BLESSING - THE REAL MEANING

The use of the term blessing or bracha in Jewish religious circles refers to the liturgical phrases used for prayer, eating, events, etc. However, the idea that verbal recitation of blessings actually constitutes a blessing should be questioned.

At any synagogue service, Jews are using the word blessing as if the word itself has real currency that God accepts. At the same time we are imploring God for His concrete blessings which address every human need and desire. Is it possible that the same God who offers His concrete, real time benefits package in exchange for compliance, will accept this kind of I.O.U. from a nation which has never given more than this kind of lip service to its Creator ?

The Jewish Press of 8/19/2011 has a few articles discussing brachot or blessings. Let's examine them : Shabbat Forshpeis by Rabbi Avi Weiss, discusses our obligations per Deuteronomy 10 : 12, 13. "And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul; to keep, for your good, the commandments of the Lord..." But Deuteronomy 10 : 16 has the command, "Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no more stiff necked."

The facts of history show that Jews can recite the 100 berachot per day as Rabbi Raphael Fuchs cites from the Gemara in Menachos 43b in his column , "A Taste of Lomdus" without ever fearing God or walking in His ways or loving Him or circumcising our stubborn hearts. The big lie attributed to the Orach Chaim that David HaMelech himself recited 100 brachot and required it from his people is a libel, an insult to David and to God.

We are a nation of schizophrenics who can recite and look at a Rashi, who decides one day, while he failed to warn his students that the Crusaders were about to butcher them - great wisdom, Rashi - that the Hebrew word mah, i.e., what, actually means meah or a hundred. So now This nation's sick teachers have made us not only sick, by brainwashing us to believe that what God wants is a daily recitation of 100 blessings, but also made us incapable of understanding how we can go about earning God's total benefits package to save us from all the butchering, torture, rape, and 100 other forms of misery we have suffered. And in 2011 when Israel is due for another Holocaust which the world is very craftily orchestrating as if it is following the biblical prophecies with great care, our modern rabbis want us to figure out when to make up the 100 blessings they want us to believe David and of course his heir, the Moshiach want us to recite. Well I will tell you all in absolute certainty that the heir of David, our prince is not schizophrenic, brainwashed by our rabbis of then and now and will teach us to actually walk with our God - something no rabbi except a few even challenged us to attempt. The Chofetz Chaim told us in Achavat Chesed to refrain from putting our money out for interest. That went over well - didn't it. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch is our most spiritual rabbi and no one is even interested in discussing derech eretz (life style) and striving to attain the spiritual level of Jeshurun as our way of life. After all saying some words in Hebrew before and after a piece of fruit or when having a drink is much easier. Who sees that it doesn't make us more righteous, holy or blessed by a God who is still waiting for us to take that "walk" with Him ? And the women; they are really providing blessing by cooking and cleaning and shopping and working and making and caring for children and taking care of schizophrenic husbands who feel superior because they have more ways to say berachot than women do. But we don't want to listen to them too much they might make us wake up and be real Jews and servants of God. Imagine if they studied our history and learned that every time the goyim raped them and their daughters, the soldiers of Israel armed themselves with a hundred berachot and hid in the shul and commenced their crying to God who was waiting in the streets for them to go out to battle and rescue their women.

You shameless idiots. If you focused on ONE thing, i.e., to fear God you would evolve into a true Tzellem Elohim. Then if you took the resultant courage and became the gur arie and never stood idly by your brothers' blood, the world would fear you; and your children would never know the meaning of "victim". You would be living as God intended, building the Kingdom He meant for you to govern and the Olam Habah would never have been such an impossible dream to believe in, because it would be our actual address.

When the Moshiach shakes you awake, your shame will start melting and circumcising your stony hearts.

Then there is Torah Tidbits by Rabbi Avigdor Miller. Does he really believe that God had to put us in Egypt because the gentile nations of the day wouldn't tolerate more than 70 Jews at a time? Does he not consider that Abraham and 310 fighters raised in his household (Genesis 14 : 14 ), conquered 5 kings ? Does he think that all of them recited 100 times 310 berachot through the night until the armies of those 5 kings dropped dead from mental fatique ? Does this sage think, like Rashi that Ya'akov our Forefather gave Joseph a second portion which he took out of the hand of the Amorite with prayer ? How will we become the warrior priests our Patriarchs were if we believe the rabbis and not the word of God in Genesis 48 : 22 ? Brothers and sisters, this is critical. Our God is a serious God and He means business. Yes, as Ya'akov our Patriarch says in Genesis 48 : 20, Israel will bless our sons by saying "God make thee as Ephraim and as Menashe." God also requires us to bless Him for the food we eat (Deuteronomy 8 : 10). Ya'akov our Patriarch and his father, Isaac had the power to bless. What we do in our religion with our hundred blessings is sheer idiocy. We have no power to bless in the manner of our Patriarchs, but when we are to actually be a blessing, as Abraham, our first Patriarch was told; we fail !

This failure to teach our children to emulate God and our real flesh and blood Patriarchs is killing us !!!! We are not tape recorders with peyot and tzitziyot who mindlessly parrot nonsense without thinking that after 2000 plus years of the most horrific nightmare a nation endured that something isn't wrong in Judah !!!! It is time to break the spell and snap out of this insanity.

The article, "Are Yeshivas Doing Enough?" by Michael Schaier is dead on. He tells us frankly and accurately that Jewish Spirituality - this is an oxymoron - is missing from our yeshivas. He notes tragically that we do not teach our children about God. He challenges us with a "call to spiritual arms".

Israel has a misidentification with the word spiritual. Spiritual is like the word bitul because it indicates that action is a product of wholeheartedness and devoid of egotism. It means that we are pure vessels filled with the Holy Spirit of our Creator who then becomes the Animating Force in our souls. Imagine a nation of insane reciters of 100 berachot suddenly freed from this ego spawned olam hasheker, so they can access the personal treasures God put in their souls and work in harmony with their brothers and sisters to build the new world. This is how we build the olam ha bah, with the concrete, tachlis talents and energies each of us possesses and the driving force of the Spirit of HaShem permanently animating us. This is how we will be in the near future and this is what the world is awaiting.

It is time for Israel' s people, if not its clergy, to hit the reset button and start becoming a genuine blessing to God by sincerely acting in harmony with His written Torah and in harmony with His agenda for Israel. This website has explained this sufficiently. Read the article Righteousness and Holiness. We can hit the brakes, turn to HaShem in truth and begin our new life as the righteous nation of holy priests who enjoy working in partnership with our Creator, amd who enjoy His total benefits package and who demonstrate to all mankind how blessings are earned.

We are again living in dangerous times which are prophesied and poised to turn more dangerous than ever. It is time to stop mindlessly uttering blessings which we were never given the Providential power to give ! If we plan to survive the coming turbulence and upheavals we need to become a blessing to God by actions which promote His intentions. This will be Israel's spiritual revolution away from pagan idolatry, which was filled with similar liturgies of incantations and rituals; and to the manifestation of action which God really demands. We can no more afford to be an insult to God with our liberal use of the term blessing. We will not derive any benefit from this silly obsessive compulsive behavior no matter how old and venerated a practice this has been. It never worked, because the God of Israel is not a social worker. And it is sheer insanity to pretend that it might. Read the Torah and apply its written laws and then you will be blessing God and those around you. And stop relinquishing the control of your children's education to stubborn, sanctimonious, self righteous teachers who simply parrot yesterdays failed strategies. We have erred as a nation - again !

Josiah lived for the written Torah he found in the Holy Temple which he began renovating. His reformation was awesome even though it ended tragically because our people returned to their evil ways. We today are all standing between the blessings God is offering for true compliance and the annihilation our enemies are preparing. No hundred or million berachot recited like dumb birds will buy God's sword and shield ( Deuteronomy 33 : 26-29 ).

If you want to walk into the New World with your families intact listen to your Creator for once. It was not pleasant for me to accept that the Judaism of our rabbis is idol worship. Yes, the kiddush and festive meals and candle lighting and havdalah are legitimate enhancements, but by no means are they Divine laws.

We detoured from God's work, His service, His Spirit, His ways, His agenda, His mission for Israel and His life preserving blessings. We will not die or desecrate our sages who led us astray if we wake up and go the right way today. The job of the man we speak of ad nauseum is, in the Prophet Isaiah's word's "The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in" (Isaiah 58 : 12). If we want to welcome the Moshiach and not just have him yank us into reality, let us consider what I am telling you. This is a life and death issue. Please stop and consider it with utmost gravity. This is the truth. It is how we are saved from destruction. It is how the nation of Israel will operate !!!!

Chaskel Bennett's Jewish Press article of 8/26/11, "A World Gone Mad" is influencing Jews to think as he notes, "In fact, the international community, by its continuous failure to distinguish right from wrong and its unwillingness to side with good over evil, bears culpability for this renewed cycle of violence." I'm sorry brothers and sisters; God put Israel in the toughest neighborhood in the world, to prove that compliance with the WRITTEN TORAH earns Israel victory and makes the world fear us! There is no Torah basis for Israel identifying as a victim whose security depends on the good will of the world's people ! We have unused super powers which make us invincible and instead of adopting fear of God as our way of life we recite gibberish as if we'll die if we miss a bracha. And we waste our precious energy convincing the world that we're really lovely and that they should like us and help us live in peace in a rough neighborhood. This can make a man vomit.

In June 1967, I operated an elevator in a 29 story building in NYC. When Israel pulled off an unbelievable military miracle, suddenly everyone respected Jews and were pro Israel. Then we began to undo God's gift with an idiocy and suicidal agenda the likes of which history never beheld. When God's truth is not of paramount importance to the Am Segula, it is not important at all to anyone. Our idiotic lies about God and Torah and the nature of Israel and our relationship with the world is not lost on a world which seeks to vilify and justify our annihilation. No one is interested in the fact that we are a nice, lovely peace loving nation. No one is sympathetic to our victim shtick. Yuk !!! What an embarrassment to God, what an unmitigated hilul HaShem !!!!

I grew up in the Bronx. We were friends with the gentiles on both sides of Easter and Christmas when we fought, and when we beat them in baseball and tackle football ( we never knew about softball and touch football ). No one messed with us.

We are forbidden to stand idly by our brothers' blood, yet our famous rabbis shook with fear of the enemy and merely talked a blue streak about fear of God -- shame on all of you. Not only have you led us to hell but you are paving the road for our children to go to the next holocaust without God's protection. Love your neighbor as yourself! Correct you neighbor in the spirit of brotherhood! Be the courageous lion cubs and lionesses we are supposed to be. Love and defend your wives and daughters. Spend time learning how to fight like the warrior priests that our Forefathers were !!! Don't recite blessings. Be a blessing !!! We are a nation which has deified and sanctified the reading of our 'instruction manual', i.e., the Torah, instead of getting onto the world stage and living by it as if God is the most important aspect of our lives. We are a nation living a lie. And God has been telling us to wake up. But you can't wake up a nation that thinks it is awake. If Shem ever had a yeshiva, it was to practice the arts of war, to learn to walk and talk with God, to free our souls from any thoughts, feelings or actions which do not encourage and invite Him into our lives. The knowledge of life, including fighting, farming, animal raising, understanding the cosmos and how to navigate, etc. was taught to a special sect of holy warriors who were philosophers, lovers of God and sought to be a part of His intentions.

Do not act like you can meet trouble as if you live on West 79th St. and can dial 911 from your cell phone, when fighting with God as your sword and shield is your birthright. You have sold our people short ! You have converted God's golden lion cubs and lionesses into shlemiels and built a culture of failure which you sell us as a precious massoret ! The Moshiach will bring you all to trial - make no mistake about this !! Jewish blood is not cheap, but you and not just the world have allowed it to be cheap !!! Read Jeremiah, chapter 23 for an indication of how God will have you false shepherds punished when the Moshiach comes !!!!

When I was at the induction center in Jerusalem; proud, young Israelis were preparing to serve their people in the I.D.F. One shameless hasid, in full hasidic dress, was crying like a baby who was deprived of his mother's milk. He never stopped crying. About one and one half hours later, the rebbe he was crying for to save him, came and lifted him off the step like a wet rag and took him away from us. Massoret ! Yiddishkeit ! This is a big lie, not the Torah. The Torah in our souls is courage, truth, power, victory, glory justice righteousness, holiness and love of God and our people. It is not anything which considers what the world thinks, wants or does, It only follows the God of our fathers.

Wake up you phony baloney Jews and get a life of Torah and give up the lies our fathers told us ( Jeremiah 16 : 19 ) ! We have secular and religious leaders whom the moshiach will put on trial for actions which led to the murder of our people. We better start to confess our criminal actions which have misrepresented God's Torah and His desires and intentions. All of our rabbis have misled us because they have been infected with the big lie that God gave Moshe Rabbenu an oral Torah, which even with its contradictions of the written Torah, is packaged and taught as the genuine word and intention of God. Look at Exodus 24 : 12 and try to break through the egoistic lies you have been passing on to each new generation of Jews: "And the Lord said to Moses: 'Come up to Me into the mount, and I will give you the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have WRITTEN, that thou mayest teach them". In another Jewish Press article by Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher (10/7/11), the rabbi writes "When Moses went up to heaven ....." and also states, "When he returned to earth, he instructed the Jews concerning all the commandments he received ..." Any normal person in this generation can see from the text in the Written Torah's Book of Exodus, chapter 24, that Moses went up to the "mount of God" and did not go to "heaven" as Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher wrote; Moses received the Ten Commandments on the two stone tablets and "the law which I (God) have WRITTEN, that thou mayest teach them". And Moses never "returned to earth" as the rabbi writes because he never left the earth. This is the kind of traditional 'rabbi-speak' which has been proliferating a Judaism which feeds off of the true Written Torah and our other biblical, Holy Scriptures, but spins them away from God's truth. Instead of applying true Torah laws and concepts to build a powerful, holy nation, faithful to and hence blessed by God, our rabbis have used the Written Torah of God as a substrate to refer to in order to legitimize the fabrication of their own rabbinic laws, masoret (traditions) and principles which may have some pretty enhancements for celebrating Shabbat and holidays, but distorts the identity of our God, the Torah of our God, the purpose, mission and identity of the nation and the way in which we the people of Israel earn God's blessings !!! This is more than just criminal negligence ! This is more than just treason ! This is a conspiracy to hijack our Covenant and kidnap our nation !!!! Think about it !!! This crime is similar to that of the kings and lords of the ancient and medieval world. The 'divine right of kings' is the phrase we were taught in school to understand the mentality of these later day pharaohs. In modern times this mentality of the lords of history entered the souls of other opportunists, who schemed to create monopolies of power and wealth. In America they were called 'robber barons' and they control and exploit the world to this day. The souls of our ancient rabbis were infected by a hubris which exploited the hopes and ignorance of our people at a time when genuine t'shuvah, i.e., return to God may have prevented this long exile of 2000 years. Instead of being given the correct and true direction back to God's grace and salvation they maintained their control by guiding our actions according to the big lie of their 'oral torah' which prevented our ancestors from restoring their national and personal lives to be in compliance with God. In essence, these rabbis sacrificed our people on the alter of their egos and power. Unfortunately, no number of pogroms or holocausts seemed to penetrate into the hearts of rabbis of any age. With a new holocaust imminent, our rabbis still maintain their hegemony over our lives, but they will not consider that the horrors that have been our people's fate is a result of God's wrath, unleashed because of their false direction and guidance !!! These false leaders are included in Moses' warning in Deuteronomy 31 : 29; in Isaiah's warnings (Isaiah 9 : 15) and condemnation of our leaders and our people (Isaiah 28 : 15; 48 : 1; 59 : 1 - 21).

Dear reader, it is hard to imagine that my criticism is valid, but you have to acknowledge that God is in control, He can save and He can ignore us and allow us to be the victims of the most horrible attacks. When Jeremiah the Prophet asked God to spare our people before the Babylonian exile, read what God told him. "Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, And see now and know, And seek in the broad places thereof, If ye can find a man, If there be any that doeth justly, that seeketh truth; And I will pardon her" (Jeremiah 5 : 1) !!! Do the math, God didn't even ask for a minyan and we couldn't deliver !!!! Don't you think this is cause for some soul searching and truth seeking ??? If you led our people into such horrors time and time again, would you not ask yourself if we had done something which made God angry enough to release such Divine vengeance upon our people ??? Or would you maintain the age old taboo against second guessing the divine right of rabbis ?????

If this doesn't make you concerned enough, continue reading the next verse of Jeremiah, "And though they say: 'As the Lord liveth', Surely they swear falsely. O Lord, are not Thine eyes upon truth? Thou hast stricken them, but they were not affected; Thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: They have made their faces harder than a rock; They have refused to return" (Jeremiah 5 : 1 - 3).

2000 years ago, I wouldn't have thought to look and inquire, but after so many years of unspeakable terror, horror and torture a normal Jew asks for facts and truth. I was born in a refugee camp and grew up with stories of the Holocaust and I served in the IDF and will do so again. Knowing our enemy is serious business. Maximizing our force is imperative. Complying with the true Written Torah of HaShem is a MILITARY IMPERATIVE which must be taught to our fighting men immediately. I believe that many of our soldiers would do t'shuvah and return to God's true ways IF it weren't for the Jewish establishment's big lies. Can you imagine what an army we would unleash upon our enemies if our soldiers were in compliance with the true Torah of HaShem ?!

In the Jewish Press of 9/9/11, Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser's column, Pearls Of Wisdom, discusses faith in the context of the 10th anniversary of 911. In this interesting article, the rabbi makes a classical error in his use of the word 'faith'. Hundreds of rabbis do the same and I am selecting this example because it is readily available. He cites Rav Soloveichik's remark, "Faith begins where human reason ends". Unfortunately this is wrong. Christians use faith in this way and actually say that if one can understand why things happen or why God does what He does, that this is not faith. As Jews we have the obligation to be accurate. A Christian and especially Catholics are required to believe that the highest form of service to God can only be rendered as a celibate. This terrible lie has caused such misery in some of their finest men and women. Yet there is nothing in the Bible which supports this lie. Catholic priests and nuns live as celibates because they believe that this is what God wants, and they have faith that their sacrifice is acceptable to God and gives them a place in heaven.

It is the Jew who is chosen to cast Divine Light upon such lies in order to free people from such tragedy and enslavement. In reality, we do know why God does what He does or allows consequences to come upon us. It is all written in the written Torah. When Joshua lost 36 men at the battle of Ai, he knew God let them loose because someone did something sinful. He made an inquiry and found the cause of the curse ( Joshua 7 : 19 ). "And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones and the strangers that walked among them."

Joshua exemplifies true 'faith'. He knows that God blesses and curses as He states in our Torah - in our Brit. So Joshua has faith that if he scrupulously does what is right in God's eyes, he will be blessed. And Joshua has faith that if he transgresses, a curse will come upon Him. Joshua is CLEAR about the cause and effect relationship of our behavior. There is no limitation of reason's ability to understand true faith. Joshua, as any truly faithful man or woman knows, that to be truly free, we must know the relationship between our obligations and our destiny. Our rabbis unfortunately, are not so clear, are not willing to acknowledge that God tells us what leads to what, and are not willing to entertain responsibility for failing to teach us or even read to us the cause and effect relationships of our behavior to help us evolve into Jews who can have faith that by following God's actual written Torah, we will be blessed with both of God's open hands.

My people, we are again standing before the abyss. A storm is brewing before us. All the nations are gathered against us. And Israel is blind and unprepared - an understatement !! Our leaders are out of touch with God, with Torah, with reality. We must return to our God with the written Torah inscribed in our hearts, minds and souls. This Torah is our survivors' instruction book. Let's pick it up and DO WHAT GOD SAYS -- NOW!!! Observing the written Torah is a strategic military imperative. If we fail to follow it, we can have faith that most of us will perish !!! If we follow it wholeheartedly, we can have faith that we will be victorious !!!