To begin this regular exploration of the key words of Jewish prayer, we start at the beginning with the invitation word: BaRuKH.

Barukh is most commonly translated as BLESS-ed, with the vocal addition of a second syllable - not the way we usually speak the word, if we speak it at all in our daily English-language lives. In a midrash, the rabbis discern that we are to say 100 blessings a day, as a response to address spiritual repair. What are we saying with all of our BaRuKHs?

To begin with, the three letter word immediately invites an embodied response, starting with the first letter bet. It connects us immediately to that other monumental beginning, that of Torah, where the first word is bereshit, in the beginning. The letter sound b is very basic. It begins with just vibration, a hum. Say "mmmm" and then you can shift directly into vocalizing a "b". To begin blessings with a barukh then is to begin with vibration, and with engaging the instruments of sounding prayer - mouth, lips and voice.

Looking at all letters of the root for blessing, we see even more physical connections. The three letters - bet, resh, khaf - form the word for "knee." To engage the knee, or any joint, is to really be in one's blessing, to be-come pliant, flexible, and thus available for the transformative possibilities of the moment.

BaReKHu - LET US BLESS - is the form of the root that appears at the beginning of all communal prayer services. For those who are able, the public call to prayer involves rising, bending, and bowing. The physical engagement invoked in a prayer-full knee-bend makes manifest two aspects of enlivening prayer. On one level, the repetition of gesture creates muscle memory, and can bring us back and forth through each prayer experience. On another level, it can serve as a jolt, a reminder not to stay stuck in what a blessing or prayer says, but rather to where it can lead us.

Multiple versions of the root appear in the prayer book, some using the undotted form of the letter bet, its vocal cousin v: BeRaKHot/BLESSINGS; yitBaRaKH/BE BLESSED, hameVoRaKH/THE BLESSED, and more. 
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See, hear, feel and resonate through all of your BaRuKHs.

© Copyright by Rabbi Mike Comins. You are welcome to reprint this article in your local newspaper, email list, Temple Bulletin or other communication if the following is appended: "This article is provided by the Making Prayer Real eJournal at RabbiMikeComins.com, where you will find outstanding resources on Jewish prayer."

The second word in this exploration of the key words of Jewish prayer invites us to experience blessing and prayer as an invitation to a great and majestic ball.
The six-word blessing formula names Divinity in a number of ways.  I can imagine that there could be several titles on an invitation to a formal event hosted by royalty.

So if we consider the basic blessing to be a kind of royal summons, the appearance of the word MeLeKH, meaning king or sovereign, shouldn’t surprise us.
However, it does take many of us aback, or back to unwelcome imagery of God as a King on a Throne with a Beard. No wonder then that we ponder how we can engage in prayer honestly, when kings and sovereigns may at best be foreign to our experience. Many feminist revisionings of liturgy have excised or replaced the word, and worked to redress the verticality of the concept.
Examining the possibilities inherent in the word, we find a path that may be neither masculine nor hierarchical, while still holding up a sense of reverence and magnitude.

The three root letters of the word Mem, Lamed, KHaf, are grouped together in the center of the Hebrew alphabet, the letters appearing in the word in reverse alphabetical order.
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As we discovered with the first blessing word, BaRuKh, letters that involve mouth, lips and voice create a vibrating connection that is possible to carry through the sounding of the word. The humming Me then carries us to LeKH, which letters create the word for: go! We’re carried, with vibration and an allusion to momentum, to enter further into our prayer.

I imagine a kind of aleph-bet bridge. See the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in a row, linked together. Then visualize them in an arc – or, as I did, write down the numbers 1-22 with 11-12 at the top. The highest point is shared by the KHaf and the Lamed, with the Mem propelling them forward. 

MeLeKH, hugging the heart-place of the prayer aleph-bet and our blessing formula, provides images for the core notion of transcendence, and of reaching towards connection to something beyond ourselves. Each blessing brings us to the next step on the prayer journey we are taking in that moment. MeLeKH inhabits so many of our prayer moments. If we can inhabit the place of MeLeKH – within ourselves as well as what we are reaching for, united in the sounding of the word – we may tap into something truly majestic. 

​© Copyright by Rabbi Mike Comins. You are welcome to reprint this article in your local newspaper, email list, Temple Bulletin or other communication if the following is appended: "This article is provided by the Making Prayer Real eJournal at RabbiMikeComins.com, where you will find outstanding resources on Jewish prayer."