MORNING BLESSINGS
An alternative opening:
Ea «rHÎd ©n .arw£r©i Li«¤l ¨Gr` :l ¥` ¨x §U ¦i Li«¤]rp §M §W ¦n .d ¨`¥l K ¦i«¨l ¨Gr` Ea «rHÎd ©n :l ¥g ¨x K ¦i«¨]rp §M §W ¦n
Ea «rHÎd ©n How good are your tents, O Jacob, and your homes, O Israel! How good are your tents, O Leah, and your homes, O Rachel!
Ea «rHÎd ©n Mah tovu ohalecha ya’akov, mishk’notecha yisra’el. Mah tovu ohalayich le’ah, mishk’notayich rachel.
Some congregations begin here:
xgyd zekxa MORNING BLESSINGS f 331–335
A selection may be read from the ‘Morning Blessings’
The sequence of passages that make up the ‘Morning Blessings’were originally recited in the home on awakening, arising and preparing for the day. Their transfer to the synagogue gives them a wider range of meanings, but they retain their private and intimate nature. They allow us to reflect upon our personal situation, our physical and spiritual nature, at this early stage of the service. The sequence begins with the ‘gift of our bodies’, a blessing that speaks of the wondrous complexity of our physical being. The next blessing reminds us that as well as our bodies we have a consciousness, an inner life, which we may think of as our ‘spirit’, ‘life force’or ‘soul’. The thirteen short blessings that follow enable us to consider the blessings that we have in our lives. The following passages lead us to think about the freedom that we enjoy and the responsibilities that go with this freedom. Central to our Jewish sense of who we are is the need to study, to seek to understand the world and our place within it. So the next blessing expresses this commitment, and the service offers the opportunity to study a passage that reflects in some way the Torah, the teaching, that we have inherited and that we discover anew each day. Through these blessings and prayers we have already begun the move away from purely personal concerns to our sense of belonging to a community, so this section of the service leads into the ‘Verses of Song’that celebrate our collective existence and relationship to God.
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