The Word “Blessed”: The Work of Choosing

Fear can change how people behave. A child can behave nicely out of fear. A worker can toil out of fear. A citizen can obey the law out of fear. But make no mistake: that is not a relationship. The moment the fear disappears, the “relationship” disappears too, because there was never any choice in it. The Lower Awe: Pressure Is Not a Relationship Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, wrote about this. There is a lower kind of awe: the fear of punishment, of judgment, of suffering in the next world. This fear is real, and it has the power to stop a person from doing wrong. But it works from the outside. It turns the body into a tool that obeys. It does not touch the heart inside. The Talmud says: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven, except awe of Heaven.” Anything in the world can be forced, except for one thing. True awe of Hashem is exactly the one thing that cannot be forced. The moment it is forced, it is no longer awe of Hashem. It is only fear of punishment. Look at it this way. At Mount Sinai, our Sages say, Hashem “held the mountain over them like an upside-down barrel.” That was obedience. In the days of Ahasuerus, the Persian king of the Purim story, the Jewish people “upheld and accepted” the Torah on their own. That was a relationship. The difference is not in what they did. It is in the choice behind it. The Point of Choice: Where a Relationship Is Built My young married friend, think about this for a moment. A real relationship is built in exactly this place, whether it is between one person and another, between a child and his father, or between the Jewish people and Hashem. It is built when you could say “no,” and you choose to say “yes.” This is where a person’s will comes out into the open. This is where his inner self shows itself. It shows not in what is forced on him, but in what he chooses. Maimonides wrote that free choice is a great foundation and a pillar of the whole Torah. This is not because choosing is easy. It is because choosing is real. And truly, everything rests on that spot, the point of choice. “Blessed”: A Fresh Insight in One Word Now hear one fresh insight. It is a simple one. Every day we open our mouths and say “Blessed.” Sometimes we say it quickly, as if it were just another word. But when you look closely at this word, it says everything. In Hebrew, the word for “blessed” comes from the word for “knee.” It speaks of kneeling, of bowing down. But pay attention: this is not the kneeling of a slave who bows out of fear. It is the kneeling of a son who bends before his father because he wants to, out of love and out of choice. The Zohar, the classic book of Jewish mysticism, explains that the word “blessed” is tied to the root of the source, to “a gushing spring” of water. When a person bows and sets his self aside, he becomes a vessel. An open vessel draws the flow down. A closed vessel receives nothing. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains in one of his letters that the blessing drawn down from above depends on how the vessel is prepared below. The deepest preparation is bowing the will. This does not mean humbling the body. It means humbling the “I.” And that is exactly what the word “Blessed” says: I could have refused to bow, and I choose to bow. The Son’s Work, Every Single Day The Tanya teaches about the “in-between person,” someone who is neither fully righteous nor wicked. Most of us see ourselves in him. His inner work is a daily choice. It is not one decision made once for a whole lifetime. Every day, with every commandment, with every “Blessed,” the moment comes again: I could have said no, and I choose to say yes. This is not spiritual laziness. It is not something to take for granted. Every “Blessed are You, Hashem” said with a calm, focused mind is a fresh act of “upheld and accepted.” It is a statement: I choose You. Not out of fear, but out of love, out of desire, out of choice. About this our Sages said: “The Merciful One wants the heart.” Hashem is asking for the heart. He wants more than the body, and more than obedience. He wants your choice.