Search our Archives:

The Bracha and the Blessing

What is the difference?

By Nachum Mohl

We normally translate the Hebrew word "bracha" as blessing. But, indeed, is a bracha the same as a blessing? Looking up the word blessing on dictonary.com we are told that a blessing is:

–noun

1. the act or words of a person who blesses.
2. a special favor, mercy, or benefit: the blessings of liberty.
3. a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.
4. the invoking of God's favor upon a person: The son was denied his father's blessing.
5. praise; devotion; worship, esp. grace said before a meal: The children took turns reciting the blessing.
6. approval or good wishes: The proposed law had the blessing of the governor.

But the concept of a "bracha" is not quite any of the above. Allow me to explain.

To really understand a word in Hebrew we need to investigate the Hebrew root. In Hebrew all words are related through their root. Most Hebrew words are made up of a three letter root. From these basic three letters, the Hebrew word is conjugated. However, it goes deeper than this; words with similar root letters are related. This is so, because unlike other languages, each Hebrew letter has a divine power to create. Therefore using the letters in a sequence can create or describe a concept.

The word bracha is related to the word barak, barad, breicha, and lehavriech. Barak is lightning, barad is hail, breicha is a pool (water) and lehavrieh is a process that farmers do when they take their grapevines and put part of the vine underground to sprout roots thereby beginning a new planting.

Now what we learn from all of this is something interesting about a bracha. What most of these words have in common is a downward motion – that is with the exception the word breicha, a pond or pool which also figures in our analysis. Let us begin now:

When we pray we use the word baruch at the beginning of a blessing, baruch atah Ad-onai Elo-hainu … Now what do we mean by this? Are we blessing G-d? Of course not, G-d does not need our blessings; He is perfect and lacks nothing. What we are doing is something else; we are trying to bring G-d's goodness and abundance down from being concealed and hidden in the upper worlds and down into our material world.

The word G-d in Hebrew is

Please let us know if you see something unsavory on the Google Ads and we will have them removed. Email us with the offensive URL (www.something.com)