Prayer/Tefilah 101: Language of Blessing

Yah, where shall I find You?

High and hidden is your Place;

And where shall I not find You?

Your Presence fills Time and Space;

I have sought Your nearness,

With all my heart I called You!

And going out to meet You,

I found You coming toward me.

-Yehuda Ha'Levi

Let's examine each of these 6 words one at a time...

בָּרוּךְ

• The word Baruch comes from the root Bet - Resh - Chaf, the meaning in the root can be about the knee/kneeling/bending/bowing, the physical act of prayer
• The word appears in the passive voice, 'Baruch', "God is blessed..." - Blessed by whom?
• What could be the reason for the passive voice here as opposed to 'we bless You', or 'I bless You'?

אַתָּה

• The word "Atah" is the familiar 'you', like the difference between the formal and informal in romance languages
• Martin Buber - "I and Thou"

  The ultimate Thou is God. In the I–Thou relation there are no barriers. This enables us to relate directly to God. God is ever-present in human consciousness, manifesting in music, literature, and other forms of culture. Inevitably, Thou is addressed as It, and the I–Thou relation becomes the being of the I–Thou relation. God is now spoken to directly, not spoken about.

  There is no world that disconnects one from God, a world of It alone, when I–Thou guides one's actions. "One who truly meets the world goes out also to God." God is the worldwide relation to all relations.

• Rabbi Marcia Prager - "Our bracha is challenging us to open ourselves to the experience of intimacy: to enter tentatively, cautiously, hopefully, expectantly, and consciously into a personal relationship with God. We call out to God as You because You is personal...."You" is the language of relationship....I make a commitment to be present to that relationship...Entering into relationship with God means finding God in our lives, opening ourselves to the presence of divinity all around us..."(The Path of Blessing, pp. 58/59/60)

ה'

• We tend to pronounce this name of God as Ado-nay since by tradition only the High Priest pronounced this Name, and only once a year on Yom Kippur
• It is from the root that means 'existence' and it is an irregular conjugation along with the same root in just about every language in the world (Interesting though that the verb meaning 'to be' is almost always irregular! As if existence itself is strange, mysterious, and wondrous.)
• Each of the letters connects to breath/breathing the fundamental activity of existence: Let's try to pronounce each letter's sound this way, Yah, Huh, Vah (or Wah)

The personal name of the God of Israel is written in the Hebrew Bible with the four consonants YHWHand is referred to as the "Tetragrammaton." At least until the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. this name was regularly pronounced with its proper vowels, as is clear from the *LachishLetters, written shortly before that date. But at least by the third century B.C.E. the pronunciation of the name YHWH was avoided, and Adonai, "the Lord," was substituted for it, as evidenced by the use of the Greek word Kyrios, "Lord," for YHWH in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that was begun by Greek-speaking Jews in that century. Where the combined form ʾAdonai YHWHoccurs in the Bible, this was read as ʾAdonai ʾElohim, "Lord God." In the early Middle Ages, when the consonantal text of the Bible was supplied with vowel points to facilitate its correct traditional reading, the vowel points for ʾAdonai with one variation – a sheva with the initial yod of YHWH instead of the ḥataf-pataḥ under the aleph of ʾAdonai – were used for YHWH, thus producing the form YeHoWaH. When Christian scholars of Europe first began to study Hebrew, they did not understand what this really meant, and they introduced the hybrid name "Jehovah." In order to avoid pronouncing even the sacred name ʾAdonaifor YHWH, the custom was later introduced of saying simply in Hebrew ha-Shem (or Aramaic Shemā ʾ, "the Name") even in such an expression as "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of YHWH" (Ps. 118:26). The avoidance of pronouncing the name YHWH is generally ascribed to a sense of reverence. More precisely, it was caused by a misunderstanding of the Third Commandment (Ex. 20:7; Deut. 5:11) as meaning "Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain," whereas it really means either "You shall not swear falsely by the name of YHWH your God" (JPS) or more likely, "Do not speak the name of YHWH your god, to that which is false," i.e., do not identify YHWH with any other god.

The true pronunciation of the name YHWH was never lost. Several early Greek writers of the Christian Church testify that the name was pronounced "Yahweh." This is confirmed, at least for the vowel of the first syllable of the name, by the shorter form Yah, which is sometimes used in poetry (e.g., Ex. 15:2) and the -yahu or -yah that serves as the final syllable in very many Hebrew names. In the opinion of manyscholars, YHWH is a verbal form of the root hwh, which is an older variant of the root hyh "to be." The vowel of the first syllable shows that the verb is used in the form of a future-present causative hiphʾil, and must therefore mean "He causes to be, He brings into existence." The explanation of the name as given in Exodus 3:14, Eheyeh-Asher-Eheyeh, "I-Am-Who-I-Am," offers a folk etymology, common in biblical explanation of names, rather than a strictly scientific one. Like many other Hebrew names in the Bible, the name Yahweh is no doubt a shortened form of what was originally a longer name. It has been suggested that the original, full form of the name was something like Yahweh-Asher-Yihweh, "He brings into existence whatever exists" or Yahweh Ẓevaʾot (I Sam. 1:3, 11), which really means "He brings the hosts [of heaven – or of Israel?] into existence." "The Lord of Hosts," the traditional translation of the latter name, is doubtful.

According to the documentary hypothesis, the literary sources in the Pentateuch known as the Elohist and the Priestly Document never use the name Yahweh for God until it is revealed to Moses (Ex. 3:13; 6:2–3); but the Yahwist source uses it from Genesis 2:4 on and puts the name in Eve's declaration, "I along with Yahweh have made a man," thus implying that it was known to the first human generation (Gen. 4:1; cf. 4:26). The apparent purpose of Exodus 6:2–3 is to glorify Moses at the expense of the patriarchal traditions.

(Names of God, EJ, Authors: Louis F. Hartman, S. David Sperling, Louis Isaac Rabinowitz, Moshe Idel and Marvin Fox

Editors: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, Date: 2007)

אלקינו

• Our God
• Refers to a nation/people
• But we will see God is not limited to our tribe
• How can God both be "Our God" and also the "Ruler of the Universe"?

The oldest Semitic term for God is ʾel (corresponding to Akkadian ilu (m), Canaanite ʾel or ʾil, and Arabic ʾel as an element in personal names). The etymology of the word is obscure. It is commonly thought that the term derived from a root ʾyl or ʾwl, meaning "to be powerful" (cf. yesh le-el yadi, "It is in the power of my hand," Gen. 31:29; cf. Deut. 28:32; Micah 2:1). But the converse may be true; since power is an essential element in the concept of deity, the term for deity may have been used in the transferred sense of "power."

In Akkadian, ilu (m), and plural ilū and ilānu, is used in reference to any individual god as well as to divine beings in general; but it is not employed as the personal name of any god. In Ugaritic Canaanite, however, il occurs much more frequently as the personal name of the highest god el than as the common noun "god" (pl., ilm; fem., ilt). In the Ugaritic myths El is the head of the Canaanite pantheon, the ancestor of the other gods and goddesses, and the creator of the earth and its creatures; but he generally fades into the background and plays a minor role in the preserved myths.

In the Bible ʾel is seldom used as the personal name of God, e.g., ʾEl-ʾElohei-Yisrael, "El, the God of [the Patriarch] Israel" (Gen. 33:20; cf. Ps. 146:5). Almost always, ʾel is an appellative, with about the same semantic range as ʾelohim (see below). The word can thus be preceded by the article: ha-ʾel, "the [true] God" (e.g., Ps. 18:31, 33, 48; 57:3). Like ʾelohim, ʾel can be employed in reference to an "alien god" (Deut. 32:12; Mal. 2:11) or a "strange god" (Ps. 44:21; 81:10). It can also have the plural form ʾelim, "heavenly beings" (Ex. 15:11). In contrast to the extremely common word ʾelohim, ʾel occurs relatively seldom, except in archaic or archaizing poetry, as in Job and Psalms. But ʾel and, rarely, ʾelohim are used when the term is modified by one or more adjectives, e.g., "a jealous god" (e.g., Ex. 20:5; 34:14), "a god compassionate and gracious" (e.g., Ex. 34:6; Ps. 86:15). Moreover, ʾel, not ʾelohim, is used when the divine is contrasted with the human (Num. 23:19; Isa. 31:3; Ezek. 28:9; Hos. 11:9; Job 25:4). As an element in theophoric names, ʾel, not ʾelohim, is used often as the first element, e.g., Elijah, Elisha, and Elihu, and even more often as the last element, e.g., Israel, Ishmael, and Samuel. Of special interest are the divine names of which El is the first element: ʾEl ʿElyon, ʾEl ʿOlam, ʾEl Shaddai,ʾEl Ro ʾi, and ʾEl Berit.

(Ibid., EJ)

מלך העולם

• Monarch/Sovereign/Ruler

We tend to translate Olam as a term for space/physical area, but the root Ayin/Lamed/Mem carries more meanings:

• Space/physical area (e.g. The world stands on 3 things...)
• Time/Eternity (e.g. Adon Olam)
• Mystery/What is hidden (Deuteronomy 22:3)

The root E/L/M then suggests God is Sovereign infused with 4 different spirits/foci:

• God is Sovereign of the entire universe, of all space/area known and unknown (So, in theory, God is also God of the Klingons...)
• God is God of all time, God is within time and also transcendent of it - Erich Fromm once asked how we as finite/mortal beings can relate to an infinite/incorporeal God - One answer: Because God wants the relationship!

Activity: Think about the six words of the blessing Baruch Atah Ado-nai Elo-henu Melech Ha'olam

Read through the six words and see which words your attention falls on at this moment.

Write that word down and a sentence or two about what may be connecting you to this word at this moment.

Prayer is reaching out to God, but with the poem where we started, God was coming toward us, looking for us.

We first see this in the early days of Creation.

Rashi here:

God knew where he was, but God asked this in order to open up a conversation with him...

Bekhor Shor:

It's God's way to speak to people in the language of people...

Malbim:

Where are you spiritually?