{"id":2011,"date":"2019-02-12T09:38:07","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T14:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/?p=2011"},"modified":"2019-02-12T09:41:13","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T14:41:13","slug":"beracha-head-of-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/2019\/02\/beracha-head-of-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Does One Recite a Beracha On Seeing the Israeli Head of State?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 28, 2018, my oldest grandson, the 20-year-old Mr. Eliyahu Rosenfeld, was honored by the State of Israel for his outstanding service to the Nation in Sherut Lei\u2019umi,<\/em> Israel\u2019s National Service program. \u00a0After completing Yeshiva High School and a year of Torah study at Yeshiva Har Etzion, Eliyahu was denied the privilege of performing military service on medical grounds. \u00a0\u00a0Not wanting to avoid serving the Jewish people and national service, Eliyahu was determined to serve his country in a morally significant way.\u00a0 So, he applied to several service programs and was accepted as an aid in a home for challenged adults. \u00a0Eliyahu was not placed in the home to do a job; he was there to make a difference. Eliyahu got young adults who were unable to communicate with anyone else to relate to him; he is strong, ethical, caring, loving, he takes the moral initiative, and always does \u201cwhat is right and good.\u201d \u00a0As a consequence of his passionate devotion, professional excellence, and well-earned respect and love of the people he served, Eliyahu was awarded a citation for exceptional service to the State of Israel by Israel\u2019s President, Mr. Reuven Rivlin.<\/p>\n

After congratulating my grandson on his wonderful achievement and recognition, I asked him \u201cwhat beracha<\/em> do we say when we see the King of Israel, and does it apply today to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and President Rivlin?\u201d \u00a0The Oral Torah prescribes a birchat hoda\u2019ah<\/em> when seeing the King of Israel. \u00a0But we don\u2019t really have kings today, most kings today are mere figureheads, many politicians are corrupt, and some rabbis conjecture that the king has to be empowered to execute its subjects at will. And since we should not recite berachot<\/em> when in doubt, perhaps no beracha<\/em> should be said altogether when seeing heads of state in modern times.<\/p>\n

At the honoring ceremony, the Master of Ceremony, Dr. Avshalom Koor began the program by explaining why, of all things, he was about to recite the blessing for the Jewish king, Mr. Reuven Rivlin, the very same topic my grandson and I were considering. \u00a0Dr. Koor is religiously observant, professionally trained in Hebrew linguistics, very learned in Biblical literature, and a warm, engaging educator and media personality.\u00a0\u00a0 However, when presiding over the International Bible Contest, when PM Benjamin Netanyahu, also a Bible buff, presided, Dr. Koor did not<\/em> recite the beracha. \u00a0<\/em>How can this be? \u00a0The Prime Minister has political power<\/em> and the President of Israel\u2019s honorific role parallels the role of the monarch of England. \u00a0Mr. Netanyahu is a secular Jew with some traditional habits. In contrast, Mr. Rivlin defines himself as \u201cdati lite<\/em>,\u201d religiously observant but not obsessively so. \u00a0\u00a0It also happens PM Netanyahu is currently under criminal investigation for financial misdeeds, receiving gifts from affluent friends, and using government money for personal benefit. \u00a0\u00a0His personal life\u2019s challenges may also be surveyed at http:\/\/blogs.timesofisrael.com\/netanyahus-women\/<\/a><\/u>. \u00a0\u00a0Unlike the Judaism that gave rise to the Mishnah and the literary transmission of the Oral Law, contemporary Israel enjoys political sovereignty<\/em>, or independence and a smart, educated, hardworking, politically engaged citizenry.\u00a0 This sovereignty does not reside in the person of the Prime Minister, but in the plenum of the Knesset, Israel\u2019s parliament. \u00a0Israel\u2019s President performs the role assumed by most contemporary monarchies. Mr. Rivlin\u2019s mission is to express the national mood, to sanctify civic culture, and to articulate the National collective conscience; his task is to bridge and to reflect the entire spectrum of political and social opinion.<\/p>\n

The blessing recited upon seeing the Jewish king is asher halaq me-kevodo li-re\u2019av<\/em>, we praise the Almighty for \u201cgiving honor to those who revere Him.\u201d\u00a0 An educator par excellence. Dr. Koor saw in this assembly a teachable moment that called for action. He explained to the audience that he is about to recite the blessing for seeing the Jewish King. By saying the blessing upon seeing Mr. Rivlin, an act he did not do when Mr. Netanyahu entered the hall to preside over the Hidon ha-Tannach, <\/em>Israel\u2019s National Bible contest, Dr. Koor was hinting to the honorees and their families that [a] there is a difference between what Israel \u00a0is and what it can be, and [b] the assembled honorees are precisely those with the skills, the devotion, and the desire to make that difference. There is no criticism of Mr. Netanyahu being made here; there is, however, a recognition that yir\u2019at shamayim<\/em>, personal piety, is not a significant part of the Prime Minister\u2019s personal profile.\u00a0 But there is a recognition on Dr. Koor\u2019s part that Jewish <\/em>propriety and sanctity is better represented by Mr. Rivlin\u2019s personal example..Dr. Koor criticized no one; he respects the office of the Prime Minister. But his religious sensibility sees in Mr. Rivlin\u2019s Torah informed Jewish nationalism a model that can inspire the Jewish nation.<\/p>\n

This being said, Mr. Netanyahu remains Israel\u2019s Rosh Memshalah<\/em>, the head and Chief Executive Officer of the sovereign Jewish state, where my wife, myself, my children, and grandchildren reside, in safety, security, and in sanctity. The Jewish state provides a spiritual environment where [a] grandchildren and grandparents can have\u00a0ethical conversations as these, formulating the ethical benchmarks that we expect of our leaders, and [b] that other Jews, like Dr. Koor, are both having the same conversation, and reach similar conclusions regarding our ethical expectations we have of our leaders.\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever one thinks of his politics, policies, and preferences, Mr. Netanyahu is the head of the Israeli government, and his office commands respect; in my family, dissent is not expressed in snarky insults, it is expressed on Election Day in the polling booth. \u00a0This being said, although Mr. Rivlin\u2019s politics are a tad to the Right of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s, Mr. Rivlin\u2019s demeanor and moral example more closely reflect Jewish ethics and ethos, allowing him to address Israelis on the political Left as well.\u00a0 Thank God, Mr. Rivlin is the President of a Jewish state that can nurture a grandchild like Eliyahu, a Jewish young adult who is committed to Torah and Avoda, a\u00a0 gentleman and a scholar who loves doing hesed<\/em>, or kindly acts, and who like his Priestly heritage [on his learned father\u2019s side], lives \u00a0to\u00a0 give with urge to serve.<\/p>\n\n

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The Oral Torah prescribes a birchat hoda\u2019ah when seeing the King of Israel. But we don\u2019t really have kings today, most kings today are mere figureheads, many politicians are corrupt, and some rabbis conjecture that the king has to be empowered to execute its subjects at will. And since we should not recite berachot when in doubt, perhaps no beracha should be said altogether when seeing heads of state in modern times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":2012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,95,93,78,127],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-2011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-halakhah","category-halakhah-modern-judaism","category-israel","category-modern-judaism","category-politics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2015,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions\/2015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}