COMMENT
Bee Kalt Travel
The Quality Pavel Specialists since 1958
Why It's Hard To Say
'Thank You, God'
BERTH ANNOUNCEMENT!
HAROLD M. SCHULWEIS
Bee Kalt Travel & Princess Cruises have done it again!
Join us to celebrate the "berth" of their two
brand new "babies"
The Star Princess
Born: March 24, 1989
Height: 120 feet
Weight: 62,000 gross tons
The Crown Princess
Due Date: July 8, 1990
Height: 122 feet
Weight: 64,000 gross tons
Special inauguration Sail-a-bration Dec. 7, 1989
Radisson Hotel
1500 Town Center • Southfield, MI
7:00 P.M.
Special "Sail Prices" available for
Bee Kalt Clients
Please R.S.V.P. (313) 288-9600
e HOLIDAY TRAVEL
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4088 Haggerty Rd.
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Corner of Richardson
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86
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1989
Special to The Jewish News
.
ISRAEL
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A
s a child, I was forever
prodded to say "thank
you" to parents,
members of my family and to
those who brought gifts. Giv-
ing thanks did not come easy
to me nor does it come easy to
persons beyond childhood.
The reluctance may account
for the half-heartedness with
which people praise God. For
them, the liturgical praises of
God seem excessive, even
obsequious. Why the resis-
tance to thanksgiving?
Perhaps a popular anecdote
can explain the reluctance.
A rabbi visited a farmer
who with considerable pride
showed him the fields of corn
and wheat within his fences.
The rabbi pounced on this
opportunity to preach a
lesson on piety. "You should
give thanks to God. You and
He are partners:' The farmer
responded, "Of course, but
you ought to have seen this
place when God was the sole
owner."
The sarcasm expressed
discontent with the rabbinic
counsel to give thanksgiving
to God because it seemed
somehow to rob the farmer of
his own role in cultivating the
soil and harvesting the grain.
He felt as if a stranger were
taking credit for the sweat of
his brow. Maybe there is
something misleading in the
way the theology of thanks-
giving is taught.
The first benediction I was
taught was the motzi, "Bless-
ed are Thou, 0 Lord, who
brings forth bread from the
earth." In my mind, the
prayer conjured up a mys-
terious divine hand emerging
from the bowels of the earth
with a package of Stuhmer's
pumpernickel. A child of the
urban streets, I knew little
about the complex production
of a slice of bread. The
mysterious hand was a lively
image attached to the motzi.
That association remained
with me longer than I
thought. As I grew older, that
fantasy made the benediction
appear infantile. There real-
ly was no hand pulling bread
from the earth and so the
thanksgiving blessing was
not unlike rubbing Aladdin's
lamp to produce a genie. The
prayer seemed puerile. And
what once was an uneasiness
with the unnatural motzi
.
Rabbi Schulweis is spiritual
leader of Valley Beth Shalom in
Encino, California.
prayer spread to the whole of
prayer.
What blocks prayer for
many is its apparent irrele-
vance. The very grammar of
prayer conspires to separate
God from the lived world of
the worshipers.
They are structured in such
a way that God is presented
as a something or someone
wholly separate from the ac-
tivity or behavior signified.
As with the story of the
farmer, God is there, the
bread is here, but where are
we in the thanksgiving? We
are lazy with prayers. Prayer
is a form of thinking and wor-
ship is work — avodah.
Benedictions come too com-
pact. Prayers need to be
unpacked.
It may help to unravel the
benedictions. The focus of
prayer needs to be directed to
Prayerful Jews
know themselves
as co-creators and
co-consecrators of
God's universe.
the terms that follow the in-
troductory formula "Blessed
art Thou." Attention needs to
be fixed on the process, the ac-
tivities, the transactions that
go into the cultivation of a
piece of bread or a cup of wine
before the name of divinity is
invoked.
Asked by his Chasidim to
tell them where God is, the
Rebbe pointed his finger at a
piece of bread. To what does
the finger point? There are
, things "given:" seeds, soil,
water, sun, wind that no
human being created. They
are given gifts. Left alone, the
gifts will yield no bread. Left
alone, they will sprout weeds.
Something must be done,
some transaction between the
given and a human being
must take place to turn wild
growthinto bread. The given
must be humanly trans-
formed, taken in hand with
wisdom and purpose to pro-
duce the bread. Sowing, plant-
ing, watering, ploughing,
threshing, grinding, baking,
packaging, distributing,
feeding the hungry are not
merely secular events. In this
manner, the mindset is
directed towards "that which
brings forth bread from the
earth." Consequent to the
awareness and appreciation
of the process comes it identi-
fication with God. As in the
Hebrew order of the three
words opening the Book of
Genesis, "in the beginning"