Shabbat Parashat Eikev - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Eikev - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  You will eat and you will be satisfied and you will bless Hashem your God for the

  good land that He gave you.  [Devarim 8:10] 

This verse is the commandment we observe after a meal, known in Hebrew as "birchat hamazon", in Yiddish as "bentching" and in English as "grace". There is a separate commandment to say a blessing before we partake of anything of benefit, but the main blessing on a meal is our verse, and comes after being satiated. The reason is that one who is given something owes thanks for having been supplied with his needs. The little booklets we use, known as "bentchers", have a consistent textual format, but our verse is the only place we find the command, so what is all that text for?

Our verse commands us to bentch when we are sated in food and also for the land. Gemara Berachot in various places differentiates bentching (and recitation of Shema) from regular prayer, giving numerous reasons. We are commanded directly regarding Shema and bentching, but prayer as we know it is rabbinic. Rav Soloveitchik explains that prayer is asking God for help of some form, whether because one lacks food or for some other need, but that Shema and bentching are both thanks for our having already received our needs. Thus, he says, we are obligated whether we are in the land or elsewhere and whether we are fully satisfied to our desire or merely to our needs. Contrary to prayer, the Gemara says one can bentch even when drunk, although being drunk is problematic for other reasons.

The format is not prescribed in the Torah so the Gemara lays it out. After a preliminary psalm there were originally three blessings, with a fourth added later, followed by requests for God's mercy upon us, our families, hosts, community, and the various special days that may be related. The text was finalized by Ezra the prophet, but the formulation of the blessings precedes him. Moshe drafted the first, Yehoshua the second, David and Shlomo combined on the third, and Chazal drafted the fourth over time.

According to Rav Avraham Twerski, the content of the first is gratitude for the manna in the desert and includes the phrase "with grace, with kindness and with mercy" referring either to various phases of our lives or to different levels of personal spirituality in order that all of us should be blessed. The content of the second blessing is gratitude for the land and for the food we have just eaten. The third is for restoration of Yerushalayim, the Temple and the monarchy. The fourth is gratitude that in our troubles God saves us, giving hope after destruction of the Second Temple.

Why does the Torah command us to bentch, and why is it tied so much to the land of Israel? The Jewish people have two purposes, to acknowledge God and to lead all the other nations back to Him. By bentching we acknowledge that all our needs are supplied by God alone. When we work the land and receive its goodness, we know from where it came. When we work the holy land in particular and see how much more bountiful is the place God chose, we are proving to those other nations that God exists and runs the world.