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Count your Blessings   
by Velvel "Wally" Spiegler"

As I gaze upon those near and dear to me: my wife of forty two years, our children and grandchildren, extended family and friends, I realize I have a choice of two views. I can either take them for granted, as I am sometimes prone to do, or I can count them as blessings. We talk a lot about blessings, but do we really understand what they mean?  We know that blessings are the building blocks of prayer. Jewish prayer, in particular, consists of extended and expanded blessings, that usually concludes with "baruch atah Adonai". Yotzer, for example, the prayer that follows the Borchu, the call to prayer, goes on, depending on the particular prayerbook, for pages and ends with "Blessed are you Lord, Eternal One, creator of the heavenly lights".

So blessing could be a phrase that keeps our mind focused on God as we do in prayer. We have choices concerning blessings too. I can bless someone as I customarily bless my grandchildren on the eve of Shabbat with the words "May you be like Ephraim and Manasseh..." which is a giving blessing. I can also receive blessings as I might from the Priestly Blessings, "May God bless you and keep you". In either case blessings transmit something righteous, something worthy and always benevolent. Blessings include both giving and receiving. We need blessings to live. We ask God to provide them--sustenance, healing, forgiveness, knowledge, etc.--in the Amidah of the daily prayer service. Whether I bless or am blessed, I am a conductor of God's power from which I derive everything I count as a blessing.

In Hebrew they're called "berachot"and in Yiddish they're "bruchas". Blessings were first encountered when Jacob deceived his father Issac to claim the blessings intended for his older brother, but the first connection of blessings to prayer goes back to the second century B.C.E. in the book of Daniel. "And he kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed, and gave thanks before his God" (Daniel 6:11). The Hebrew equivalent of "kneel" became the word for blessing, a brief prayer acknowledging God's role in each act we perform.
When is the proper time to recite a blessing? We are taught to say them before or after special occasions--partaking of various foods and drink or certain rituals of the synagogue--but there doesn't seem to be a definitive prescription for the right time. The sanctioned inventory of Jewish blessings acknowledge certain natural occurences:  for the delight of food and drink, for wondrous sights, for fragrant aromas and providing safety during travel, while other actions like "charitable contributions" don't require blessing.  It was Abraham Joshua Heschel, after the march with Dr. Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery, who proudly proclaimed, "I was praying with my feet". We too can make ordinary events special by a reciting a blessing and an intention to make it a prayer. I find myself doing just that before my three mile runs. Certain activities, particularly artistic endeavors--music, drawing, writing, crafts--lend themselves to prayer as we become totally absorbed in the action after reciting a blessing. These blessings can be recited in English; you can compose your own words as long as the intention is genuine. Reciting the blessings affirms, sanctifies, and creates an awareness of the action as prayer, elevating it to holiness.

The Tree of Life, the diagram that Jewish mystics consider the lowest common denominator of all existence, portrays God's light radiating down upon us and manifesting into all our earthly needs, both physical and spiritual. Yet the mystics say that the Divine light needs to be returned to its source in order to keep the cosmic circuitry flowing. That's what makes the world go round. This clarifies the connection between prayer, blessings and the laws of sacrifice. The destruction of the Temple, two thousand years ago, ended the system of sacrifices and the Rabbis, the early sages, in their wisdom replaced sacrifice with  the order of prayer. The most holy sacrifice, the burnt offering, with its "pleasing aroma" rose upwards as a symbolic gesture to return to God what we have received.

We are all blessed. We're overflowing with blessings, the power that sustains life. The Divine source is an endless wellspring of blessings. We can't possible deplete what we have; the more we give, the more we have. We can share the abundance with everyone around us. We can do a lot more than just giving money to charity. We can give our attention by listening carefully to what others have to say; we can give our accumulated  knowledge and wisdom to those in need; we can touch people in all kinds of ways.  S'micha, the act of laying on of hands (touching) can make both sacrificial atonement or can bless the children on Friday night. There are so many ways. If we can all learn to bless each other, imagine what a wonderful place this would be.