Here All Along by Sarah Hurwitz

Here All Along by Sarah Hurwitz

Author:Sarah Hurwitz [Hurwitz, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-03T00:00:00+00:00


BLESSING PRACTICE

Jewish prayer isn’t limited to certain places, like a synagogue, or done only at certain times. It’s supposed to be more of an all-the-time/anytime activity—a way of life really. Hence the Jewish blessing practice.

Blessings are brief scripted prayers of praise and gratitude traditionally addressed to God (but I think you can direct them to whomever or whatever you think is appropriate), and they are supposed to be said anytime something worthy of blessing crosses our path. According to Jewish tradition, that would be quite often—at least one hundred times a day!

Blessings traditionally begin with the words “Blessed are you Lord, our God, ruler of the universe, who…” But you can play with the language if words like “God” and “ruler” don’t work for you. Lab/Shul offers one alternative: “A blessing: in the Presence of the Infinite, we pause with gratitude for…”

The siddur contains many blessings, so the prayers traditionally observant Jews say three times a day cover quite a few of the one hundred. There are also blessings for everything from witnessing the beauty of the natural world (“who has such things in the universe!”), to drinking wine (“creator of the fruit of the vine”), to encountering a renowned scholar (“who has imparted Godly wisdom to human beings”), to seeing an unusual-looking person or animal (“who makes varied creatures”). I particularly love this last one: At a moment when we may be inclined to recoil or judge, we’re instead called to notice the Divine imprint on another.

There is also a well-known blessing called the “Sheheḥeyanu” (meaning “who has given us life”), which marks the first time something occurs, either in a year (we say it on the first night of many Jewish holidays) or in our life: “who has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this time.”

There’s even a blessing to say after we go to the bathroom, in which we thank God for “fashioning the human body in wisdom, creating openings, arteries, glands, and organs, marvelous in structure, intricate in design,” and we acknowledge that “should but one of them fail to function by being blocked or opened, it would be impossible to survive and to serve You. Praised are you, Adonai, healer of all flesh, sustaining our bodies in wondrous ways.”

Laugh if you want, but I think this is a profound prayer. Just one tiny thing going wrong can wreak havoc on our health. And how often, when we’re actually healthy, do we stop and feel grateful that our bodies are working properly?

In our tendency to take what we have for granted, we’re like the two characters in a midrash about God parting the Sea of Reeds who became preoccupied with the muddiness of the sea floor:

Reuven stepped into it and curled his lip. “What is this muck?”

Shimon scowled, “There’s mud all over the place!”

“This is just like the slime pits of Egypt!” replied Reuven.

“What’s the difference?” complained Shimon. “Mud here, mud there; it’s all the same.”

Because Reuven and Shimon didn’t bother to look up, they missed the miracle happening all around them.



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