Even at times of joy, there is a gaping hole in our landscape
Yerushalayim and the Beis Hamikdash figure prominently in our tefillos, but how closely do they touch our hearts? Our frequent pleas for their restoration in Shemoneh Esreh and Bircas Hamazon aren’t always passionate. For many of us, it’s only on special occasions that our hearts move along with our lips — perhaps during the Kinnos of Tishah B’Av, or at the exultant cry of “L’shanah habaah b’Yerushalayim” at the close of Yom Kippur and the Pesach Seder.
It takes a receptive, sensitive heart, a core attuned to the realities of Creation, to respond to Yerushalayim on an ordinary day. Beis Yosef tells us of such an individual, one whose emotional reaction to the Churban precipitated a custom related to Bircas Hamazon. This person was once reciting the third brachah of Bircas Hamazon, bircas bonei Yerushalayim, when, overcome with anguish and grief, he seized a table knife and plunged it into his body. Since then, we cover or remove all knives on the table prior to bentshing.
The third brachah of Bircas Hamazon, the last of the Biblically mandated blessings, was originally written by Dovid Hamelech and Shlomo Hamelech to celebrate the respective occasions of the building of Yerushalayim and the building of the Beis Hamikdash — an era of glory, joy, and unity for the nation. After the Churban, the brachah was rewritten into a plea for the restoration of what we’ve lost.
Although this brachah refers to momentous junctures in our history, what’s puzzling is that these topics don’t seem to be directly connected to the main topic of Bircas Hamazon — our sustenance at the Hand of Hashem.
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