HA-EL HAGADOL HAGIBBOR VEHANORA

Today is the 10^th of Tamuz, 5770

“God, who is great, powerful and awe-inspiring.” These words of the first Berakha of the Amida are really exceptional. Why? Because we normally praise God by referring to what He does for us: Ozer, Moshia, Magen, helps, saves, protects, etc. We never refer or describe anything about haShem HIMSELF.

Our rabbis were very reluctant to do so because no matter what we would say, we would always fall short from praising God Almighty. Take the word “powerful.” Can this word, which we use to describe a car (what a powerful engine!) or the president of an important company (a “powerful” man!) etc., be enough to describe haShem’s infinite power and might?

We believe that describing God’s ‘power’ or ‘greatness’ is absolutely beyond our human capability or vocabulary. Therefore, any praise that we would say about God HIMSELF would be actually considered an (involuntary) offense…

The rabbis therefore were hesitant to authorize the use of these words and the only reason they allowed us to say these attributes is because Moshe Rabbenu said them (Ekeb).

“Had Moshe not pronounced these attributes and had not the men of the Great assembly ordained this in our prayers, we would be unable to say it” (Berakhot 33b)

In a sense, we are not actually daring to describe God’s attributes, we are just reiterating Moshe Rabbenus’ ‘s words.

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Eloke Ya’akob. The God of our father Jacob.

Today is the 3rd of Tamuz 5770

Jacob most traumatic life experiences revolved around deception. His brother Esav was a ‘master’ of deception. Esav was an accomplished hunter, as our rabbis explained, because he mastered the art of deceiving animals, hiding his presence by acting and looking like them. Esav was also a talented deceiver of humans. He was able to make his own father, Yitzchak, believe that he, Esav was a righteous man and that he –and not Jacob- would deserve to be appointed as Yitzchak’s (and Abraham’s) successor. In this extreme circumstances Jacob ended up deceiving his deceived father…. Jacob was forced by his mother to become Esav/deceiver in order to make things right…

Still, and although he did what he did on behalf of his mother, Jacob paid a very high price for his desperate act. Later on, as our rabbis explained, he himself was deceived twice by his father in law Laban in similar circumstances. Deception as a victim or a performer, characterized Jacob’s first part of his life.

But then, he fought with an angel. Who was this angel? Our rabbis said: saro shel Esav. Elie Wiesel interpreted the struggle between Jacob and the angel as a struggle between Jacob and himself (or, from a more Freudian approach: between Jacob and the Esav/deceiver within him). Defeating the angel (the personality of –saro shel- Esav, that he was forced to adopt) allowed Yaakov to make a turning point in his life and become ish emet, a man of truth.

Jacob reminds us the value of repentance, our duty to change and our bad incorporated habits and the love for truth.

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Let everyone know the truth.

Eloke Yitzchak. The God of our father Yitzchak.

Today is the 19th of Sivan 5770

From Abraham Abinu we’ve learned that God is one, the He does not have a body and that He cares about us as a father cares about his children.

Yitzchak, Abraham’s son, revealed an additional layer of God/Israel – Father/son relationship: same as a father, God is also the authority.

Yitzchak experienced this matter “literally” in his own flesh. Although we always think about Abraham’s great courage when he was ordered to sacrifice Yitzchak, we should also bear in mind Yitzchak’s thoughts and feelings at the time of his sacrifice (which after all is called Akedat Yitzchak, the sacrifice of Yitzchak!). Yitzchak was not a baby but a fully conscious adult man. Our Rabbis explained that Yitzchak knew exactly what Abraham’s intentions were and far from rebelling against his father he was willing to offer his life to fulfill God’s commandment.

While Abraham discovered God’s love (Chesed) for His children, Yitzchak discovered God’s power (Gebura) over our lives. Abraham saw that HaShem gave us our lives, Yitzchak also realized that it is God who determines when our lives end.

From Abraham and Yitzchak we’ve learned that God is simultaneously our father and our King (abinu malkenu). As a father, we owe God our appreciation, as a King we owe God obedience.

Same as our parents, we love haShem but we must also revere Him.

ELOKE ABRAHAM “The God of Abraham” (Part 3)

Today is the 12th of Sivan 5770

In the previous weeks we analyzed the words Eloke Abraham, the God of Abraham. We explained that we are praying to the God Abraham “discovered” and taught us about.
First, we said, Abraham found out that God is invisible, second that He is one (see last week’s HOTD) but probably the most important thing we’ve learned from Abraham about God is that God ”cares” about us.
In all ancient civilization the gods had their own concerns and problems. Normally they would spend their time fighting against each other to impose their supremacy. If they ever did something good for a human it wasn’t out of love or altruism: it was payback for or in anticipation of some human favor (human sacrifices, human gifts or human help in fighting a competitor god).
Abraham Abinu taught us that God Almighty is our Creator, and as such He loves us and cares about us, the same way a parent loves and cares about his children. While the idols or mythological gods “behave” like the tyrants who invented them, and acted upon selfishness and mutual interests Abraham taught the world that the true God listens to our prayers, protects us or delivers us without expecting anything in return.
It was probably the most revolutionary discovery of our father Abraham.

So important is this concept that the rest of this berakha does not elaborate on God’s unity or God’s invisibility. It focuses on the ways the God of Abraham cares about Abraham’s descendants, the people of Israel.

ELOKE ABRAHAM “The God of Abraham” (Part 2)

Today is the 27th of Iyar, 5770 (42 days of Omer. 5 weeks)
(See last week’s HOTD)
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2. Abraham Abinu believed that God is “One”, which does not imply a mere mathematical reduction of the number of “gods”. It goes way beyond that…
Abraham lived in a society ruled by a tyrant king named Nimrod, who did whatever it pleased him pretending to have received a message from “god A” or “god B” . So, if Nimrod didn’t like you, the “god of death” would reveal to him that today it is a Mitzva to kill you. And if Nimrod liked your wife, the “god of lust” would reveal to him that he must take her from you. Right or wrong depended exclusively on the whims of Nimrod and his cynical manipulation of the various “gods”.
When Abraham Abinu spread the idea of “One God” he was considered by Nimrod and his entourage an extremely “dangerous individual” not because of his philosophical ideas but because it was ruining Nimrod’s play!
The idea of only “One God” would imply that there is an objective right and wrong. That whatever is wrong today is wrong tomorrow, for the simple citizen and even for the powerful Nimrod….
Abraham was persecuted and he would have been executed by Nimrod if not for God Almighty’s protection (Magen Abraham) who saved him from the tyrant’s hands.
The belief in God’s unity, initiated by Abraham Abinu, has a greater impact in man’s morality than in man’s theology.

ELOKE ABRAHAM “The God of Abraham” (part 1)

Today is the 20th of Iyar, 5770 (35 days of Omer. 5 weeks)

The first Berakha of the Amida is known as “Birkat Abot”, the Berakha in which we mention our forefathers, Abraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akob.
By mentioning them, we first assert that we are not praying to a God who is the fruit of our own imagination or interests, but to the God of the Hebrew Bible, the same God our forefathers pray to. Abraham, as everyone knows, arrived to the knowledge of God (EMUNA) by his own reasoning and intellect.
When I say in this Berakha “The God of Abraham” I remind myself of the three major things Abraham taught us about God Almighty.
First, Abraham discerned that God has no body. We can see His actions, we might infer His amazing powers, but God remains invisible. He cannot be pictured or even represented by any image or figure.
Maimonides explains that at the beginning of humanity, people knew this fact and they considered the powerful sun and the enigmatic moon and the stars as God’s ministers, but then, manipulated by wrong leaders, men begun to attribute to the sun, moon and stars divine powers, built for them sanctuaries and worship their images, so much so that they completely “forgot” of God Almighty.
Abraham Abinu brought back to humanity the idea of the Almighty “invisible” God.
Abraham also discovered that God is One. We will talk more about the impact of Abraham’s idea about God’s unity, BH next Tuesday.

ELOKENU VELOKE ABOTENU

Today is the 13th of Iyar, 5770. (28 days of Omer. 4 weeks)

“Our god” and the “God of our parents”. These two words encapsulate the idea of spiritual progress. We know of God Almighty in two ways: by what our parents have taught us, we know of His miracles, His protection and love for Am Israel. Thanks to our parents we don’t have to undergo the whole process of Abraham Abinu’s discovery of God. Even if your parents were not fully religious, if they transmit to you your Jewish identity you owe them your very basic idea of the God of Israel.

But that is not enough. We should also embark in our ‘personal’ discovery of God adding to our parent’s inherited knowledge. For us, people of the 21th century this journey is fascinating. Because God’s presence is becoming more evident than ever.
The incredible sophistication of space or the world of atoms are all 20th century’s new testimonies of a Divine Designer. The more we understand how DNA functions, the more we realize that there is no chance. In this sense, we know today more about God than our parents did.

One example: just 150 years ago -before Pasteur- our parents lived in a world which believed in spontaneous generation of life, that life appears just like that from matter (btw, this is how Darwin justified the origin of life in our planet!). In the 1980’s Fred Hoyle said sentenced that” the likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one in 1040,000 (10 with 40,000 zeros after it)… which is a mathematical impossible. Of all disciplines, secular science -in some cases involuntarily -is endowing us with knowledge of Mi sheAmar veHaya haOlam, the Creator of our universe.

The meaning of the name of God

Today is the 25th of Shebat, 5770

The name of God is written in one way and is read in a different way. When this happens elsewhere in Biblical Hebrew, it is called keri/ketib, which means: a word is written in a certain way but must be read in a different way. To signal this event, the original word’s consonants are combined with the vowels of the word that should be pronounced. In our case, the four letters of God’s name are combined with the 3 vowels of the word AMONAY (read with D, instead of M): Chataf Patach, Cholam Chaser and Kamess. (It is confusing for the beginner because he might fail to see the Chataf Patach, which under a Yod became a Sheva…).

According to its writing, the name of God means “The Eternal.” The four letters of His holly name are the combination of the Hebrew “He was”, “He is” and “He will be”. The concept of “Eternity/Infinity” is obviously beyond our ability to grasp accurately.

Therefore when we read it we say: AMONAY (idem.): “The Lord” which in Hebrew stands for authorship / ownership. This concept is obviously more accessible to our understanding.

Whenever we pronounce the name of God we have to think about its double meaning: that He is Adon haKol, the Owner/Master of everything that exists, and that He is Ineffable, Infinite, Eternal, therefore, beyond our human, limited understanding.

The meaning of ATA (You)

18th of Shebat, 5770

When saying the Amida, ideally, we should delve into the meaning of every word. This mental exercise is called “Kavana” (consciousness ) which is required at the time of prayer and is mandatory in the first Berakha of the Amida. Last week, we illustrated the process of Kavana with the word Barukh. Let’s see now the second word of the Amida: “ATTA”, which means “You”.

We refer to the Almighty, at the beginning of the Berakhot in the second person of the singular, inviting ourselves to gain consciousness of been directly in front of His presence.

The realization That HaShem, God Almighty, is present “now” and “here”, virtually in front of us, is what daily feeds our Emuna (the Hebrew for faith). Because in Judaism, faith does not consist only in the believe that God exists but mainly in the feeling/consciousness of His Presence.

Realizing God’s presence is a moral matter as well: every time we utter ATTA we should feel that we are, in a sense, in front of a “mirror” we can’t deceive. The Almighty knows not only our actions but also our intentions and thoughts. ATTA, therefore should ultimately impact our behavior. Realizing that we live under His sight, we should act in a way that deserves to be watched by Him.

The meaning of the word “Barukh”

Last week we discussed the issue of Kavana, consciousness, and a level of a deeper understanding, beyond the words’ translation, which helps the person who prays to meditate on each word of the Amida.

First we “say” the word. We have to actually articulate the word and whisper it to ourselves, not just think about it. Once we say the word we need to “understand” its meaning. Then, we need to “stop on that word and delve into its meaning”, letting the word to inspire us back.

Let’s illustrate this idea with the word Barukh: Commonly translated as “Blessed” this word involves some difficulties even in its plain understanding. One can immediately notice that we cannot possibly bless God in the sense we bless another human being, wishing him or her well. Neither are we invocating God’s blessing to someone else, like we do in a Misheberakh or in Bircat Cohanim.

When we say Barukh we are acknowledging that God is the ultimate source of every blessing in our lives. Everything we have, beginning with our life, is a gift/blessing from God. Barukh inspires gratitude. And it invites us to find His presence in things that we take for granted. When taking seriously, thinking about Barukh or any other word in the Amida, could take us more than a few seconds.