[music] Rabbi David Teutsch: Part of being an American in our time is having an extraordinarily strong sense of entitlement. The most fundamental attitude, I think, [that] comes out of the religious life is to have the recognition that we are utterly dependent on others and that most of what we have in our lives would not be there were it not for the gifts of others. [music] Rachael Burgess: Welcome to Trending Jewish. I am Rachael Burgess here with my awesome colleague, Bryan Schwartzman. Bryan Schwartzman: Hi, Rachael. RB: Hello, Bryan. So, we have a very interesting topic today, and I'm curious your thoughts about this. So the topic today is blessings, which isn't really trending; it's something that's old, it's been part of Judaism since forever. And that's one of the big things that we associate with Judaism, is all of the times we have to say a blessing before bread, before wine, before cheese, before... Like anything before eating. And I don't know about you, but I always felt very intimidated having to learn about blessings because... or trying to incorporate it, 'cause I always felt like I wasn't doing enough of them 'cause I didn't even know where to begin to learn them. BS: I mean, nothing is "have to," right? I mean, we're all Jews by choice now, right? But I guess, traditionally, that's what you're supposed to do. RB: Right. You're supposed to be doing at least a hundred blessings a day. So... And there's a formula you're supposed to do it, but... When you first wake up in the morning, and... The big one is the food because for every different kind of food, there's a different blessing for them. Did you ever grow up learning them, or... I know I didn't have a traditional Jewish education, where I would've learned all of these things in Hebrew school. BS: I mean, my parents wouldn't have known them beyond the bread, beyond "hamotzi." So no, not at all. I think as I learned more about Judaism and traditional Judaism and even kind of flirted with a more observant lifestyle, which I don't lead today, [this] was something I really began to appreciate. How it makes you appreciate the sunrise, appreciate every meal, appreciate a shooting star, appreciate the ocean. There's so much in there that... I mean, we know that leading a Jewish life and following all the commandments and reciting all the blessings doesn't necessarily make you a good person. In fact, we know plenty of people who follow the law and are bad people, but it seems like it makes it just a tad easier to be headed in the right direction, and... I don't know, I listened to... BS: Did I tell you this? I listened to an interview with Krista Tippett's "On Being," who everybody's listened to forever, and I'm just getting into, and she had a interview that really focused on the life and thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who I have read about, and actually played some audio clips from him, which were really mind-blowing, and he talked about everybody, to be alive, you need to maintain... Or fully alive, you need to maintain your sense of surprise and wonder. I'm totally going to butcher Heschel, but on the one hand, wonder for all of the good and amazing things and never stop [being] astonished by the ocean or shooting stars and also never stopping and getting astonished or getting outraged by the bad that happens in the world, the injustice, never getting used to it...always seeing injustice as a surprise. And that really struck me, so I'm excited to talk about these topics today because there's a lot to talk about. RB: Yeah, and there's... I think I came out at, where my family was more Conservative, and I think that there's a bit of, I think, Conservative closer to Orthodox and there's this feeling that when you do something, it has to be perfect to the letter, like if you're going to do it, you have to do it perfectly. So, for me, the intimidation is not so much the wonderment, but, "Am I saying this right? Am I using the right blessing?" And actually, one of the things that I did in prep for this interview is, "How can we access these blessings on demand?" So, I actually went online, so I went... I checked out the Google app store... Or the Apple app store, and there's plenty, of course, on Android as well, I just happen to be an iPhone user, so I actually pulled out a couple of applications to basically help me access blessings whenever I need them, so... BS: There's an app for that? RB: There are several apps for that, actually. BS: Oh, my God. RB: So, one of them was actually done by the Rabbinical Assembly, it's called "Sanctifull." So, that one is actually... It's free and it's pretty easy to use, it has a bunch of lists of different blessings that you can search through. So there's food, nature, ritual, day-to-day, death and grief. So it basically gives you some blessings, and there is some contemporary literature in there that you can look at. An interesting one that I kind of I'm having fun with is, it's called "Brochos," so, B-R-O-C-H-O-S, this is another free app. So, this one, you can actually search different categories, and basically, you can look up anything. So this is... It does not matter what kind of food you're looking up or what kind of event, there's a blessing for that. So whether it is the blessing for iced coffee, there's also "random" so you can find little random blessings for Popcorners, twisted salts, like what do you say before eating this and what do you say after that, and it comes from a bunch of different sources. So there actually are a couple apps for that, and... BS: I love the detective work. [chuckle] BS: We do our research here. RB: We do do our home... BS: Or you do the research. [chuckle] RB: We did... I was just curious, how do... Like there's a part of me that would love to incorporate this, but there's always this fear that I'm doing it wrong because I'm not a Hebrew speaker, I'm used to... If I'm going up to the Torah, I have two people next to me and a rabbi behind me that are [chuckle] correcting me every time I screw up my Hebrew, so there's this pressure that you have to say everything correctly. BS: Oh. You totally just reminded me of what I wanted to talk about. I know we have... [laughter] BS: We have guests here anxiously waiting, but... So, what you said about saying it right and the rabbi just totally clicked. First off, folks may not know this. Apparently, we have a listener in Germany, which I love, Guten tag, we love you, spread the word in Germany. [chuckle] BS: And... And another listener has been my mother. And you know parents sometimes can be a little critical, says, "I love you, your questions sound great, but you're 'uhm'-ing and stammering a bit too much." [laughter] BS: So, I always... Talking about saying it right, can we set up a contraption in here that would, like... I mean, I tried to explain, it's sort of a rough cut... A rough cut, natural conversation flow we're going, but... RB: Yeah, this is pretty much... This is pretty much the way we talk. [laughter] BS: But my mother says, "No... " RB: "You better edit this." BS: "Cut out the 'uhs' and 'umms'," so I'm like, "Is there something that can shock me every time I do it, or... " RB: You gotta listen to it. You have to listen to yourself. BS: Is there like a rabbinic equivalent of a Hail Mary I could say every time I... [laughter] RB: No, maybe the constant reminder from your mother. Like, to say, "Listen. That's... " Actually, in my background in radio, that was actually one of the big things that our general manager encouraged us to do, was to listen to ourselves. And he swore to me that if he did nothing else in his life, that he was going to stop me from saying "like" every other word. BS: It's so hard. It's... RB: It's really hard. BS: You just like look at your... It's like listening to yourself, it's like seeing all your imperfections put out there, but I guess... I don't know, there must be something in striving to get better and blessings and... RB: You know, basically, I think the big tie-in to both of these things is awareness. So, here we are having a conversation, and we're not aware of all of the little quirks we have in the way that we speak, and much like the way that we go through life. There's this beautiful quote that I had heard where even your hands in front of your face can cover the biggest mountain, just like the distractions of everyday life and just kind of going through the flow, keep you from noticing the biggest... Keeps you from noticing really significant details. So, as we're sitting here having a conversation and having fun on our podcasts, we don't always... We might not always hear the "umms" and "uh, uh, uh," so, you just have to be aware. BS: There is a rabbinical school I think could use you, but... [laughter] BS: That was beautiful. RB: And I'm actually really excited to go into talking to our two fabulous guests... BS: Great idea. RB: Who are here with us today to really help us talk about blessing, appreciation, and awareness. And they are the authors of a new book that was just released, called "From Gratitude to Blessings and Back," which is available online on Amazon, and our two authors are Marilyn Price and Rabbi David Teutsch. So, just so you can get to know our two authors, our two guests, for the last 40 years, Marilyn Price has been the president of Marilyn Price Puppets, using puppets and storytelling to enhance and educate and entertain all listeners and learners. As President and CEO of TriBraining Incorporated, a not-for-profit educational foundation, she undertakes projects to help educators reach students of all ages in experiential and formal classrooms. She frequently is called upon as a keynote speaker and presenter to help in areas such as imagination stretching, listening skills, and using the arts as a creative tool to teach and reach. One of TriBraining's many national projects includes her co-directorship of HEVREH, an adult learning community, which is a summer retreat for adults who want to really immerse themselves in Jewish learning. She is the puppeteer and literacy trainer for the Chicago Public Libraries and received the prestigious Mayor's Award for the Arts in her hometown of Chicago for her work as an artist and arts advocate. RB: And her co-author and seemingly total polar opposite, Rabbi David Teutsch, is the Director Emeritus of the Center for Jewish Ethics and the Louis and Myra Weiner Professor of Contemporary Jewish Civilization here at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where he also previously served as president of the College for a decade. A renowned lecturer, consultant, and trainer, he has previously served as Executive Director for the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot, as program director of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and as a congregational rabbi. He was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and his three-volume series, "A Guide to Jewish Practice," is available online now at rrc.edu. BS: Welcome, both of you, we're so thrilled to have you in the building and in the studio. And I guess I just wanted to start by giving our listeners a sense of this little gem of a book you've put together, and I was wondering if you would read an entry, just so everybody kind of knows what we're talking about. Marilyn Price: Can I explain how it's done? 'Cause I think that would help us even before we read it. BS: Please. MP: So there are 51 blessings... Well, selected by David and edited by me. [chuckle] MP: And they deal with many everyday things that you don't think about, our blessings. So Judaism, as you know, has a very large number of blessings and then we are commanded to do a hundred blessings a day. These are only 51, so you need to either do them twice or find more. All of them are traditional except for two, is that right, David? DT: Mm-hmm. MP: One of which David wrote and one that was written by... DT: Jeremy Schwartz, a Reconstructionist rabbi with a congregation in Connecticut. MP: So, that... That is our idea. And now, because Rachael so beautifully introduced us, you can tell that we come from different places with different backgrounds, so many people say, "What an odd combination!" And if you eat peanut butter, it's kind of like the peanut butter and chocolate combination, will they ever go together, right? But we've been friends for over 30 years, maybe more... Yes, more, and we kind of balance each other out. So, he is obviously the more serious and deeply academic, and I am the goofy puppeteer-storyteller who uses values to teach kids to make their world better. I think I balance the goofy part there. So when we started to do this, which initially was in conversation very, many years ago even more than we thought about, it came from a little volume we did when David stepped down from the presidency, called "Kol Habrachot." So what it was was the blessings and people commented on them and someone said, "Wow. That's a great idea." So, 15 years later... [chuckle] MP: Maybe more, here we are with this little book, which basically says the blessing, Hebrew, transliteration, a comment, and then a story to bring it into everyone's everyday ambience so that your blessings, which we believe are not necessarily centered towards God but help everyone from the giver to the receiver and their blessings and thank yous are cyclical... Circular, excuse me, that one gives to the other and comes around again. So, we would like, David and I would like everyone, no matter what they're looking at, even a bottle of water, to think about why that is a blessing to us. So that every day becomes sacred. DT: And key to that is recognizing that we live in a culture that is overwhelmingly focused on being a consumer. And part of the idea of being a consumer is, "If I have the money to buy this, I'm entitled to it." So, part of being an American in our time is having an extraordinarily strong sense of entitlement. The most fundamental attitude, I think, that comes out of the religious life is to have the recognition that we are utterly dependent on others and that most of what we have in our lives would not be there were it not for the gifts of others. Albert Einstein put it that he stood on the shoulders of giants. The rabbis said, "I wake up in the morning and I put on clothes that I did not sew, made of cloth I did not weave, and I go and have breakfast of bread that I did not bake, made of wheat that I did not grind, that grew in soil that I did not till, and I'm constantly therefore, benefiting from the natural world and from the work of others. So, if gratitude doesn't shape my daily life, then I'm missing most of what's going on around me." DT: The purpose of blessings is to help us see all the things in the world that we could be grateful for. Just the other day, I was at a retreat in California and we started the morning with a brief service, we walked up a hill overlooking the ocean and the person leading the service had, happily, a copy of this book in her hand. [chuckle] DT: I wonder how that could have happened... MP: I have no idea. DT: And before the service began, read the blessing... Barukh atah adonai, eloheinu melekh ha'olam, oseh hayam hagadol. DT: Which means? MP: "Blessed are you, oh, eternal, our God, the sovereign of all worlds who made the great sea." DT: And our book then proceeds with commentary about it. So, the one I wrote says: "When I was little, our family sometimes went to the beach on summer vacations. I never tired of watching the waves, of the feel of sand under my feet, and of the surf's endless pushing and pulling. I quickly learned that the tides and waves had to do with gravitational pull from the sun and moon, but the scientific facts had no influence on the mesmerizing power of the waves. Seeing the beach each morning was an awe-inspiring experience. Wonder and science operate on different planes of our existence. Listen to the crashing surf. See the sun glint on the water. Feel a power far beyond our own." MP: "I'm sitting by the window overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The wind is howling and the rain has been nonstop for hours. In my chair with my cup of orange tea, warm and fragrant next to me, I feel safe, but the ocean, restless and breathless, is threatening and fascinating. Yesterday, walking along the shore, watching the sun set, seeing the birds perch and fly and the kids play on the then-calm ocean, I felt exhilarated yet safe. The ocean, like people, changes. Powerful, predictable, and stable, is changing. Pleasure-bringing and danger-making, filled with life and death, can you connect this power with God and people's changing nature? How can you not?" MP: "On the other side of the country, I'm privileged to sit by the Atlantic, watching the waves crash along the shore while on a week's vacation. I'm thinking of my ancestors traveling over it, towards this land over 100 years ago, as big and endless as it looks to me. I can't imagine my grandma Elisheva's angst and also excitement as she headed from her Romanian homeland with one little girl towards a life with so much mystery and so many possibilities. If this massive, tumultuous ocean is mysterious and powerful to me, I cannot begin to imagine how it was for her and the brave others as they headed to this land of freedom. I imagine her prayers were delivered in Romanian with a fervor that matched her fears and her joys." RB: That's beautiful. One of the things that I found very interesting, and you start this actually in the beginning of the book, where both of you are actually sharing memories of how you got to a place to appreciate blessing. So, as a storyteller, why... You could've created stories or found different stories that somehow relate to the ocean or Shabbat or many other blessings that are on the book. What particularly drew you to the idea of memories? MP: David's quote, which of course I didn't have in front of me then, I think we're all built on memories. I can't imagine finding that we just were plopped here without standing on something. So, for me, as a teller, story, his story, all my stories have a history of me in them, but more important, my job is to open up the door to the listener so that their memories can come in as well, and then the stories become theirs. So, the blessing part and interesting story, I think I mentioned in here somewhere, is... I was doing a workshop in the library in downtown Chicago, and I sat down next to a beautiful woman, and I looked to her, it was early in the morning, and I said to her, "How are you?" And she said, "Blessed," with a smile on her face that pretty much radiated this dark room all over. And then that has come across to me everywhere I go in some particular communities, and no matter what you say, they will respond not, "I feel blessed," but "Blessed." It sort of overwhelms culture, and the story and the blessing become one, and the values that they bring. Many people that feel blessed by our standards would not be blessed, I mean, their lives are harder than ours, and David beautifully said before how we take things for granted, and we never say "Blessed." MP: If I'm walking down the street and someone comes up to me and says, "Hey, Marilyn, how are ya?", chances are pretty good I'm not going to say, "Blessed." I know I am, but most people don't respond that way. There are some who actually breathe it, live it, and I've asked a lot of people, "How do you get there?", and I'm kind of hoping that these books will help people to grab on to the everyday and make it extraordinary. DT: And part [of] telling stories from our own lives is that they invoke people's stories in their minds. And it's not enough to know that David Teutsch feels grateful; it's a question of, "How do I, as a reader, plug into moments when I experienced gratitude?", 'cause what we need to do is build on our brief experiences of gratitude until that's one of the dominant emotional frameworks that we experience all day long. When that happens, the difference in mental frame transforms our lives. RB: There was something else that you had said earlier, where you were talking about how being grateful and being thankful of all of the things that other people do for us, and that we give to others because we work in this fabric of existence and we all need each other, and some of these blessings are for natural wonders that people don't make -- for example, a rainbow, or the ocean. For some people who live in a world of science, where we understand that, "Oh, the rainbow is because the light is being divided through water and this is how light is broken up," some of these blessings have a connotation of a God. So how, to somebody who may not believe in a God or may be agnostic and not sure whether or not there is a higher power out there or doesn't believe in a higher power, like traditionally taught in religious institutions, how do they approach a blessing that starts off, "Blessed are you, oh, Lord," or "Blessed are you, Almighty," how do they approach it? DT: Well, one issue is what's the important part of a blessing? This morning, as I was driving to the Rabbinical College, I was noticing the changing leaves, yellow and red and brown, and I just let myself revel for a moment in their color and in their amazingness. And at that moment, I did not need to attach my wonder to a theology. I needed to encounter that beauty and encounter that wonder, and realize, not a single thing about those leaves changing had a thing to do with me. Didn't cause it, won't affect it. So, it comes from outside. So when I say, "Praise to you, God," who is, in some theologies, the source of the oneness of the world, the unity of the world, I am looking beyond the particular miracle I am at the moment encountering to saying, "There is a unity that produces this sense of wonder in me, and that unity is something I need to be in touch with and not to take for granted." People can give it any name they want, what's important to be about Barukh Atah is to recognize there is another that is responsible for that unity. I didn't cause it, and I can't change it. MP: Totally right, of course. But there is something else, too. I don't think it matters who gets it (your words). I think the most important person to get it would be yourself. So once you realize and take the moment away from whatever your angst is, you're driving to work, you don't know what you're going to say when you get there, you have to go pick up your kids at carpool... Whatever the moment of anxiety is, when you get yourself removed from the angst and encounter something as beautiful as the season change, or somebody you see down the street you haven't seen in a long time, it removes you and puts you into a different place. So, whether or not you address it, sort of like a letter, "Dear sir," or "Dear ma'am," or dear whatever, you are becoming a piece of it. And a lot of what, I believe, blessings are about are connections that enhance both the giver and the taker. DT: One other piece of the blessing is "ruler of the world." So, when I say that, what flashes on me is, no matter how powerful an institution I have headed or how critical I have been in some system in which I've operated, I'm never in control, and I'm never ultimately in charge. So for me, when I hear "ruler of the world," I don't visualize or imagine a king; I just recognize that the world as a unity of reality is far more powerful than any of us, and every blessing that flows our way is a gift that we can't control. And recognizing that our lives are filled with gifts, regardless of how we imagine the giver, changes how we encounter our everyday reality. BS: So we've inherited from traditional Judaism this amazing technology to live a more humble, aware, gracious life. I guess this is a rabbi... [chuckle] A rabbi question. Can you say anything about where these blessings come from, who wrote them, what they were trying to accomplish? DT: The earliest antecedents to the blessings are found in the Tanakh, in the Hebrew bible. There are lots of examples of them. The earliest formulations of blessings are evident in the Amidah, in the standing prayer that Jews traditionally said three times a day. That formula, however, is different from the one that we now normally use for blessings 'cause a lot of them don't have "melekh ha'olam" in them, "ruler of the world." So we know from that that the blessings were evolving by, and prominent by, late in the Second Temple Period. And the formula that we now have was well-fixed by the time of the Mishnah, which is a couple hundred years into this era. So that gives us a pretty long stretch of gradual development. And the rabbis settled on this formula because they thought it was theologically important, not least because it says there is one divinity that is the unitive force in our world. MP: And the same thing, the origin of the story comes from the same place even earlier. Or but maybe not, 'cause to keep warm, the people sat around the fire, and even before language, they would use sound. And because of the wonder of it all, 'cause they had no clue where anything came from, not having read Torah yet, you would imagine that some of the sounds they made were delivered not only to each other, but to the force around them. So, all of that combined to come together in the history of the story, as well as the history of the blessing. DT: But the word "Barukh" itself, which is often translated as "blessing," "blessed," or "praised," has two Hebrew roots that kind of underlie it. One is the word for "knee," as in, we prostrate ourselves, we bend our knees in recognition of the greater force beyond us. The other one is the word "berekh" which means spring. Particularly growing up in the Middle East where water was one of the most critical life-sustaining forces, it is everywhere, but in places where there is enough water, we take it for granted. In the Middle East, where fresh, clean water was a precious thing, to say that we acknowledge and appreciate the wellspring is also a powerful image. So somewhere in there, the origin of the word "Barukh" gets, I think, two things. One, essential to being able to see who we are is to be able to acknowledge our own limitation and to live lives in a way that has humility to it, and the other is to recognize that every day, we are the recipients of an untold number of gifts, and part of our challenge is to recognize all those wellsprings that sustain us. RB: One thing that just popped into my mind actually as we're talking about gratefulness and thinking about history and even more ancient cultures where many different blessings and prayers were not only to say thank you, but also like an "ask" for it to happen again, where we want a prayer for... We're saying, "Thank you for rain, but please keep it coming so our crops don't die," or "This beautiful rainbow has come before us, and so thank you for that, please do that again." Do blessings have that same underlying ask? It doesn't seem completely like an altruistic thank you, but also like an ask to say, "Can you please bring that back again?", or "Can you please keep this?" DT: It's a little bit like writing a thank-you note. MP: Yeah. Mm-hmm. DT: You write a thank-you note, you're actually very grateful for the gift, and you say thank you, but it also may prime the pump for the next one. MP: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [chuckle] DT: The notion of thanks is there. And one of the things that's interesting about Jewish prayer is it's much more focused on thanks, appreciation, awe, and an assertion of values than it is on requests. There are requests in Jewish prayer, but they're not the dominant force in Jewish prayer, because requests are like the cherry on top of the sundae. [chuckle] DT: We start out saying, "Wow! It's an amazing world," and "Boy, do I have a lot to be grateful for." And at the end, we do have hopes and we express our hopes and our longings, but they're not the most important thing in terms of our prayer lives. What's really important in terms of our prayer lives is the stance that brings us to gratitude and wonder and the learning of values that will shape our conduct. MP: One other thing that you might think about, and that is the conversation. And I think we've all had conversations with people that begin with, "How are you? ," and they say "Fine," and that's the end of it. And then you grope around for the next thing to ask, or you'll ask them about them but they won't ask you about you. In many respects, a blessing is the beginning also of a conversation, and a blessing surrounding a story is even more so... You tell the story. And then you say, "Well, you know, now that I think about it, that happened to me, and it happened in that way, and I never connected it." And that will bring you into a blessing as well. So blah-ti... Grati... "Blah-titude." That's a new word. Would you write that down? Blah-titude to gratitude and back is a really important focus of this book. It's all very circular. You could start in either direction. You could do the... We could have named it the other way, we could have named it "From Blessings to Gratitude and Back," but... And I don't know why it was this way, it's not alphabetical. [chuckle] MP: It's... It's all connected, and I think... And I'm thinking David will agree, or not, that this book was meant to be a way for people to step into what we feel we feel. DT: So, when we feel gratitude, that opens an opportunity for blessings, and that's fabulous, and that's part of what Marilyn is saying, but getting in the habit of saying "blessings" also reminds us to feel grateful. MP: Mm-hmm. DT: But the other thing blessings do sometimes, or an other thing blessings do sometimes, is shape our consciousness in other ways. For example, if you say "vetzivanu la'asok betzorchei tzibur", "Commands us to act in order to meet the needs of the community," you're reminding yourself that, indeed, doing for others is something we ought to be doing. And if you say that at the beginning of a meeting, it reminds you that that's holy work, and that the idea that it's holy work should shape how we talk at meetings, and how we treat each other at meetings, and how we keep our minds on the end purpose of meetings. So blessings often really are a way of directing our consciousness, not only to gratitude, as important as that is, but also to the holiness in our daily lives and to the holiness we can create by how we live. BS: So I think... We're starting to run out of time and feel like... [chuckle] BS: We could be here for hours on this topic. But one thing I feel obliged to ask is, I think I have something that's a commonality for a lot of Jews who grew up in non-Orthodox households, in that I really never was exposed to blessings on a regular basis growing up and it certainly hasn't become a part of my practice as an adult. But I really like the idea of using words and using instances to remind us of just the amazingness, the miracle of being alive. There're all these couch-to-5K programs, from going from nothing to being a runner. Is there... If somebody wants to... [chuckle] BS: Start incorporating blessings into their lives, how do they begin? Do you just start making 'em up? Do you just start consulting this book? Where... [laughter] BS: How do you get going? MP: I'm sure there's an app for it. RB: I confess that I'm... I feel that I'm pretty religious, but as a more secular Jew, I don't think I'm anywhere close to getting to a hundred blessings a day. MP: Do you bless someone when they sneeze? That counts. RB: Oh. I didn't realize that. MP: Oh, yeah. RB: Thank God for allergies... MP: Absolutely. RB: Maybe I'm closer than I thought. MP: Hay fever season is amazing. [laughter] DT: And if you were to pray the Amidah three times a day, the way traditional Jews do, you'd be up to 57... MP: I mean, we keep going. Think about meals. DT: Just from those three. MP: Three meals. DT: But so if you're looking for a place to begin, I think meals are a great place to begin, 'cause if you can just pause a moment before you dig in and say one blessing that reminds you about what a blessing the food is, that's a terrific place to begin. So, the blessing that most people say at the start of a meal is, "Hamotzi lekhem min ha'aretz," "Who brings forth bread from the earth." And if you think about it, that's really odd, 'cause bread does not come forth from the earth. What comes forth from the earth is wheat, and then it has to be ground, and it has to be mixed, and it has to be baked. So every time I say, "hamotzi," I think about the way in which the natural world comes together with the social world in order to put bread on my plate. And I'm grateful for the baker, but I'm also grateful for the delivery guy and for everybody else that's involved in that process. That can flood through your head literally in a moment. MP: Mm-hmm. DT: And it changes everything that happens at the meal. So I think if you're looking for one easy place to get started, that's a great one. MP: I have another one. "Thank you." "Thank you." Literally, "Thank you." Most people don't say it enough. There's a couple of new responses to it, like, "No problem," I have no idea what that means, but the process of saying thank you, looking someone in the eye and meaning it is a... Connects you in a variety of different ways. So, the thanks are good, the blessings... Many people say them out loud in restaurants. I've seen people sit and hold hands with their tablemates and talk about it. For lots of people, that's really uncomfortable. And I will agree with David that if you go, if you stop and say the motzi and you look at it and [inaudible], it takes a while, but it doesn't, really. It just reminds you that there's somebody else out there but you, in charge, and the baker. MP: And if you ask a kid to write a blessing, they get it. And they will write, I had a... Wrote a prayer book with the school I was running, and they took that motzi blessing and they went all the way back to every single ingredient and who made it. And I can almost guarantee you that when they say the motzi now, after we teach it to their parents who didn't know it, then they will get a different and broader picture. And the one we don't do enough is the Birkat Hamazon, the leaving, 'cause we think of it as so very long that we'll never get out the door and get back to work, but that's a incredible blessing about connecting us to what happens after we eat. So that's six times, and if you snack, coffee break, you're up to 10. DT: And there's a short form of the Birkat Hamazon. That's just "brikh rahamana malka de'alma marei dehai pita." That's from the Talmud. RB: Isn't that the one where you're being chased by bandits? I thought... DT: Well, that was what the rabbi says. What's the shortest form of the grace after meals... [laughter] DT: You could say if bandits are running in the front door and you have to be fleeing out the back. But it has all the key notions in it. "Thank you to the merciful one for the life-giving gift of bread." And dwelling on it even for just a moment is enough for it to change the rest of your day. MP: Mm-hmm. BS: I have to admit, I've been sitting here hearing in my head that great line from Fiddler on the Roof, "May God bless and keep the czar far, far away from here,"... MP: Good blessing. [chuckle] BS: Is there an active blessing, writing, and creating going on, going on now, or there, are creative liturgists making new blessings all the time? MP: At this very moment, yes. Yes, yes, yes. DT: Absolutely. And there are new formulas for blessings, too. Some of them are in Kol Haneshamah, the Reconstructionist prayer books. Some of them are in the work, for example, of the poet, Marcia Folk. If you go to ritualwell.org, which is one of the websites of the Rabbinical College, you see lots of examples of new liturgy where new blessings are being forged, both new blessing formulas and new blessing foci. What's the blessing you say when you turn on your computer? You don't know? Look it up on ritualwell and you'll get some suggestions. MP: I... Have a word for the non-Hebrew speakers. I think that's sometimes a block for people who want to get into the blessing mode. God understands all languages, as do very few people, [chuckle] but they do... If you are stuck and don't think you can say a blessing 'cause your Hebrew isn't fluent, there's no good reason you can't say a blessing in English or in your own words. Same opportunity. But know that it comes from our tradition, and that's an important lesson. BS: It's a very empowering lesson. MP: Oh, yeah. RB: That feels great. That was one issue that my mother had when she was leading a Jewish congregation, where she wanted to be able to do blessings and create blessings that weren't available to that particular military community, and she didn't know Hebrew, so, the best she could do was come out with something in English, which she wasn't quite sure whether or not that was correct. MP: It's okay. DT: So if you're looking for a really transformative way to begin, the next time someone says, "How are you?", try saying, "I am blessed." That, too, is a form of blessing, and it changes and uplifts the nature of the transaction. RB: "Baruch HaShem" is another one I've heard. DT: "Baruch HaShem" is the Hebrew word that means the same thing, "Blessed be God." It's just a way of saying, "I am blessed." RB: Well, thank you both very much for joining us on our podcast. MP: Thank you. Thank you. RB: So definitely, check out "From Gratitude to Blessings and Back", which is available on Amazon, so... MP: And Wipf and Stock as well, from the publisher, they have them as well. RB: Make sure that you check out ritualwell.org if you're interested in learning how to write blessings and other blessings that are available that other people have written. If you would like to submit your own blessing, you can do that there as well. And you can learn more, find out more about the book, and also more of our podcast episodes on our website at trendingjewish.fireside.fm, and on facebook.com/trendingjewish. BS: And just to throw more in there, if you guys like Trending Jewish, if you liked what you heard, know we are a project of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist communities, so, we'd love it if you could support our work at... You can give right at www.rrc.edu. And thank you. Thank you for listening, and thank you for being our guests today. MP: Thank you. DT: Our pleasure. [music]