Birkot HaTorah (Hebrew: ברכות התורה, The blessings of the Torah) are blessings in Jewish law concerning the giving of the Torah from God to Israel and to study of Torah. According to Jewish law, the blessings are obligatory to bless before Torah study (including the Talmud[1]), and it is customary to bless them every morning prior to any Torah study that will be taught that day.

The order of the blessings

The system of Torah blessings is structured as a series of three sections:

  1. In the first part, we bless according to the regular wording of the blessing of the mitzvos: we bless Hashem who sanctified us with His mitzvot and commanded us to occupy ourselves with the study of Torah.
  2. Then we add a request for success in Torah study: we request that the Torah, which Hashem taught His nation Israel, be pleasant to us, that we merit learning it with desire, and that we and our offspring have the privilege of understanding the depth of its content.
  3. After the request, another blessing is given as thanksgiving for the giving of the Torah to the people of Israel: we bless and thank Hashem for choosing us from among all the nations and giving us His Torah.
    • This blessing is also the blessing that blesses every ascendant to the Torah before the reading of the Torah in the synagogue, and also after the recitation blesses the ascendant another blessing with a similar content: "Who gave us his Torah a true doctrine.[2]

The importance of Birkot HaTorah

In the Talmud it is written that one of the reasons for the destruction of the Land of Israel is to know a Rav, the one who studied Torah without first blessing the Birkot HaTorah. Rabbi's explanation is an interpretation of the verse in the book of Jeremiah which describes God answering the question why the Land of Israel was destroyed:"Who is the ish hechacham (wise man), that may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of Hashem hath spoken, that he may declare it, for what HaAretz perisheth and is scorched like a midbar, that none passeth through?" [3]

From the simplicity of the Bible it appears that the destruction of the land was due to the departure of the Torah, but Rav requires the duplication of the language "they left my Torah" and "did not follow it", meaning that they did not bless before studying Torah.[4][5]

Is thought considered speech?

In the Berakhot, the Amoraim were divided as to whether contemplation (thought) should be considered as it were speech or not. According to Rav Chisda thought is not considered speech: the evidence for this is that an unclean person is not allowed to say holy things, yet the unclean person should think on the words of the food blessing in his mind. Hence a thought is not considered speech, as such people must ponder the sacred, so that he will not be idle from sacred words, while others are engaged in blessings of praise.

Some Talmudists, like Rabina II (and possibly Rabina I), considered thought to be speech. As the mishnah commands such a person to ponder in their minds the words of the blessing of food, the thought must be speech. Against this, as this mitzvah requires only that the body be pure when speaking sacred words, the duty to maintain a pure body is only when speaking of holiness really and not in contemplation.[6]

References

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