The first thought our Tradition invites us to think when we wake up is: "I am grateful."
The Modeh/ah Ani prayer manifests this concept:
מוֹדֶה (מוֹדָה) אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ מֶֽלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַֽרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶֽךָ:
I give thanks to You, living and everlasting Sovereign for You have returned to me my soul with compassion, great is Your faithfulness.
Each morning, as we regain awareness, we set this intention for how we will engage with the day. Many of our morning blessings encourage us to approach our day like this. Some examples include:
Thank you for the ability to distinguish day and night.
Thank you for who I am.
Thank you for making me free.
Thank you for providing for me.
Thank you for strength.
But soon, we find ourselves at breakfast, and both before and after we've eaten our fill, we express gratitude again. In particular, I want to draw our attention to after, the Birkat HaMazon, the blessing over food, or more colloquially, The Grace After Meals.
We derive its source from this week's Torah portion, Eikev:
וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבֵֽרַכְתָּ֙ אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ עַל־הָאָ֥רֶץ הַטֹּבָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָֽתַן־לָֽךְ׃
When you have eaten, and you are satisfied, give thanks to your God ה׳ for the good land given to you.
These three words at the beginning, "And when you have eaten, are satisfied, give thanks (literally: you shall bless)," are the basis for the mitzvah of reciting Birkat HaMazon.
In Masechet Berachot in the Talmud, it reads:
Rav Yehuda said: From where is the mitzva by Torah law to recite Grace after Meals, derived? As it is stated: “And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God."
Simple enough! Eat, satisfaction, blessing. This makes sense.
However, the Rabbis, ever ready to dig deeper, go on to say later in Berachot:
I only have a Torah source for Grace after Meals. From where is the obligation to recite the blessing of the Torah derived?
As we saw, the mitzvah for Birkat HaMazon is relatively straightforward. The rabbis always want, if possible, to derive a mitzvah from the Torah directly. They now want the same kind of thing for the blessing of the Torah. Essentially: how do we know we need a blessing here?
Several answers are offered, but I want to focus on one:
Rabbi Yishmael said: It is derived through an a fortiori inference [a kal v'chomer form of inference] from Grace after Meals: Over food, which is an aspect of temporal life, one recites a blessing, all the more so one recites a blessing over the Torah, which is eternal life.
Rabbi Yishmael makes the argument we don't need a Torah passage. We can use an analogy. If food, which sustains us during our limited life span, has a blessing, it must also be the case that something more powerful, Torah, a well of wisdom and life, must certainly also require us to have a blessing.
Here's what we can learn from all of this:
Blessings are an expression of gratitude.
When we recite blessings, we can stop and bring our attention and intention into focus. This pause allows us to think clearly about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Building the practice of reciting blessings is one of the most powerful frameworks available to us as human beings.
The rabbis wanted us to say lots of blessings.
In our Tradition, there are blessings for everything, and with good reason. There is much to be grateful for.
There are blessings for our bodies, for food, for hearing Torah, for entering holy places, for seeing and experiencing amazing things, and for nature, to name a few.
Blessings, and Torah, expand our potential.
Rabbi Yishmael eruditely explains that when we engage with Torah, we can experience something beyond our limitations. Like with blessings, we can tap into something greater than ourselves.
When we recite blessings, we invite ourselves into the possibility that we don’t understand everything and are all connected.
It also reminds us that our tiny actions and the bigger picture overlap.
Our blessings do matter.
Gratitude is good for our health.
While not rabbinic, science has shown us that gratitude is good for us. The APA, the American Psychological Association, published an article a few years back that read:
"‘We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue and lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers related to cardiac health,’ said lead author Paul J. Mills, PhD..."
More than that, "What surprised the researchers about the findings, though, was that gratitude fully or partially accounted for the beneficial effects of spiritual well-being."
The rabbis and these psychiatrists understand that gratitude is essential to our spiritual, mental, and physical health.
Every moment in our lives can be punctuated by gratitude and expressed by blessings.
What are you grateful for?