Make a Bracha

Shalom and welcome to Tikkun Tips A weekly nugget of Jewish Environmentalism from your friends at Teva

In Pirkei Avot, Ethics of our Fathers, 3:9, Rabbi Yaakov states, “One who walks on the road while reviewing a Torah lesson but interrupts his review and exclaims, ‘How beautiful is this tree! How beautiful is this plowed field!’-Scripture regards him as though he is liable for his life.”

***Make a bracha and expand your environmental and spiritual consciousness***

I remember watching the movie of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen several years ago. In one excellent scene, Danny Saunders, the main character of the book and son of a powerful Chasidic Rabbi, sits in the synagogue and listens to his father deliver a sermon. Danny, who feels held captive by the tradition that destines him to succeed his father in an unbroken line of great Hasidic rabbis, has befriended another Jewish boy in the neighborhood who lives outside the insular world of the Chasidic community. In his sermon, Danny’s father cites the above section of Perkei Avot, explaining that it means we should never let the outside world interrupt our study of Torah. We must always stay focused on the text, even in the face of a beautiful tree or a lovely field.

How could this be, I thought. How can our tradition actually hold someone accountable for recognizing the beauty of God’s creation? A few years ago while studying at Yeshivat Bat Ayin, one of the teachers there, Rav Yehoshua, gave me an explanation that was subtle yet powerful enough to change the entire meaning of the original text. He told me that the Bal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chasidic Movement, had a slightly different understanding of the quote from Pirkei Avot. The Bal Shem Tov explained that IF looking up from your text to admire a tree is an interruption from your Torah study, then, and only then, are you liable for your life. In other words, if a person cannot see that the tree or the plowed field or the sunset or the mountain is, in fact, an extension of the written torah, and therefore, stopping to admire the beauty of nature is an extension of their Torah study, they are missing the point.

The subtle yet substantial difference between the explanations of the father from The Chosen and the Bal Shem Tov is, in my mind, so essential to the expansion of Jewish spiritual consciousness. We need to be able to recognize the inherent spiritual potential in all of God’s creations, not just those that are established religious icons. We learn from the act of making Kiddush each week that we have the ability to raise objects to a level of holiness. However, this is largely a result of the individual’s mindset. For example, a Talit may be an object of utmost spiritual importance to one person, an essential component to their tefilah experience, and simply a piece of fabric to another. Neither is inherently correct. Our goal as Jews is to expand our spiritual consciousness to include as much of God’s creation as possible. Doing so gives spiritual significance to what might otherwise simply be a walk in the woods.

Abraham Joshua Heschel writes that expanding one’s spiritual consciousness leads to a continued sense of wonder revolving around the beauty of God’s creation. He says the best way to retain a sense of wonder is by reciting brachot, blessings. The Rabbis teach that we should strive to make 100 brachot each day. Brachot are not only for food, but also for enjoying anything in this world, fragrant smells, beautiful sites, even seeing a friend after a long period of time has passed. By making brachot we pause to appreciate just how amazing this life is, and how everything we derive benefit from is, like us, an extension of God.

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