We need to question everything, even our prayers. By questioning, we learn; by learning, we improve ourselves and help improve others and even inanimate items. An example is a seemingly silly statement in one of our prayers.
Many Jews follow a meal that includes bread with a rather long collection of blessings to God. It is called Birkat Hamazon in Hebrew, “Grace After Meals” in English, and Bentching in Yiddish. The Grace thanks God for the food, the land, and the blessings of daily life.
The long Birkat Hamazon is recited only after consuming a meal with at least a relatively small amount of bread. Shorter versions, called Al Hamichyah or Borei Nefashot, are recited and give thanks after other foods when bread is not included.
The Birkat Hamazon contains over half a dozen long paragraphs, with additional paragraphs for special occasions such as the Shabbat, holidays, and weddings. Overall, the many paragraphs express our recognition that all we have is the result of God’s creation.
A joke makes this clear.
A boy tells his dad he is going outside to play ball.
“Who are you playing with?’
“I’m playing with God.”
“With God?!”
“Yes. I throw the ball up to God and God throws it back to me.”
While this is a naïve, childish understanding of the laws of gravity, it contains some truth. God created the laws of nature, including gravity. God is the ultimate cause of the ball falling to the child.
It is the same with the Grace after the meal. We recognize that all we have comes from God.
Since this is the theme of the Grace, the seemingly simple sentence near its end is surprising. The sentence states, “From when I was young until now, I have never seen a pious person who was abandoned and his children begging for bread.”
This makes no sense. Many people are insensitive to others. We have seen pious people who are not helped by others. What is the sentence saying?
I could not think of an answer. But remembering that we need to question everything and that when we do so, we learn and improve, I decided to ask my son, Stephen, if he knew what the sentence was saying. My son, Stephen, is very bright.
Stephen replied that he also did not know. But he continued and gave me the next step to unravel the mystery. “You need to see where this sentence appears, and the contexts will clarify the matter.”
He was right. The sentence is the penultimate verse, the next-to-last sentence in the lengthy Grace. The last sentence summarizes the preceding paragraphs: “God gives strength to His people and peace.”
I saw my mistake. I understood the penultimate sentence refers to humans. I should have understood that, like the entire Birkat Hamazon, it relates to God. It says that God does not abandon people.
I then understood that the word “pious” in the sentence means an individual who sensibly accepts life, as a person should. In the final sentence, I also understood that “strength” refers to the gift of human intelligence, the “Image of God” that Genesis 1 states God placed in humans.
Maimonides wrote in his “Guide for the Perplexed” 3:28 that people mistakenly believe that Divine Providence means that God watches over people, interferes with the laws of nature, and aids people when they need help. He explains that Divine Providence is the intellect that God placed in humans. He wrote that people are helped by the intellect that God created and placed in humans to help them, and the person with more intellect gets better help. His words are, “Divine providence is in each instance proportional to the person’s intellectual development.”
So, the penultimate sentence in the Birkat Hamazon is not senseless. It and the other paragraphs of the prayers recognize that God provided everything on earth. We thank God for what he gave us and in the last two sentences we see a summary – if we use our intelligence and do not allow ourselves to be overcome when life is difficult, realize that if things are easy they are probably wrong, difficulties can encourage growth, and the use of intelligence can give us peace – we will see as the sentence said, God has not abandoned us. He gave us the solution to our problems.
Maimonides wrote in his “Guide for the Perplexed” 3:28 that people mistakenly believe that Divine Providence means that God watches over people, interferes with the laws of nature, and aids people when they need help. He explains that Divine Providence is the intellect that God placed in humans. He wrote that people are helped by the intellect that God created and placed in humans to help them, and the person with more intellect gets better help. His words are, “Divine providence is in each instance proportional to the person’s intellectual development.”
I agree with Maimonides that providence is the intellect that God placed in humans. It is that but much more. It is helpful to know that there are two kinds of providences, (1) General Providence, that is, the natural order of the universe and (2) Special Providence, that is, God’s extraordinary intervention in the lives of people. The Stoics rejected the latter Christian version and accepted the first idea. In the Stoic view, God is nature itself. This is pantheism. In such a conception of God, there is no room then for the laws of nature to be broken. Nature cannot break the laws of nature. People who think that Providence means God interfering with the laws of nature to help people are mistaken. What does the word Providence mean? The Latin word providentia means foresight, precaution, foreknowledge. It is not necessarily that the universe has been planned out in advance, but what happens next can be deduced by what is happening now. Marcus Aurelius explains, “That follows coheres with what went before…” (Meditations 4.45). Thus, Providence is the stability of natural events. Spinoza agreed with the Stoics. He said that Divine Providence is nothing more than natural laws. Examples of providence are the tides, the seasons, and the motion of the stars.
I agree with you my friend Turk.
I agree with you, Rabbi Drazin, that our intelligence is the “Image of God” that Genesis 1 states God placed in humans. The English Christian deist, Thomas Gordon (died 1743) agreed, writing –
“Reason checks tumultuous passion, the greatest enemy to the peace of the mind and to the peace of society. Hence, it has been observed by the same moralist that all our rational pursuits are temperate pursuits and that what we pursue with reason, we never pursue with violence. Reason subdues anger and prevents cruelty. It makes a man less fierce than a lion and less ravenous than a bear. It is not human shape, but human reason that places a man above the beasts of the field and lifts him into a resemblance with God himself. Hence, it is justly styled divine particula auræ, a ray or impulse of the divinity. And in what sense can a man be said to be made after the image of God unless by his possessing that reason which is a divine particle of the Godhead? We resemble not our maker in person or complexion and, therefore, can only resemble him in reason and in mercy, which is the child of this divine reason. Were we not rational creatures, we could not be religious creatures but [would be] upon a level with brutes, to whom God has made no revelation of himself because they want reason.”
Adriaan Koerbagh, Spinoza’s friend, wrote in his book called “A Light Shining in Dark Places” that reasoning is the image “to which likeness Scripture tells us that we are made in the image of God…” Koerbagh continues, “Because God is the origin of reason, God has eternally been and reason has eternally been in and of God, indeed is also part of God’s being, for without reason God would not be God. God is unchangeable, and so is reason; God is true, and so is reason.”
Koerbagh’s book is fantastic, but it is almost impossible to find because it was censored by the authorities and only published recently. Koerbagh himself died a year after publishing the book in a jail for heretics. I have the book. I like Koerbagh as he has some very religious sides. Maybe someday I’ll try to write an essay about him.
Very interesting. Thank you Turk.
Intelligence is the most beautiful part of the human condition.
It determines the greatness in literature of a person even in movies
You are correct. Steve. It is God’s gift to us. I protects us and help us develop all that God provided.
I agree with you, Steve, and Rabbi Drazin that reason is the image of God. The Christian deist, Matthew Tindall (1657-1733), agreed, writing that “it is our reason which makes us the image of God himself.”
My grandmother was wonderful, and she taught me to say “thank you” to God for creating the trees, flowers, and all of creation.
She was wonderful, no doubt about it.
I agree with the blessings and saying grace after meals. It is nice to say thanks to God. I say a prayer of thanks to God, such as saying “thank you,” for all the gifts and blessings that God has provided, such as the sun, rain, snow, and beautiful flowers to smell and rainbows to admire. Many people say prayers of thanks and appreciation and thank the Supreme Intelligence/God for life, reason and the intelligence-based universe. But I understand that prayers are not a time for asking for anything (please cure this sickness). Instead, we give thanks for life. Whether or not God hears us, or even cares, is of no concern.
We agree, Turk.
So, the penultimate sentence in the Birkat Hamazon is not senseless. It and the other paragraphs of the prayers recognize that God provided everything on earth. We thank God for what he gave us and in the last two sentences we see a summary – if we use our intelligence and do not allow ourselves to be overcome when life is difficult, realize that if things are easy they are probably wrong, difficulties can encourage growth, and the use of intelligence can give us peace – we will see as the sentence said, God has not abandoned us. He gave us the solution to our problems.
is the penultimate sentence is it misinterpret by many people? Is the orignal meaning of the sentence by the author implying that we need to rely on God for everything and “pious” people never make mistakes
The sentence teaches us to recognize that God gave us to solution to our problems, learn and us the intelligence that God gave us.
By acknowledging the difficulties that we face, we are reminded that they are a natural part of the human experience, and that it is through the exercise of our rational faculties that we may find the solutions to our problems, dear Rabbi Israel Drazin.. The sentence, far from being senseless, is a declaration of faith in the divine providence, a reassurance that God has not abandoned us, but has instead provided us with the intellectual and spiritual tools to navigate the trials of life. Best: stephen
We are in total agreement.