Blessed Are You, Lord

This is the opening of the berakhah, the rabbinic blessing, the fixed formula "Blessed are You, Lord" that begins the countless benedictions of Jewish liturgy and daily life. A blessing continues from this opening to name the occasion, God who brings forth bread from the earth, who has commanded a particular act, who has kept us in life to reach this season, so that the same opening words are completed differently for food, for commandments, for wonders of nature, and for the great prayers of the service.

The rabbis of the Talmud fixed the form and multiplied the occasions, teaching that one should recite a blessing before enjoying anything of this world and directing a hundred blessings a day, so that the formula becomes a means of turning ordinary experience into a recognition of God. Its constant recurrence, at every meal and threshold, makes it perhaps the most spoken liturgical phrase in traditional Jewish practice.