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Chapter Two
Grace After Meals:
The Torah Koan of Having Your Cake
and Being Eaten Too
One of the well-known prayers in Jewish liturgy is birchat hamazon -- Grace After Meals. The source for “bentching”– the Yiddish expression for birchat hamazon[1] -- after eating a meal with bread is prescribed in the Torah.
“You shall eat and be satisfied, “U’varachta et HaShem Elochecha…” and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you." [Devarim/Deut. 8:7-10]
This verse is not only the textual source for the mitzvah of birchat hamazon, but “U’varachta et HaShem Elochecha…” is the cosmic well from which conceptually every rabbinical formula beginning with Baruch atah… (“Blessed Art Thou”) flows.[2] Birchat hamazon, is the Biblical root from which hundreds of brachot (blessings) for numerous acts and prayers branch out from. What is curious is that the essences of all the blessings we give to God emanate from the concept of eating. Even more intriguing, however, is the question that our investigation will lead us to: Who is it that is doing the eating? This is Kabbalah Koan of how to have your cake and be eaten too.
But first the obvious question here is an old one “Does God need our blessings?” Fully examined either way you answer you cannot win. If you say ‘yes’ -- the berachot are for God --then you imply that God has needs and then He is no longer omnipotent. If you say ‘no’ -- all the berachot are solely for the purpose of the creation -- then you have distorted the literal meaning of the verse because it says, “You will bless God..” The principle that surprisingly is adhered to by the Kabbalists is that “No scriptural verse can be divorced from its plain meaning”.[3]
Instead of viewing this question as a philosophical conflict of interests let’s turn the two views into a machloket, as explained in the chapter of King David’s Paradox. The contradiction is transformed into a statement of fact, i.e., both perspectives are equally true and necessary. Now we have a qashe question – Can both be simultaneously true? -- and we can begin building our Kabbalah koan.
Like all good qashe questions the problem at hand is a paradox that is embedded in the fabric of creation. But it is a paradox that we can unravel and consciously become part of. Then, of course, it is not longer a paradox, but prima facie of how reality works. In many ways this phenomenon is the warp and woof of existence itself and the apparent theosophical difficulty of the beracha is God’s “problem” as much as it is our problem.[4] If God can have problems then He certainly could use a few blessings here and there. But this is just begging the issue. Who really has the beracha ball in his court?
A Spiritual Spring of Water
The Hebrew word for a blessing is bracha, the three letter root being bet-resh-chaf. Contrary to public notion, a bracha does not mean “to thank” or “to praise”. Rather, the root meaning of b-r-ch is “addition and increase” as is clear from a number of scriptural verses and from explicit statements in the Zohar.[5] The word breicha – a spring of flowing water – shares the same root. When we make or give a bracha something is being added, springing forth. The flow is being turned on and turned up. What is it that is being increased and, once again, how is this increase affecting God?
There are a number of simple ways of understanding how we can, as a figure of speech or metaphorically, be “increasing” and “adding” onto God. The way of the Kabbalah, once again, is to take the words of the Torah literally only from a very different perspective and with a very different set of tools.
Fundamentally, the term “God” never refers to the ineffable essence of the Source of All Emanations. That aspect of the Divine is known as Ain Sof – The Infinite One.[6] The Ain Sof is never a direct participant in any aspect of existence, yet eternally omnipresent, the uber ground upon which all and everything is manifesting itself. We know and interact with the Ain Sof through It’s manifestations and attributes. These divine attributes are what the kabbalists refer to as the sefirot. Sefirot are the technical terms for the different divine names, formulas and combinations of creative powers emerging from within the Ain Sof that govern and interact with the world.
Within this framework it can be appreciated that even the word “God” is a Name or attribute of the Ain Sof just as is Lord, Almighty, Lord of Hosts (and others which are not translatable.) This teaching, although simple to express in words, is one of the trickiest to remember. We have a knee-jerk reaction to the word “God” that immediately stops the qashe question from ever formulating. One has to remind oneself of this subtle yet crucial law when the word God appears. Incidentally, the act of remembering that “God “ is only an aspect in a larger picture of the Ain Sof is a mental and spiritual exercise in and of itself. It is also one of the 613 mitzvot. Which one? “And you will know God!”[7]
The Yin/Yang of Torah
Secondly, it is fundamental to the inner Torah that reality is not a monolithic entity devoid of different aspects. Yes, “it is all one”, but the singularity of existence is unveiled via a mechanism of polarization. These two polarities interactive with each other, yet their relationship is not a simple set of opposites. Although the polarities are equal (they are both emanations of the Ain Sof) they are not equivalent, i.e. they have distinct qualities and perform differently. In the Kabbalah these two potencies have specific names but for simplicity sake we call them hesed – expansive energy – and gevura – contracting energy. For want of a model in Western culture hesed and gevura loosely correspond to the Oriental concept of yin/yang. (Do not bother trying to line them up with each other or to figure out which is masculine and which is feminine because the similarities essentially stop here, but that is a different Kabbalah koan.)
From the time of the dimensional fall of Adam the union between these two divine emanations making up the fabric of creation have frayed and come apart. This is the separation between God and man, heaven and earth. The purpose of man and the will of God is the reunification of these polarities into a unique mode of singularity that will wondrously contain a “unified multiplicity” (again an apparent paradox).
Man and God are equal partners in this process. Simply, any given aspect of humanity, relative to a corresponding aspect of divinity is an aspect of gevura. The various qualities of “God”, relative to a corresponding aspect of humanity, are an aspect of hesed. The person that is “giving” the beracha to God becomes a vessel for the aspect of gevurat. God, who is “receiving” the beracha is, at that moment, the aspect of hesed. As is known, the quality of gevura stimulates, opens and increases the aspect of hesed which in turn now flows into the receiving vessels of gevura. The key to understanding this dynamic is the Talmudic formula, “More than the calf (human/gevura) needs to suckle the mother cow (Divine/hesed) needs to nurse”.
The two polarities of hesed and gevura, the divine and the human – are looped into each other. The ritual utterance of the beracha’s formula opens the vortex between the two and it is the aspect of human gevura of that is “giving “ the beracha to the aspect of Godly hesed. This is what it means to give a beracha to God. This is the great Divine need. Paradoxically, the one thing the Divine lacks is the ability from “outside” itself to stimulate and open its own portals of goodness and sustenance.
“Bless Me, My Son”
A beracha is the meeting place of heaven and earth, the vortex of higher and lower worlds. Herein also lies the essence of teffilah- the Jewish form of prayer. The dynamic of tefillah does not even require the word or root of bracha to be used. There is a well-known vision recorded in the Talmud. It was Yom Kippur some 2,000 years ago and Yismael ben Alisha the Cohen Gadol entered the Kadosh haKadoshim, inner sanctum of the Holy of Holies to culminate the service of the Days of Awe with the burning of the sacrificial incense. There, in a state of prophecy, the Holy One (God/hesed) revealed Himself to the sage. While in the most intimate relationship between the Creator and the created, the nexus of God and man, the Divine asks, “B’nie, barchani”—“My son, bless me”. Yismael ben Alisha did not respond with any words of praise or thanks.[8] Rather, as he atoned for his people and for the world, the High Priest uttered these words, “May it be Your will that Your mercy suppresses Your anger and that Your mercy prevail over Your other attributes so that You may deal with Your children with the attribute of mercy and that for their benefit stop short of the required justice due to them”. In other words, let it flow. Let the well springs of the hesed flow down into the lower realms of creation.
The key place for the beracha process to be launched is over food and other acts of pleasure (where berachas are prescribed) because that is where obviously a lot of energy is trying to flow. This helps explain why you must eat and be satisfied in order to open up the beracha. The virtually infinite sparks of gevura are awoken and in turn they stimulate the drops of hesed to pour out their sustenance, “to rain upon the land. After you have eaten then you become a “live wire” sparking with gevura that can now arouse and stimulate your other polarity of hesed.
The qashe question that we originally set up is that when a beracha is uttered who is receiving the benefit? A tension was generated by rigorously maintaining both possibilities are simultaneously true even though each explanation by itself is incomplete. This is precisely so because the secret of the beracha lies in the dance between the parts, the dynamic interface of God and man. The “answer” perpetually loops back and returns us to the starting qashe question and that is exactly where we want to be to contemplate the Kabbalah koan of Birkat HaMazon.
When the divine hesed from “above” absorbs the spiritual charge from “below” it is, in effect, “ingesting” your energy, the food you just ate and the pleasure you just received. In effect, you now literally become food for thought, i.e., God’s thoughts as your energy is absorbed into the Divine Mind. God blesses us with his gift of human food and through our ability to eat it. We bless God with our gift of divine food, which is our ability to be eaten. “You shall eat and be satisfied and then bless the Lord your G d…”. This verse is now revealed as a Kabbalah Koan. Birkat HaMazon is having your cake – or your bread – and being eaten too [1] The ending “ing” of bentching is actually an Anglicized form of bentchen. Bentch is also found in the familiar bentsh licht and bentsh gomel. Bentch is cognate with the Romanic Bendicere (bless) and benediction.
[2] The actual format is borrowed from another Scriptural verse, “Baruch atah HaShem lamdaney chukecha”.
[3] Stopping just short of the cosmic law that “No scriptural verse can be divorced from its plain meaning” there are numerous reasons from a psycho-ethical and philosophical perspective where man is the sole beneficiary of the blessings. These explanations are true on their level.
[4] One of the methods of unlocking the language of the Kabbalah is to make “your problem’s” into “God’s problems” and then He will make His problem’s into your problem’s, i.e., He will reveal to you the inner mechanism that loops the divine reality into the human reality and vice versa. This echoes the formula in the Mishnah of Perkie Avot, "Make your will God's will and He will make His will your will".
[5] Sefer Nefesh HaChayim, Gate II also quoting Rashba. Rabbi Chayim Volozhin, the most famous disciple of the Gaon of Vilna.
[6] In fact, the term Ain Sof is not a proper noun referring to the Ain Sof Itself because the Ain Sof is not a subject or an object to be conceptualized. Rather, the term refers to the human inability to complete the conceptualization of this inexpressible concept. We can begin the thought process, but there is ain sof --no end -- to trying to complete it. Ibid.
[7] “”And know this day and place it upon your hearts that the transcendent aspect of the Divine (the aspect of the Ain Sof) is the same as our immanent manifestation of the divine (God), there is no-other”.
[8] Nefesh Hachayim, ibid.
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