Saying Berachot, Part 5
Eli: Hi, Rebbe. Boker tov! And, after last week, I don’t say that lightly! To clarify, to delineate in order to connect … to visit. It’s all taken a big weight off my shoulders starting the day.
Rav Daniel: That’s really wonderful to hear. The next blessing of birkot ha’shachar is pokei’ach ivrim—Who removes what’s blocking the sight of the blind. But why are we making a blessing that talks about G-d opening the eyes of the blind. Is that iveir (blind person) us? Here’s the deep thing. In Hebrew, the word “pokei’ach” is used for other things too; like removing a pile of stones to find something is called “me’fakei’ach ha’gal.” A pikei’ach is also someone sharp—smart and insightful. Now the word for the blind, “iveir” has the same Hebrew letters [ayin, vav, reish] as an “ohr,” which is the skin, or a hide. The blind that we’re referring to here need to have the skin removed from their eyes. But the skin both prevents our eyes from seeing and it hides us (hence, skin is also a hide). In this blessing, we are being grateful that we can see, but the Hebrew leads us to a deeper calling: there’s a skin over your eyes and you can’t see because you’re hiding!
In fact, the first time the word is used in the Torah—in Bereishit, right after Adam and Chava eat from the tree—their eyes are opened, and they see they’re naked and … they immediately go into hiding! They can’t take being seen. This is the blindness we all suffer as we awaken in the morning from our closed world of dreams, imaginings—a self, isolated unto itself. Will you remove the hide?
It’s an enormously powerful issue. To see another, we must be willing to be seen—and we all know and experience how eyes are both windows outwards and apertures that expose us to those who peer inside. And really, we need G-d’s help here, to bless us that we not be afraid. We only aren’t afraid when we experience the Divine within ourselves, when He awakens us to who we truly are—creatures in His image. If we don’t know that, then we become afraid that people will see our evil, how “off” we are, who we “really” are. But, Eli, it’s just not true. Because we’re not just skin deep; we are of Hashem, our essence the soul within. And so, “Baruch Atah Hashem … pokei’ach ivrim”—it is You Who removes the skin and the hide and allows us to open our eyes.
It’s only then that we are empowered to truly see and to be able to see another. Only then that we can truly see his or her truth. Only then that we are not challenged by their greatness, by their Divine soul, by their being creatures of light. It’s sad, but in the Garden our eyes weren’t really opened. The Tree of Knowledge wasn’t of real knowledge but of judgement, subjectivity, and the root of a narcissism we still suffer. Hashem saw them hide and made them “clothing of hides, kutnot ohr.” But here’s a most beautiful fact: it doesn’t have to stay that way! We can get in touch with this blessing, that our hides be torn open and we see!
There was a man like that, Rebbe Meir. In his text, it didn’t say “ohr” with an ayin but “ohr” with an aleph, which means light. According to the Zohar, we look at the fire flickering off our fingernails on motzaei Shabbat [Havdallah] to remember that we have that possibility: To be of light and to see light. To not hide and not to be afraid to see the other. We need to know it, first thing in the morning.
Eli: Rebbe, this blows my mind. And I can say, as a performer, it’s only self-consciousness that gets in the way of an authentic creative moment. And that self-consciousness is totally a product of the thought: “Who do I think I am to be here?” And then what happens is I stop seeing my audience … I get self-involved, they become a threat rather than the ones I love. It’s like I go back to sleep! Into my closed cavern. Rebbe, we need these words.
Rav Daniel: Totally, Eli. All of us, every morning.
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