Q: What do true talmidei chachomim and baalei teshuva have in common?

A: The way they recite brochos.

No, it’s not funny, nor meant to be.  It’s simply an easily confirmed observation – and one that holds a thought worth thinking.

A Jew is enjoined by halacha to pronounce scores brochos each day, acknowledging HaKodosh Boruch Hu’s glory and gifts to His creations.  Many of the brochos are part of our tefillos; others are offered throughout the day, like before and after eating. There are brochos to be made upon seeing lightning and hearing thunder, on a rainbow, before smelling flowers or fragrant spices, after using the bathroom.

But ironically, so many opportunities to express hakoras hatov to Hashem make it easy for reverence to devolve into rote.  Many of us brocho-making Jews find ourselves pronouncing the nine words meant to thank Hashem for the beauty, tastiness and nourishment of an apple, for example, as a string of slurred semi-words, taking perhaps two seconds rather than the five or six needed to actually say all the words clearly and focus on their meaning.

BlessedareyouHashemourG-dkingoftheuniverseWhocreatesthefruitofthetree.

Call it an occupational hazard of observance.  When something is done regularly and often, it is only natural for the quality of the experience to become degraded with time. Mitzvas anoshim melumada.  But natural needn’t, and here doesn’t, mean acceptable. And watching a true talmid chochom (who has succeeded in routing rote) or a baal teshuva (who may be more attuned to his religious actions than some of us who are more “experienced”) say a brocho can help remind us of how things are meant to be – and inspire us to make them right.

A funny-sad story (considerably less humorous in writing than in my father, shlit”a’s telling of it at the Shabbos table when I was a child) concerns a shtetl Yid who owes a powerful landowner, or poritz, a good sum of money.  Yankel somehow convinces the poritz to forgive the debt if he, the Jew, can teach a bear how to pray.

Faced with the need to produce results, Yankel obtains a cub and hands him a siddur with a drop of honey on its cover and on each of the sefer’s pages.  The bear wipes up the first drop of honey with its paw and puts it on his tongue.  Bright bear that he is, he opens the book and locates and eats the other drops of honey too.

The next day, Yankel gives Boo-Boo the same siddur, this time with a drop of honey only on every other page.  The bear, with a murmur of disappointment at each page bearing only words, still manages to service his sweet tooth from the others.  The following day the honey is only on random pages.   The bear goes through the sefer, wiping up what drops of sweetness he finds and licking his paw, murmuring all the rest of the time.

The Jew is now ready.  Presenting the cub to the poritz, he declares the animal shul-worthy and hands him the here-and-there-honeyed siddur.  The bear opens it, turns a few pages, murmuring all the while, then stops a minute to lick his finger before resuming the page-turning and murmuring.  The poritz is not impressed.  “That’s not praying,” he says sternly.

“Come with me,” says the Jew, leading the poritz to the local shul.  Shacharis is underway and the Jew opens the door.  Lo and behold, the poritz gazes upon an entire congregation of supplicants doing an excellent imitation of the bear.  The poritz has no choice but to forgive the debt.

And everyone lived happily ever after.   Well, other than those listening to the story, left to wonder whether their own tefillos are something more than page-turning and mumbles.

Brochos, like tefillos, are essential to Yiddishkeit.  The very word “Yehudim” derives from the name Yehuda, which the Gemara teaches is rooted in Yehudah’s mother Leah’s declaration that she was the beneficiary of “more than my share” of blessing.  That refusal to take Hashem’s brochos to us for granted, that sense of gratitude to Him, is what brochos embody.

And, we might remind other Jews, brochos can be accessed by all Jews, whatever their levels of observance, whatever their “understanding” of Judaism.  Saying brochos throughout the day is not very difficult, nor does it offend any contemporary sensibilities.   And there are many English-language guides to the pertinent laws.  The practice of saying brochos may not currently be a common practice in most of the non-Orthodox Jewish world, but what is the future for – for any of us – if not to better the present?

What is more, were brochos more widely embraced among all Jews, those of us who have always been saying them and are so “expert” at doing so that we slur our words and forget to think of what we’re saying would have more examples from whom to learn and derive inspiration.

What a brocho that would be.

© 2008 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]