It’s a Lot More than Lips
Earlier this week, several people commented that they could predict what I would write about in the Lead Tidbit — definitely something about the significance of Eretz Yisrael as essential for the full living of a Torah life. Good guess. It’s in this sedra. As it was in last week’s and many other places in the Torah. It’s mentioned more than once in this week’s Sedra Summary and elsewhere in Torah Tidbits. With that said, I’d like to focus on another message from the sedra.

The Torah commands us to say Birkat HaMazon after a satisfying meal. Chazal carry the ball from there and have commanded us to say brachot before and after eating, before performing mitzvot, in prayer, and on many other occasions. People who say brachot say them all day long, every day of their lives. They start shortly after awakening in the morning and their bracha-filled day doesn’t end until they are overcome by sleep at night. The goal set for us by the Sages is 100 brachot a day; on many days we exceed that number. That’s thousands of brachot a year. In a span of 30 years, a person could say a million brachot! There might not be an area of Jewish practice that takes up more of our time than making brachot. And, maybe because of that, there is probably no aspect of Jewish life that is taken more for granted. We tend to go on automatic pilot when it comes to brachot. Lift a piece of food or a drink to your lips and you go into the bracha-mode. Brachot become reflexes rather than the special mini-mitzvot that they should be.

What we all need, then, is a reminder every so often (such as this Lead Tidbit) to take things a tiny bit slower and to involve our mind and heart with our lips. Don’t leave it just to the lips.

It’s hot, you’re thirsty, and you pull up the colored spout/cover thing (whatever you call it) on the cap of a bottle of water. Pause for a moment - a second or two will do - and realize what you are about to say. You will proclaim - and recommit yourself to the concepts - that G-d is the source of all blessing in the world, that He is our G-d, that He is King of the Universe, and that every- thing - EVERY THING - exists by His Divine Word. What an amazing statement of belief in G-d. It’s like reciting the 13 ANI MAAMINs. It’s like saying SH’MA. We declare our belief in G-d even with only one sip of water!

There are nine words in the bracha of SHE-HAKOL. (So too for all the other food & drink brachot, except HaMotzi, which has ten - and I bet there’s a significance in that too, but we’ll leave it for another time.) It can take from 2-3 seconds to say a bracha. That’s all. If we precede it though with 1-2 seconds of focusing, and we say the words more slowly, so that the bracha takes 4-5 seconds, then a 5-7 second experience becomes very meaningful and special.