AMIDA (Berakha 09) , “Make us rich… but save us from Affluenza”

The 9th berakha of the Amida, barekhenu or barekh alenu, is the blessing in which we ask haShem to grant our livelihood (parnasa).
 
This blessing focuses specifically on requesting dew, rain, a good year’s crop, and a successful production of vegetables and fruits.  We ask HaShem to provide us material blessings and protect our source of livelihood from weather inclemencies and other natural disasters.
We particularly ask God to send rain. One of the most disastrous scenarios for the economy of Israel, and this is true even today,  is a period of drought.  Rain coming on its due time is God’s blessing to the people of Israel, as it is explicitly recorded in the Shema Israel. We also learned in the second part of the Shema that rain in the land of Israel is conditioned to the people of Israel’s keeping God’s Covenant. The Tora describes a sort of cause/effect dynamics between the People of Israel’s behavior and Israel’s skies. Heavens of the Holy Land are not governed by the rules of nature but by God’s retribution or reward to Israel’s loyalty.
Although this berakha refers exclusively to the agricultural aspects of Israel’s economy, because it was conceived for the ancient Israel nation, when Jews dedicated mostly to agriculture, it also alludes to our general economic success. This berakha implicitly includes our request to God to bless our sources of livelihood in present times: our businesses, our jobs, our investments, etc. 
Another important thing we learn from this berakha is that we specifically ask God to send rain as ‘blessing’ (tal umatar librakha). In other words, we expect to receive whatever rain is needed for the land, and not more than that! Rain in excess is the opposite of blessing.  Similarly, in many areas of material life, excess might be counterproductive.  Material excess can turn into a psychological “disorder”, which might affect us and our children, known as “Affluenza” 1. The feelings of unfulfillment and frustration that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by tireless pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to consumption.   
We should ask HaShem to bless us, providing us with what we really need.   
 
 
More on asking God in excess of
what you really need
“How the Lives of 10 Lottery Millionaires went Disastrously Wrong” (from money.co.uk)

Who wants to be a millionaire? Most people, surely (except billionaires of course). But sadly, winning a truck-load of money on the lottery, any lottery, comes with a heap of baggage. Daydreams of a millionaire lifestyle seem to have a habit of turning sour faster than a sub-prime mortgage, isolation, paranoia, drugs, crime, poverty and prison await those who fail to adjust, as this top ten of ‘Lottery Losers’ shows:

1. Jack Whittaker won a record $314.9m Powerball Jackpot in 2002. But life since then has been a long list of arrests, lawsuits, broken relationships and even death. In 2007, his then wife, Jewell admitted she wished she had ‘torn up the ticket’.

2. William “Bud” Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lotrery in 1988. He later described the experience as a nightmare and wishes it had never happened – who can blame him after he was sued by a former girlfriend eager to get her hands on the cash and his brother hired a hitman in the hope of inheriting the winnings. He invested in ill-fated family businesses and within a year was $1m in debt. Today he gets by on social security payments.

3. Luke Pittard from Wales won a ‘measly’ £1.3m on the National Lottery. After the novelty worn off and the obligatory lavish holiday, wedding and new home were done and dusted, he got bored and returned to work at MacDonalds.

4. An as-yet-unnamed Sicilian won £79m on the Italian lottery in 2008. Before he or she could even collect the winnings consumer groups were demanding that the windfall be seized by the government. The winner has since gone into hiding, fearing the Mafia will come calling.

5. Janite Lee won $18 million in 1993. Her generosity in giving money to a variety of political, educational and community causes was commendable – but just eight years later she filed for bankruptcy.

6. Mark Gardiner from London won $ 11m in 1995. Thirteen miserable years later, he hasn’t lost his money, but he has lost all his friends – even the ones he treated to new £100,000 homes – and lost touch with his family.

7. Michael Carroll won a £9.7m National Lottery Jackpot in 2002. Since then he has appeared in court more than 30 times and been jailed for drug related offences. In 2008, he admitted that ‘just’ £500,000 of his windfall remained.

8. Willie Hurt won 3.1 million in 1989. Two years later the money  was gone and he was on a murder charge. Hurt spent his fortune on a divorce and crack cocaine.

9. Charles Riddle won $1 million in 1975. The original lottery car crash, he quickly got divorced, faced several lawsuits and was eventually indicted for selling cocaine.

10. Ken Proxmire won $1 million in the Michigan Lottery.He moved to California and invested in a car business with his brothers. Five years later, he was bankrupt and back working as a machinist.

 



AMIDA (Berakha 08) HaShem is the ultimate Healer

רְפָאֵנוּ ה’ וְנֵרָפֵא
“Cure us, Oh God, so we will be cured…”

 

In this berakha we acknowledge that God is the ultimate healer.  When we are sick, we assert, our cure ultimately comes from Him.
 
This Berakha, and the subject of being sick/being cured is a great example of the complex dynamics between man’s freedom of choice and God’s intervention in our lives. 
 
First, in the way a disease is acquired. Many times illness is a consequence of our wrong choices. If we make an habit of eating the wrong foods, or if we don’t take care of our health, sickness might be directly or indirectly our own making. The Rabbis expressed this idea in TB Ketubot 30a: הכל בידי שמים חוץ מצינים פחים “Everything is in God’s hand, except colds and insolation”. In other words, if I willingly expose myself too much to cold or too much to heat, I cannot expect HaShem to protect me from my bad choices.   On the other hand, certain diseases (perhaps most) are not a consequence of our behavior, but an adversity out of our control. And many times it is impossible (and useless) to assess where the blame should be placed.  In any case, we pray to HaShem to help us and to remove from us all illness, pains and wounds.  
 

The second point is that the Tora forbids a person to rely just on God for getting cured. We are obligated to seek a physician’s intervention (verapo yerape). We can’t just hope that illness will vanish by HaShem’s grace.  What this Berakha makes clear is that when we visit the doctor, we believe that it is still HaShem who cures us (harbe shelihim lamaqom). We believe that God acts through the medical advise of the physician, or through the hands of the surgeon in the operation room. It is ultimately Him, by means of myriad of human agents -doctors, researchers, nurses- who brings healing and alleviates the sick. Physicians are HaShem’s privileged agents in the art of healing. God, we believe, is behind man’s wisdom to develop medications, and behind man’s ability to cure sickness.

 
We must do all in our power to avoid being sick. And we must do all in our power to get cured. Nevertheless, we pray and beseech God to protect us from all illness, to heal our pain, to cure our wounds and to prolong our lives.  We recognize Him as the ultimate healer. He has the final say.

 



AMIDA (Berakha 07), HaShem, our next of kin

ראה נא בענינו וריבה ריבנו

Please [God] see our suffering and fight our fights, and to grant us a complete salvation, for the sake of Your name, because You are a powerful GO-EL. Blessed are You , God, the GO-EL of Israel.

In this berakha we ask God for His assistance and deliverance.

The key to understand this prayer is the Hebrew word GO-EL. GO-EL means “redeemer”.  In some contexts this term refers to the Messiah. The Messianic times are also known as the days of GE-ULA, the redemption of Israel and the return to the Land of Israel. In the next section, when we ask God to fulfill our national requests, we will have two specific berakhot for these subjects. One berakha in which we ask haShem to bring us back to Israel, and the other in which we ask HaShem to bring us the Messiah, a descendent of King David.  

 

Thus, in the context of this berakha GO-EL should not be connected to the Mashiah or our National GE-ULA. GO-EL in this berakha means: ‘next of kin’ or ‘closest relative’.

 

According to Jewish Law it is the duty of the GO-EL or ‘next of kin’ to help his relatives in moments of need. The best example is Boaz and Naomi. Boaz, a relative of Elimelekh,  assists Naomi, Elimelekh’s widow, and takes care of her and her daughter in law Ruth.  We need to bear in mind that Elimelekh betrayed his own people leaving to Moab, enemy territory. We could have assumed that Elimelekh’s relatives should not deserve anymore the next of kin’s assistance. We see, however, that the duties of the GO-EL supersedes considerations of merit.

 

In this berakha we appeal to God as ‘our next of kin’, ‘our closest relative’, asking Him to assist us and deliver us from suffering. We beseech HaShem as our GO-EL, certain that He will assist us, even if we do not have enough merit to deserve His intervention in our behalf.

What is the diffeence between teshuba and geula? 

Teshuba < i do it by myself. 

In any scenario that I cannot help myself, that I need SOMONE else, then is call GEULA. 

HaShem is our GOEL. We are asking here His collaboration when we cannot do more…



AMIDA (Berakha 06) Father vs King

סלח לנו אבינו כי חטאנו , מחול לנו מלכנו כי פשענו
“Forgive us, our Father, because we have inadvertently sinned; pardon us, our King, because we have rebelled [against You]”
 
In the 6th berakha of the Amida we ask HaShem Almighty for forgiveness.
 
We refer to God with two key words: abinu and malkenu
 
abinu means “Our father”. As we have previously explained, we Jews believe that God loves us as we love our children. We appeal to HaShem first as our loving father. Confident that no matter how bad we might have behaved, we know He will always take us back. Same as a loving but responsible parent, all God demands from us to forgive our offenses toward Him, is that we take charge and admit our responsibility.   When we refer to God as “our father” we describe our sins as “hat aim” or inadvertent wrongdoings. We excuse ourselves saying that our general intention is to do good, but sometimes we make mistakes or we fail to control our impulses…
 
But we also know that God is malkenu, our King. The King is the ultimate authority. In ancient monarchies, Israel included, the King was also the supreme Judge, and among other things the King had the power to sentence his subjects to death. Every time we say melekh we are stating that our lives are at His mercy. When addressing God as a King we use the word pasha’nu, we rebelled against You. We disobeyed You. We don’t excuse ourselves as before.
 
abinu and malkneu often come together to express that God is the One who granted us the gift of life (abinu), and He is also the One who can take life away from us (malkenu). The tension between these two words is solved at the end of this berakha: “Barukh Ata haShem, hanun hamarbe lisloah” we say that HaShem is merciful, and that He forgives abundantly. At the end of this prayer we assert, and simultaneously wish for, that God as “our father” prevails over God as “the King”. As a loving parent He will see our sins as mistakes, not rebellion. And He will be waiting for us to come back to Him.
 
אני שלום וכי אדבר המה למלחמה
 
PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS (Jews and non-Jews). 
THIS IS MOST YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL AND ITS CURRENT EFFORTS FOR PEACE 
 
 
 

 



AMIDA (Berakha 05) The gift of repentance

כי לא תחפוץ במות המת, כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה
In this berakha we ask God to assist us in the process of our teshuba (=repentance). Literally, teshuba  means “coming back”, returning to the right path.
We say in this berakha:
Bring us back, our Father, to Your Tora…
The Rabbis define sinning as temporary insanity en adam ba lide het… ‘a person would not sin, unless he is possessed by a [temporary] spirit of foolishness’. When we are seized by ambition, lust, jealousy, etc. our mind is clouded. Once we recover our wisdom, as we have requested in the previous blessing, the first thing we realize is that abandoning the right path, the path of virtue, was not a good idea. Still, the way back is not always simple. Thus, we ask for divine assistance to come back to the path of the Tora.
And bring us closer, our King, to Your service (la’abodatekha).
‘aboda  is God’s service. It consists in the application of what we study in the Tora. That is why we assert that first we should get back to study Tora, which would lead us to serve God.
And make us return to You…
When we say: “bring us” , “make us”,  we do not mean literally that we expect God to do these actions for us, while we remain passive.  We are in complete charge of our moral actions.  We, humans, were blessed with freedom of choice. What we are asking God is for His help, assistance and inspiration to come back to Him and His Tora.
Baruch Ata.. haRotse bitshuba.  Blessed are you, God, who desires (our) repentance.
We assert now that God “wants” us to return to Him.  A very important Jewish principle is that God loves us like a father loves his children. As a loving father, God does not take enjoyment in punishing a bad son. All God wants from His children is for them to coming back to the right path. That is why we dare to ask God to assist us in our return to Him. We know that God “wants” our repentance, because He loves us and He desires our good.

 



AMIDA (Berakha 04), the miracle of intelligent life

Ata honen la-adam da’at…,  You grant humans wisdom…
This berakha inaugurates the second section of the ‘amida, “Request” (baqasha), the blessings in which we ask God for our material needs. In this berakha we ask God to grant us “wisdom” or “intelligence”.  But why asking “wisdom” before anything else?
Because without wisdom we will not be able to identify the gifts and blessings that we already have, which is essential for knowing what do we really need. We need wisdom, in addition, to differentiate between what we “need” from what we just “want” or “wish”. Moreover, without wisdom we will not even know “what” to ask from God. Or what to do with the blessings that God would eventually grant us. We might think that we need urgently money or success. But without wisdom, money and success might be counterproductive.
Additionally, this blessing teaches us a very important principle. “Ata honen…” means: YOU (=God)’ grant humans the gift of wisdom/intelligence.  Intelligence/wisdom is God’s gift to the human specie. Our brain is remarkably similar to that of monkeys.  Yet, we humans are endowed with “intelligence” which is not an extension of our biological make-up, and cannot be justified in evolutionary terms.  Intelligence is not a biological natural feature like sight, hearing or a digestive system. Without intelligence we would be able, somehow, to survive as a specie.  But we wouldn’t be able to connect with God, to learn or teach His Tora, or to choose between right and wrong.  Intelligence is what make humans unique among all living species. In this berakha we assert that intelligence is a  God-given, miraculous, supernatural gift humans were endowed with.
“vehonenu me-itekha…“
We ask God, the source of wisdom, to bestow upon us three types of intelligence
HOKHMA: Hokhma refers to creativity. The capacity a person needs to see or discover something new, when everyone is looking at the same things. The ability to develop a new idea. This is also, we say, a gift from HaShem
BINA: Once a new idea is discovered we need bina, practical wisdom to effectively apply an idea. Some people may be gifted with bina and not with hokhma, or vice-versa.
DA’AT: Da’at refers to the good “judgment” that we develop by life-experience. Yet, people differ in what or how they learn from experience. Some people are so gifted that they posses the ability to learn from other’s experiences. Some have the ability to learn from their own experience, and others have a hard time to learn even from their own experiences.  
In all these intellectual fields, we say, we need HaShem’s assistance and inspiration.
 

 

 



AMIDA (Berakha 03), the limits of our understanding

The third blessing of the ‘amida is also the shortest one. In this berakha we state that HaShem is “qadosh”; and that so is His name; and so are those who praise Him every day: the people of Israel .

But, what is “qadosh”?

It is impossible to translate this Hebrew term with just one word in English. “Qadosh” means: special, unique, different, consecrated and sometimes: “inaccessible or out of reach”.

One example: in Hebrew qiddushin (from the same root as “qadosh” q-d-sh) means marriage. When a man marries a woman, she is consecrated (mequddeshet) to him, becoming for him unique, special and different from the rest of the women. At the same time, by being consecrated to her husband this woman is now “inaccessible” to any other bachelor.

In the context of our berakha, when referring to God as qadosh we hint to our inability to really perceive God, or God’s Almighty-ness.

When saying ATA QADOSH we are stating that “God, is beyond our intellectual reach”. God remains concealed to us.   Why do we emphasize this message here, at the end of these blessings of “Praise”?

Because in the two previous berakhot we have acknowledged God’s intervention in history (Abot), from our ancestors until the future go’el (mashiah); we have said that God is Great, All- Powerful and Magnificent, and we have described and praised God’s powers, His blessings, His miracles. By saying ata qadosh we convey a philosophical disclaimer, recognizing that no matter how much we have praised Him or will praise Him, we do not presume to really “know” God or to have praised Him exhaustively. Rather, what we just said about God is the little we grasp of Him from our human perspective.

VESHIMKHA QADOSH, and ‘Your name is qadosh’. We are also incapable of grasping His name -the name of four letters- which conveys the idea of infinitude and eternity, concepts that lie beyond our intellectual capacities .

UQDOSHIM BEKHOL YOM. Still, the qedoshim, God’s people, those who are consecrated to You (=Israel), praise You every day, as much as we are capable of praising You. An almost identical message constitutes the core of the qaddish (also from the root q-d-sh): le’ela min kol birkhata, etc. Your praise is beyond any praise that could be said of You.

BARUKH ATA HASHEM HA-EL HAKADOSH: Blessed are You, God, Whose power and praise remains ‘far beyond our reach’.

Canada supports Israel fundamentally because it is right to do so.

 



AMIDA (Berakha 02) God’s powers and Evolution theory

The second berakha (=blessing) of the ‘amida is called geburot, “God’s powers”.
This blessing asserts, in the first place, that God is Omnipotent (Atta gibbor le’olam) , infinitely powerful. Then it tells us that God uses His powers to restore life, to save, to make rain descend, to nurture, to support those who fell, to cure the sick, to deliver captives, etc.
Unlike mythological gods whose powers are shown in their ability to overcome other gods or destroy, HaShem’s might is all about Him blessing His creatures,  teaching us, incidentally,  that like HaShem we too should use our powers, resources and abilities to save, cure, help, etc.
The highest expression of God’s power, mentioned four times in this berakha,  is tehiat hametim, ‘the resurrection of the dead’. Resurrection (do not confuse with reincarnation) is a core belief in Judaism. Resurrection affirms that in messianic times, God will restore life to the dead.
Tehiat hametim, life restoration, is similar to Creation. It obviously defies all physical and biological laws known to us. Even today, 2014, when science has decoded the DNA and developed nanotechnology, no scientist can generate life from atoms. Even if a scientist would intelligently design a lab, duplicating the same original conditions in which, according to his theory, life appeared “randomly” on earth, he will not be able to create even one single living cell.  The generation of life remains God’s exclusive domain. By the way, this is the weakest point of Evolution theory. Until today evolutionist fail to explain how life appeared in our planet to begin with.
Something similar happens with Tehiat hametim. Give to a modern microbiologist a simple mosquito, which died one minute ago of natural causes. Could a scientist restore the life of this mosquito, even for a few more minutes?  We are not talking here about creating life out of inorganic matter in a laboratory. The scientist is given a mosquito, with every part of its body still in place. Is it possible for a man to restore even one moment of autonomous life?
We humans have the power to help, to harm, to kill or to heal.

But tehiat hametim, restoration of life, same as creation of life, is HaShem’s exclusive domain.



AMIDA (Berakha 01). God, our protector

The ‘amida consists of nineteen blessings, or short prayers which end with a blessing. The first blessing of the Amida is called “Abot”, which literally means “fathers”, in allusion to our ancestors or founding fathers,  Abraham, Yitshaq and Ya’aqob.  This blessing belongs to the first section of the ‘amida: “Praise”. Our first prayer to God, before we ask anything from him,  consists in praising Him for protecting us, the Jewish people.
We affirm that HaShem watched over Abraham, Ytshaq and Ya’aqob. We also describe with three words what we can grasp of God’s protective powers. We say that God is Great, Powerful, and Awe-Inspiring (=Gadol, Gibbor, Nora), there is no power beyond His control (el-‘elion). HaShem uses these powers with kindness (gomel hasadim tobim) to guard us, and ensure our continuity.
We state that because of the merit of our ancestors (zokher hasde abot), God grants us His present protection and our future redemption (umebi go-el).
We also affirm that God promised (lema’an shemo) our ancestors that He will never allow the Jewish people to disappear. He will never abandon us because He loves us (beahaba). See Deut 7:7.
God protected us even before we became a nation. When we were just the family of Abraham or an incipient tribe. Then, we were extremely vulnerable.  In this berakha we are not asking God for protection. We are also not declaring that God will protect every Jew just by virtue of being a Jew. God’s protection of the individual is not the subject of this blessing. We claim that God guaranteed our survival as the People of Israel, and we praise Him for delivering that, for keeping us alive as a nation, against all odds.
Finally we state that God is our King (melekh). HaShem is a special King. He is not a king who demands His subjects to serve him for his own sake, but a King who cares about His subjects: us. A King ready to help (ozer) when we request His assistance. A King who rescues when we are in trouble (moshia’). A King who shields us (magen) from perils, dangers and hazards, which we are not even aware of.
We finalize this prayer by blessing (=acknowledging) God for enabling the survival of the Jewish people, since the times of Abraham Abinu (magen Abraham).


AMIDA: God, open my lips….

 

ה’ שפתי תפתח ופי יגיד תהִלתך
Before we begin the ‘amida, we recite a very special verse from the book of Psalms, (51:15) “God, open my lips, so my mouth would proclaim Your praise”.  To understand why the Rabbis chose this verse to introduce the ‘amida, it is critical to see this verse within its original context.  Psalm 51 is a Psalm of Teshuba (=repentance, contrition). David regretted the sin he committed with Bat-Sheba. When composing this Psalm, David was in a state of deep anguish, consumed by guilt and shame. As he was imploring to God with a broken heart, at one point he felt speechless and powerless. The reader can see that suddenly, the flowing of this Psalm stops. As if David, aware of God’s Presence,  became short of words to beseech God’s mercy.  He paused. Then, he said, God, as I wish to continue praying to You, I realize that I need Your help to address You, please, give me the strength and courage to address You, “God, Open my lips, so my mouth would proclaim Your praise”.  With this extraordinary request David haMelekh conveyed the depth of his contrition and his unique humbleness.  But above all, he taught us that even the most gifted and eloquent biblical poet, when realizing that he is talking directly to God, he requires God’s assistance. 
 
The ‘amida is not a regular prayer. While in all other prayers we talk about God, in the Amida we are talking to God.  Talking about God, praising Him, recounting His blessings as we do, for example, when we read the Psalms in the first sections of our prayers, is somehow within our abilities. Talking directly to God, however, when seriously taken, might/should be an overwhelming experience. When we recite the ‘amida we are not repeating the words of David haMelekh. When saying the ‘amida, in a sense,  we are David haMelekh. Upon realizing what we are about to do, we are overcome by reverential-fear and a sense of inadequacy and powerlessness to experience His Presence; let alone to address Him with words.  
 

This verse was chosen by our Rabbis for the introduction of the ‘amida. To inspire us to feeling the humbling and overwhelming experience of addressing directly God Almighty.