Moshe Teldon @MosheTeldon - Twitter Profile

5 months ago

I was once asked by a Jewish mother to share the Chanukah story at the private school her son attended (he was the only Jewish student there). I told the story. Did my spiel. A room of 200+ students and teachers stood as I held a candle and sang the Menorah blessings. 🎶 “Baruch Atah Hashem… 🎶Elo-keinu Melech ha-olam…” and then lit the Menorah. As the assembly ended and students headed back to class, one young student came over to me and said, “Thank you, sir. That was a great experiment.” I chuckled. But it got me thinking. That *was* a cool experiment. I thought about a one-liner that shows up at countless moments in Jewish life. Before we eat. When we pray. Before we do a mitzvah. Like a song we never stop singing. The same six words! “Baruch Atah Hashem, Elo-keinu Melech ha-olam…” We say it so often, it feels familiar. And because it feels familiar, we stop being curious. We translate it automatically: “Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe…” But what if we’ve been saying it a little too quickly? Baruch doesn’t just mean “Blessed.” It shares a root with the Hebrew word ‘berech’, meaning ‘knee.’ To crouch. To lower. To draw downward. Reciting a bracha (bessing) in Jewish life is not just another blessing or praise directed *upward*. It’s an opening through which the Infinite can flow *downward*, into the finite. The mystics understood the recitation of a bracha as a formula for inviting a higher reality into our life. “Baruch → Atah → Hashem” is the moment we shift from speaking to G-d to making room for G-d to enter our awareness, into this moment, into this object, and into this holy act. A bracha is where the Infinite becomes personal. Psychologically, pausing to make a bracha interrupts autopilot. It moves us from rushing to pausing. From consumption to presence. From ritual to relationship. Mystically, it opens a channel. If you’re feeling down or low, make a bracha nice and slow, and picture something higher flowing down to meet you. Ready to try? Here we go. Baruch: not “blessed,” but *drawing down*. A flow of Divine energy into this moment. Where does that flow begin? → Atah: “You.” Essence. G-d *beyond* titles or definitions. → Hashem: the name that refers to the Infinite, where past, present, and future are one. → Elokeinu: “Our G-d.” The Creator we encounter as divine energy flows through nature (Elokim shares the numerical value of ‘ha-teva,’ Nature). → Melech: “King.” A divine presence that enters through a relationship we mutually choose to make room for, not force. → ha-olam: “of the universe.” From the word ‘he’elam,’ concealment. The flow finally reaches our world, where the sacred hides in the ordinary, waiting for a mitzvah to reveal it. It’s the bracha formula that invites and channels that downward flow from a higher reality. Into the words of our prayer. Into the food we eat. Into the physical act of a mitzvah. What was merely a physical moment now becomes a meeting point between heaven and earth. That child was right. A mitzvah is a great experiment. There’s the action: the physical mitzvah we do with our hands and feet; There’s the result: holiness finding its way into the world; And there’s the blessing: the moment we open ourselves to be part of it. On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the souls taken from us, may their memory be a *bracha,* a light that continues to descend into this world through the lives we live and mitzvot we do. Amen.

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Moshe Teldon

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