Baruch attah

So it's time for the second in my series of things-I've-learned-about-being-Jewish, which I'm writing in summation of this two-year conversion journey, in preparation for my Bet Din, and as a way of getting thoughts clear in my head as I contemplate writing a book on my Journey Into Judaism.

Last time, as you recall, I wrote about the Jewish relationship with belief. One of my rabbis suggested that I look into 12th-century Rabbi Moses ben Maimon's (aka Maimonides or "the Rambam") thirteen principles of Jewish faith (see a nice article on these principles by the excellent Jewish educators of My Jewish Learning at http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-thirteen-principles-of-faith/ ).

I had three thoughts about this:

• First: is there anything Maimonides didn't do? The man was a court physician, rabbi, scholar-philosopher, and writer of myriad books and commentaries that have stood the test of centuries – he gives me quite an inferiority complex!
• Second: yes, this is a statement of faith for Judaism along the nit-picky Christian lines, but despite the Rambam's declaration that those who disagreed had no place in the world-to-come, there seems to have been plenty of argument and dissent about some of Maimonides' principles (again, see the MJL article linked above), and I've run across no evidence of people being kicked out of the Jewish fold or branded as "heretics" for their disagreements.
• Third: my main point still stands, that at least among Jews I know these beliefs are not the most important definition of Jewishness: they don't recite Maimonides' 13 principles during prayer services as a statement of collective faith, nor do they quiz newcomers on these principles to find out if a given person is "our kind of Jew" or not.

I also want to say that I don't see Jewish belief as unimportant, just as less important that other pieces of Jewish identity. One author I have read suggested that all religions require some mixture of "belief, behavior, and belonging" and that while Jews certainly have all three, we tend to neglect belief a bit.

So, where to go after Jewish belief?

Behavior would seem to be the next topic, but it's a big one. Today, I'm going to deal with one particular behavior: Jewish prayer, and in particular how it differs from Christian prayer.


Growing up Christian (of the United Methodist sort), I learned that the basic prayer was "Dear God, please..." followed by a list of things the pray-er wanted God to do for them. Bless so-and-so or such-and-such. Grant that our gathering and our efforts are successful. Help us to know what we need to know. Give us today our daily bread, and a pony would be nice, too. That sort of thing. My bedtime prayer growing up was "Dear God, please bless..." followed by a list of everyone and everything that was important to me, then a blanket request for a good night sleep and a good day tomorrow.

Now, I know that formal Christian prayers are not quite that simple: they usually start by thanking or praising God, but the crux of the prayer, the focal point, is usually the part where you ask God for what you want. "Father, we thank you for bringing us together today, and we praise you for being so wonderful, and we ask you to..."

And there are plenty of Christians who really, truly expect (1) that they can tell the Ruler of the Universe what to do to make their particular situation better and (2) that God will do it for them. I had a roommate in a college program one summer who was an equestrian enthusiast. My mother invited him to meet her horse and those of her neighbors, but then she found out that her neighbors would be out of town. He really believed that if he prayed enough about it, God would somehow cause her neighbors to cancel their trip and be available. I don't believe in that God. I've also had plenty of students in my college anatomy classes who have failed to study for one test or another and then told me that they "asked Jesus" to help them pass their test anyway. I usually respond that I have a deal with Jesus that he only helps people who pay attention in class and study. Sacrilege? Maybe just a little. But again, I don't believe in a God who will take your side over mine by whispering answers to my test questions in your ear.


In contrast, the most basic Jewish prayer is "Baruch attah Adonai, eloheinu melek haolam, [who did something truly awesome]." That translates as "Blessed/praised are you Adonai, our god and ruler of all creation, [who did something truly awesome]." Some of the things that fill in those brackets include...

• who brings forth bread from the earth
• who created the fruit of the vine / of the tree / of the soil
• by whose word all things came to be
• who blessed us with mitzvot and commanded us to [do any number of observances]
• shield of Abraham, helper of Sarah
• who gives the rooster the ability to distinguish night and day (a waking-up prayer)
• who created me in your image
• whose world includes such wonders as these

The point here is that these are complete prayers -- blessings, we call them -- that don't ask God for anything. The point, rather, is to bless God for all the things God has already done for us!

This is not to say that Jews never ask for things. We have prayers of supplication in the weekday liturgy (which, granted, most of us who aren't Orthodox don't say anymore) but they are for broad-strokes things like peace and goodness, wisdom and understanding, healing of the sick, and the good of the Jewish people. We have one prayer that is said on Shabbat that asks for blessings on the sick, both physically and mentally/spiritually, known as the mi sheberach. It says, in essence, "may the one who blessed our ancestors also bless those who are in need of healing today". 

But think about that: not "Dear God, heal so-and-so" but "may God grant healing." It's less of a demand and more of an encouragement. After all, we suppose God already wants the healing of God's people, so we are just offering our blessing and adding our spiritual energy to that desire: may it be so. As I think of it, most Jewish prayers of supplication take that form: may it be God's will that things of ultimate good come our way. We don't tell the Ruler of the Universe what to do, we encourage Her to do what is already Her will. 

An example:

A typical Christian blessing before meals might go like this:

"Dear God / Father / Lord Jesus, please bless this food and the people who eat it..."

or

"...bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and this fellowship to the nourishment of our souls"

or something similar.

For Christians, the food by itself is nothing special -- it needs to be blessed. And the same for the people doing the eating. It is asking for the ordinary to be made special. 

The Jewish blessing before a bread meal goes like this:

"Blessed are you Adonai, our god and ruler of all creation, who brings forth bread from the earth."

For Jews, the food is already blessed by virtue of having been created by God, and the people who eat it are already blessed by virtue of God having cared enough about them to provide food! So, what is left is to bless God who created the food in the first place. It's about gratitude for that which is already special.

Another example:

In the Episcopal Church (USA), it is typical for the first prayer in a service to be a "collect"; one typical collect follows:

"Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love,
that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness,
and minister your justice with compassion..."

It is, again, a prayer that essentially tells God what to do: give us enough faith and love and grace that we can go and and do what we are supposed to.

In Jewish services, the call to prayer goes like this:

Leader: "Bar'chu et Adonai HaMevorach"

(Bless/praise Adonai the-one-who-is-to-be-praised)

Congregation: "Baruch Adonai HaMevorach l'olam va-ed"

(Blessed/praised is Adonai, the-one-who-is-to-be-praised, to eternity and beyond)

Here, instead, we have an instruction to the congregation to bless/praise God, and the response of the congregation is to pronounce a blessing on the Eternal. God doesn't need to be told what to do, God needs to be reminded how much we love Him. And so do we. 

(There's also a fundamental difference in theology showing up here: Christianity sees people as fundamentally flawed: we need to be blessed, given grace, in order to become good enough to do God's will in the world; Judaism sees humans as always capable of either good or bad, that it is through doing God's will that we earn God's blessings and through blessing God that we remind ourselves to do God's will and not yield to our yetzer ha-ra)

I'm not trying to pick on Christianity here, but it strikes me that we get very different ideas from these different styles of prayer. The basic posture of Jewish prayer is thankfulness and praise, from which one learns a sense of humility and a feeling of being already blessed by all that God has already given us, by the privilege of being alive in this world we share in the first place, by the wonder of being made "in the image of God". And from this posture of gratitude, we proceed to thankfully go serve God and each other.

Christian prayer includes thanks and praise, sometimes, but as I have said it tends to focus more on asking God for things, from which one learns to feel that the things life throws your way, in fact that who you are in essence, might not be enough -- that you are entitled to more and better and that you have the right to ask for it, that God is some sort of divine concierge whose job is to provide you with the best that creation has to offer, that if you simply pray hard enough it is possible to ride a continuous stream of easy victories and successes (without even studying) on the way to the Good Life. There are even Christian pastors (Osteen and Dollar among others) who preach this sort of divinely guaranteed prosperity from the pulpit. Growing up Christian I was *told* to "count your blessings" but led by example to constantly ask for more of them.

And I think it makes a difference. Two years of Jewish prayer have changed the way I see my life, the way I approach and live my life. My whole Christian life I struggled with the question of why God was not "answering my prayers" and giving me everything I felt I needed to live the life I wanted. This job? In this bland stretch of suburbia? This house with all its faults? These people with all their faults? Why can't I have my dream job in my dream location in my dream house with people who give me the respect I deserve all the time? Come on, God, at least one of those seems reasonable!

These last two years have changed me in many ways, but not the least in this way: for the first time I can see that what God has given me -- a faithful and loving wife, four healthy and (mostly) happy children who continue to amaze me, an extended family who help out when they can and care always, a stable job in a world full of anything but, a house to come home to in a world where some have much less -- is truly a blessing. 

Baruch attah, Adonai, for this present moment in all its inglorious glory. 

Amen.

Finally, one more edition of "signs you will never see in front of a synagogue":

Pray about everything

Worry about nothing

This sign is in front of a church I pass every day on the way to work. Why is this not a Jewish sign? Well, first, as I have been trying to point out in this whole blog post, Jews don't seem to have the idea Christians do that you can just dump your list of concerns out to the Eternal in the form of a list of requests-for-action and count on God to make it all work out for you. The attitude I have observed more among the Jewish people is to take what comes your way, do what you can to make a better outcome of it, hope for the best, thank God for what blessings you can find in your situation...and worry about what might go wrong until it either does or doesn't.

And if you have to ask why "worry about nothing" isn't a Jewish sign, you haven't read enough Jewish jokes. My favorite, a telegram: "letter to follow, start worrying."

One more reason I make a good Jew.  :-)