F ar be it from me to pick a bone with new Mishpacha contributor Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin particularly when he has the formidable interpretive authority of ArtScroll to back him up.
Still I’ll venture an alternative translation with an authoritative source of its own to the one he recently offered in these pages for the first thing a Jew says as he begins his day beginning with the words “Modeh ani lifanecha.” Rabbi Bashevkin explained that “Modeh ani” is an expression of thanks to Hashem for returning one’s soul each morning and so indeed does the ArtScroll Siddur render it: “I gratefully thank You O living and eternal King for You have returned my soul within me…”
In the second maamar of Pachad Yitzchok on Chanukah Rav Yitzchok Hutner ztz”l explains that the word hodaah encompasses two different but related meanings: thanks and concession. The Talmudic phrase hodaas baal din means admission to an opposing position while hodaah al haavar connotes thanks for past kindnesses. That they share this word explains the Rosh Yeshivah indicates that at the deep root of every thanksgiving is an admission of one’s dependence on another for whatever kindness it was that prompted the thanks a dependence that is at odds with the natural human impulse toward self-sufficiency.
There is a way however to discern which of these disparate meanings of hodaah is intended in a given context. When conveying acknowlegment it will be phrased along the lines of “Modim sheh… (we admit that…)” — as in Shemoneh Esrei where we say “Modim anachnu loch she’ata hu Hashem…” But where the meaning is that of thanks the phrase will begin “Modim al… (We thank You for…)” — as in the very next phrase in that same brachah where we continue with “Nodeh lecha unisaper tehilasecha…”
