Baruch Ata Adonai
From SiddurWiki
This expression occurs so many times in prayers of all kinds that it lends itself to many interpretations. The literal translation would be "Blessed are you God" with the continuation. This is a particularly difficult phrase from a non-supernatural perspective. Who are we blessing? A personal deity that can personally act in the world? And even if that were true in some way, why must we think in terms of an antiquated hierarchical king-subject conjugation?
Marcia Falk changes both the meaning and the Hebrew here to "Nevarech et Ein HaChaim" or "Let us bless the source of life." The passive removes the supernatural I-thou relationship and replaces God with "the source of life" which can be read many ways, although there still is a slight connection with an external deity or power which is the source.
Even better might be reading this as "the mysterious source of life" (תעלומה) or "the mysteries of life" - "Talumot HaChaim" - which more simply states that modern knowledge does not know how it all started. The full text would be נודה בתעלמות החיים - "we acknowledge the mysteries of life" although this does change the words rather than simply re-interpret them.
We are still troubled by the term "blessing" - what can it mean in a humanistic understanding? Please see the page on blessing for alternative wording for the concept of "blessing."
Mystery of Life vs. God
Changing the wording from "baruch" to "nevarech" is poetically satisfying, but one of the goals of SiddurWiki is not to change the words but to re-think their meaning. It is not too difficult to substitute the meaning of "nevarech" נברך for "baruch" ברוך or even "nodeh" נודה (we will acknowledge) - see the wording above and also the blessing page - while still saying the word "baruch."
But what if you want to keep "adonai" rather than "mystery of life?" If we apply the meaning laid out in the section on God, the meaning becomes:
Let us bless/we will acknowledge "the power within us to do good and change the world."
Now in the context of an actual blessing - the hamotzei over bread: "Let us bless/we will acknowledge the power within us to do good and change the world as we recognize that this bread comes from the earth and without it we would go hungry, as many around the world do."
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