Blessing

Before a Jew eats or performs a mitzvah, he or she recites a special blessing recognizing G-d, the creator of all.

Yet it wasn’t until a few years later that I learned how to connect to the formal Jewish prayers. Staying over at a friend’s house for Shabbat, I was completely embarrassed when she handed me a prayerbook. I sat on the sofa, pretending to read the Hebrew ...

There are special blessings that we make whenever we witness particularly wondrous natural phenomena. Eclipses, however, are not listed among the wonders for which we make a blessing. The Talmud tells us that a solar eclipse is a bad omen for the entire w...

The Tu B’Shevat festive dinner is an opportunity to repair the transgression of Adam and Eve.

We were given the power to bless others.

The blessing helps bring into focus how the forces of nature are all truly from G‑d and expressions of His majesty.

Question: I once heard that there is a certain amount of blessings we should attempt to say each day. How many is it, and what is the source of this idea? Answer: There is indeed such a teaching. We are to recite 100 blessings each day. The Talmud Menacho...

Question: Most blessings seem to begin in second party ("Blessed are You..."), and end in third party ("Who gives us His Torah" or "Who santifies us with His commandments")—as if we were discussing G‑d instead of addressing Him directly. Why is this? Answ...

Question: Why do the Cohanim cover themselves and their hands when they do the priestly blessing? Why do the people cover themselves in their talitot? Answer: The Cohanim are meant to concentrate on blessing the congregation, and the congregation should c...

Question: Is there such a thing as "taharat klalot" ("curse removal")? Recently, everything that could -- and some things which we thought couldn't -- go wrong, has. My son told me that someone suggested that we look into the possibility of "taharat klalo...