What Does This Mean?

A few months ago I was in a coffee shop when a member of our shul whom I had not seen in a while stopped by to say hello. After we spoke about how he and his family were, I asked him if he had any suggestions for Temple Emunah. He told me that he liked what the shul was doing, but said, “Well, there is one thing.” I asked him what it was, and he told me that while he appreciated getting the e-mail bereavement notices, he did not know what the phrase “Barukh dayan ha’emet” means.

I explained it, and he thought it might be a nice idea to share this type of explanation with the community as I did on the eighth day of Pesaḥ. Building on his suggestion, I am returning to that subject to inaugurate a new column in the Bulletin entitled: “What does this mean?” Please e-mail your questions to Maria Espinoza and each month or so, Rabbi Jacobs or I will pick one to write on and share.

So, what does “Barukh dayan ha’emet” mean? First, it is a shorthand expression for a longer blessing “Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha’olam dayan ha’emet,” literally translated: “Praised are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who is the True Judge.”

This is the blessing that is recited when one learns of bad news, especially death. A few years ago, based on another sage suggestion by a member of our shul, we added these traditional words to the bereavement notice to include the Jewish response to sad tidings.

But all this brings me to the next questions: Where does this blessing come from? And does it still resonate with us modern Jews today?

The history is fairly simple: the Mishnah (the basic code of Jewish law compiled in the land of Israel by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the year 220 C.E.) states: “One must offer a blessing of bad just as one pronounces blessing over good” (Mishnah Brakhot 9:5). When we hear good news, we are supposed to recite a blessing: “Barukh… ha-tov v’hameitiv—Praised… is the One who is good and makes things good.” As is clear from context, the rabbis wanted to preclude dualism espoused by Zoroastrianists who believed in a god for good and a god for evil.

It is natural to praise God when we hear good news: the birth of a child, an engagement, the Sox winning, etc. We want to acknowledge that goodness. The brakhah formula allows us to appreciate what we have heard and focus on the positive energy in the world, filling us with a sense of gratitude.

Our rabbis were consistent. Since God is the source of both good and bad, then shouldn’t God also be praised when the news is negative? There is logic to it, but this is a difficult practice to follow. When we lose a loved one, praising God is quite challenging.

Two approaches help me understand this brakhah. The first one is moving beyond the author’s original intent. While it’s hard to know exactly what someone meant when he wrote something thousands of years ago, it seems like it meant something like: “I have just heard of someone’s death and since God determines when we die, God is responsible. I do not understand why God just took this person’s life and I feel betrayed by God; even in the face of that, I will try to remain connected to the Holy One, although I do not understand God’s ways.” While that explanation is somewhat compelling for me, I do not, unlike our ancestors, believe that God determines exactly when we die, so I would change it somewhat: “God set up a world where there are diseases, human evil, and natural disasters; while I do not believe that God ordains that a specific person will die at a particular moment of a particular cause, God did set up a world where terrible possibilities exist.”

Since we will never know why the world is that way, a better question becomes: What should we do when disaster strikes? How can we respond to loss and bad news? That’s the power of this blessing, it understands that God alone is the True Judge—God is Truth and is beyond any reality we can perceive. The blessing acknowledges that we do not understand why the world is this way and why it can have such a damaging impact on us. The blessing is really about building a bridge back to the Creator who we feel has betrayed us.

That brings me to the second aspect of this blessing: how it is used. While some recite it or the shorter, three-word version whenever they hear bad news, most save it for when they become mourners. For most of the last 2000 years, this blessing has been the liturgy for kriyah—tearing. In some ancient societies, mourners would gash themselves when they learned of a loss of a close relative or teacher. According to the rabbis, our bodies do not belong to ourselves—they belong to God—and so we are not allowed to do anything to harm our bodies in a more permanent way (from smoking to tattooing); we cannot gash ourselves. But the need to rip something was very real and so, the practice of tearing clothing evolved.

In ancient times, most people only had only set of clothing. You can imagine how powerful it was to tear one’s only garment and then baste the tear after shiva (the seven-day mourning period) or shloshim (the less intense 30-day mourning period). The person would finally sew up the tear, leaving a scar for all to see, until they finally got new clothes at the end of the year of mourning. This tear reflects the tear in the heart and thus, the blessing should be understood in the context of that action. Tearing signifies three aspects: the pain and tear in our hearts due to the sadness we feel, the break in the relationship with our loved one who is no more, and the separation we feel from God. Then the brakhah, dayan ha’emet, represents an attempt to reach over this tearing; it is like the threads that are the beginning of the mending of the garment, a way to plant the seeds of some future reattachment between the mourner and God.

As an aside, the practice of tearing a black ribbon, an American custom that was encouraged by funeral homes, does not capture the power and the symbolism of tearing one’s actual clothing. And I hope many of you, when facing a loss, will consider tearing a suit, jacket, tie, shirt, sweater, or blouse to really feel the depth of our ancient mourning rites.

While this brakhah is certainly challenging, it is an important part of hearing about and coping with loss. Our ancestors understood that rituals and liturgies can help us not only extend joyous moments, but also sustain us during times of brokenness.

May the insights of our tradition continue to support us in both happy and sad tidings and may we all have a mean-ingful and joyous summer,

Rabbi David Lerner