From the Ritual Chair

From Ritual: Let’s Keep Our Blessings Straight 

Well, the summer is over, the date being August 2nd as I sit down to my laptop to compose this treatise. How do I know summer is over? Birds flying south? Leaves turning red? Nope. E-mail from Judy Cohen, our editor-in-chief, berating me for not having my article in yesterday. Actually, I knew about turning in my article yesterday as I sat in shul, but it would be sacrilegious to write a ritual column on Shabbat. (By the way, my computer says that is the correct spelling of sacrilegious—can someone please e-mail me explaining why it is not sacreligious?)

Judy, I really did think up a topic for my article as I sat in services yesterday (yes, it is acceptable to THINK about a ritual column on Shabbat). The topic was pretty good, actually. After observing one more person called to the Torah mix up the blessing before and the blessing after the Torah reading, I decided I would get to the bottom of why one blessing is said before and one is said after, and why they are not and can’t be reversed, and use my column to give everyone a way to remember which is which. I figured there must have been a good rabbinical fight in days of yore that resulted in a compromise, which has now been brought to our generation carved in stone. 

To save you the trouble of running for your prayer book, the first blessing thanks God for choosing us from all the peoples of the world to receive the Torah. The second thanks God for putting the Torah of truth and everlasting life in our midst.

Anyway, I raced to my trusted source of Jewish knowledge this morning—Google. But the rabbis and Hebrew scholars at Google failed to come up with the answer to this age-old mystery. Actually, to be fair to Google, it came up with 4,010,000 postings under the search topic “Torah blessings,” and if I had been inclined to read all 4,010,000 postings, I probably would have had my answer. I only had the patience to look at the ten on the first page. I did learn that just about every synagogue in the English-speaking world has either a recording or step-by-step instructions for aliyahs posted on the Internet. Also, the best information on that first page was on a website called hebrew4christians.com. Go figure.

So the mystery will remain unsolved for now. The good part about this topic is that I managed to get a whole ritual column out of it anyway, even though I had nothing to say on the subject. Maybe one of our rabbis will adopt the subject and expand upon it at services on the High Holidays this year. I do, however, feel guilty for getting you to read this far into my ritual column and giving you no new insight into Judaism. So I will leave you with what I have found to be the best way not to mix up the two blessings. This is the method I have used since the day of my bar mitzvah, and all of my readers are hereby given license to follow my secret technique: I have found that every time I go up to the bimah there is a large-print card on the table on which are written the two blessings. My method? I put my finger on the first blessing and, following the words with my finger, I READ IT!!!!! I then repeat the same method for the second blessing. It works every time. 

This being the first and last ritual column before Rosh Hashanah, I probably should have written something on the High Holiday theme—but you try writing about Rosh Hashanah in August (even worse, I really should have written this article in July). Suffice it to say, the best wishes of me, my wife Nohra, my co-chair Jonathan Cohen (hmm, why can’t Judy’s son Jon face these deadlines once in awhile?), and the entire Ritual Committee are extended to all of our congregants for a sweet, healthy, prosperous, and happy new year!!

Ken Leff

Ritual Chair

P.S. We are now looking for additional people with energy and ideas to join the Ritual Committee this year. Don’t miss out! If you are interested in our wonderful committee, please contact Ken (845) 353-8668 or me, Jonathan (201) 767-6001.