beginning of the liturgy and going forwards!

Well, I wasn't starting at the beginning of the liturgy and working forwards, I was starting with what was most theologically accessible to me, and felt important I should be doing on a daily basis, at the time.

Part of what informed this is that I take the mitzvah of tefillin a lot more seriously than the mitzvah of reciting Ashrei however many times it's supposed to be repeated.

Pshaw, the whole Ashrei thing is because of one rabbi saying anyone who says Ashrei thrice daily has a place in הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. Who was he to rule that, anyway? And doesn't it contradict כל ישראל יש להם חלק לעולם הבא anyway? aviva_m miss out the second Ashrei, and that's completely off the bottom of the list of things I would complain about in the way they run their services. It's certainly not a mitzvah as you put it.