What, then, is the real meaning of baruch?
Let us at least for today set aside matters such as the daily scandals, hypocrisy, politics, and the usual fare that constitutes a column’s subjects, and let us discuss some really important things. Such as:
Just as we often take familiar people for granted — wives, husbands, children, siblings, parents, friends, community — so also do we often take familiar prayers for granted, barely giving them a mumble and a nod, all but ignoring them.
The daily brachos — which a Jew is supposed to recite 100 different times each day (and which are on a par with hearing the Megillah and lighting the Chanukah menorah; Talmud Menachos 43b) — are a prime example, especially the very first word, the ubiquitous baruch. That poor, overworked word flits from our tongues without effort and without much thought. Sometimes it is hardly pronounced in full. Instead of the two syllable baruch, it is often slurred into a one-syllable “b’ruch.”
It is universally translated as “blessed,” so that every brachah begins with “Blessed art Thou, King of the universe…” Which is fine, but with one major problem: Baruch means much more than “blessed.” G-d is the very source of all blessing. Would it not be odd for mortal man to bless the source of all blessing?
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