We are watching Shtissel these days. It’s an Israeli series that takes place in a Haredi community (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. It’s easy to see how an Orthodox Jew can recite 100 blessings in a day. Every action is accompanied by a blessing. Blessings are so constant that you might imagine they become a habit instead of training minds and souls in the direction of full awareness in every moment.
There is one scene, though, in one of the episodes when you realize how profound these blessings are. Giti Shtissel, one of the main characters, is desperate for work when her husband abandons her and their five children. She is ultimately hired as a nanny and housekeeper. When she is introduced to the child of the single mother who hired her, he asks — when he hears her recite a blessing before sipping from a glass of water — if he should also say a blessing when he drinks. She tells him no, he doesn’t need to, she just recites a blessing because she is “religious.”
At a later time, Giti leaves the job after being “politely” chastised for bringing her infant son with her one day. She calls her young charge to let him know she won’t be back and to say goodbye. In the course of the brief conversation, she also reminds him of his question about saying a blessing and says, “I lied. You should say a blessing before every morsel of food and every drop of water, just as I do.”
That statement seems particularly poignant today in these times of Covid-19. Grocery stores are considered “essential” businesses. So are farms. Most of America lives in cities and suburbs. Even though there is enough food to go around, there has always been a problem of distribution even before Covid-19. Imagine if these vital workers were not able to do their jobs. And yet I read an article today pointing out that 41 grocery store workers have died of Covid-19, and thousands more are infected. Workers are becoming anxious about going to work. And what if the virus runs through the farm worker community? What then?
Many of us are fortunate enough to take our food for granted. We take it so much for granted, in fact, that we waste 30-40% of it. I once did some calculations, and it seemed to me that we could easily feed the food insecure with what we waste. I once saw a picture of mounds of celery stalks piling up in a field, torn off of celery and discarded in order to make “perfect” bunches acceptable to grocery stores. Yet those discarded stalks of celery would have made gallons and gallons of fresh, delicious, nutritious soup along with other less than perfect discarded produce.
Doesn’t this all seem kind of mindless? But consider for a moment the miracle that occurs when a seed is planted, either randomly by nature or consciously by human hands, a miracle celebrated in Shir Ha-ma’alot recited before Birkat Ha-mazon, the Blessing After a Meal (literally blessing for food):
הַזֹּרְעִים בְּדִמְעָה–בְּרִנָּה יִקְצֹר
הָלוֹךְ יֵלֵךְ, וּבָכֹה — נֹשֵׂא מֶשֶׁךְ-הַזָּרַע
בֹּא-יָבֹא בְרִנָּה נֹשֵׂא, אֲלֻמֹּתָיו
Hazor’im b’dimah b’rinah yiktzoru.
Haloch yeileich uvachoh, nosei meshech hazara,
bo yavo v’rinah, nosei alumotav.
Then those who have sown in tears shall reap in joy. Those who go forth weeping, carrying bags of seeds, shall come home with shouts of joy, bearing their sheaves.
Imagine gathering your seeds the old-fashioned way, from plants, wild and cultivated, preparing them and properly storing them for use the next year. And imagine you don’t know, or aren’t sure, that those precious seeds, gathered with many hours of labor, will result in a harvest when you bury them in the ground. This is the backdrop of the meditation, Psalm 126. The farmer, uncertain of the outcome or purpose in what he is doing, knowing only that he is letting something go that is precious, weeps as he buries the seed. In the course of time, though, he returns rejoicing, bringing a bountiful harvest that came from the tiny, precious seed.
A similar experience is available to all of us who live far from the fields where people labor in the hot sun doing the work that we all did once, the work that once connected us to the miracle of producing food from tiny seeds, earth, and water. The experience of the miracle of fresh water for those who struggle with drought and the sun’s heat is available to those of us who have become disconnected from it by the ready availability of a faucet with running water.
These experiences are available to us when we say a blessing over every morsel of food, every drop of water. In that moment we have an opportunity to become aware of the miraculous nature of what we take for granted.