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In the last installment of my series on the morning prayers I wrote about the blessings for the body, for Torah, and for the renewal of our souls each morning. These prayers lead in to the section that actually gives the first third of the morning prayer service its name: Birchot HaShachar. You probably can recognize these from hearing them in the synagogue if you don’t daven in Hebrew at home - it’s the part with all of the consecutive “Baruch atah…“s.

But first, in many siddurim there is a beautiful little kabbalistic preparatory prayer, in English here to spare you the transliteration :

For the sake of the union of the Holy One, blessed is He, and the Shekhinah, I accept the obligation of the Torah: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ and by this merit may I open my mouth.

Lamentably, Siddur Sim Shalom, the Conservative movement’s prayerbook, eliminates much of it. But ArtScroll includes it, as does Kol HaNeshamah, the Reconstructionist siddur (I’m not sure about the new Mishkan Tefillah of the Reform movement… anyone know?). Anyway, I really like this little bit of preparation, as it alludes to the importance of our relationships with other people before we deal further with our relationship to G-d. As Hillel told the patient and apparently well-balanced questioner, the entire Torah can be summed up as: That which is hateful to you, do not do to your brother; the rest is commentary. Only upon remembering this important reality do we continue to offer prayers to G-d.

We move on then in to the series mentioned at the beginning of this post. There are some important differences between Orthodox and Conservative versions of these blessings, so I will print their translations below, with the Orthodox differences in italics. Commentary will follow some of them. Each of these begins with Baruch atah Hashem, elokeynu Melekh HaOlam… and so below they are listed from this point on…

“…Who enables His creatures to distinguish between day and night”

“…Who made me a Jew” “…For not having made me a gentile”

“…Who made me in His image” “…For not having made me a woman; for women: …for having made me according to His will.”

“…Who made me free” “…For not having made me a slave”

“…Who gives sight to the blind”

“…Who clothes the naked”

“…Who releases the bound”

“…Who raises the downtrodden”

“…Who creates the heavens and the earth”

“…Who provides for all my needs”

“…Who guides us on our path”

“…Who strengthens Israel with courage”

“…Who crowns Israel with glory”

“…Who restores vigor to the weary”

“…Who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids”

For me it is much easier to approach G-d as the One who made me a Jew, a free man, in His image and according to His will, than as the One Who, thank G-d, didn’t make be a woman, a non-Jew, or a slave. It is hard for me to get with the idea that I should be thankful I am not a woman while women should be content with how they’ve been created. It just sets up for me a dichotomy I don’t think is relevant. This is especially true in egalitarian communities in which women are rabbis, cantors, teachers, and equal participants, and in a world where I have two daughters whom I want to value their identities as both girls and Jews.

These prayers make a lot of sense in the morning. I have put on clean clothes most of the time, I know I’ll eat on my way to work, I feel invigorated, and as I prepare to go and do labor for which I will be paid, I begin to embrace the awareness of the new day before me. While sometimes these prayers feel like making peace with the fact that I am no longer in bed, most of the time they are reminders of my reliance on G-d, and of the beauty that fills my life even when I am not looking for it.

There is a very old tradition that adult Jews are required to recite 100 blessings each day, and while you may not be in to making sure you hit that number, I think the implied value placed on thankfulness is something that is important for us to remember, Jewish or not. Especially in America, we are conditioned to think about our own selfish desires - particularly the unfulfilled ones - rather than recognizing the goodness all around us. Judaism’s antidote to falling in to this mindlessness offering blessings, and here, early in our daily prayers, we engage the practice. Prayers like this collection of blessings help us focus on the reality that none of the things we take for granted are actually guaranteed to us. Tomorrow any of us could, G-d forbid, wake up blind, weak, bound in some type of servitude, unable to feed our family. And so each morning when we arise and realize these things are not the case, we must offer thanks.

Next in this series we’ll continue on to Pesukei D’Zimrah, the Songs of Praise in the Siddur…

kol tuv,

Yair