What the Rabbis taught about teaching and learning was that all Torah study should begin and end with blessings, just as eating does. Often, in liberal Jewish circles today, these blessings are not done. But without them, it is easier for Torah study to feel like a mere academic discussion, devoid of spirit. And where the blessings are said but only by rote, it is easier for Torah study to feel merely antiquarian and automatic. In Jewish-renewal style, how can we bring new kavvanah — spiritual meaning, intention, focus, intensity — to these blessings — and therefore to the process of Torah study itself?

When I go out to speak and to teach, I define Torah study broadly to include not only traditional text study but also all serious examination of emerging Torah — where we are going into the new world of the next Judaism, and how it might address such down-to-earth questions as food, money, sex, the earth, rest. So it is not only when we gather in a circle to study a text but also when I am giving a talk or lecture on these subjects, to be followed by a discussion, that I explain this is a process of learning Torah together, and therefore I will begin and end with blessings.

I start with an untraditional version of the traditional brokha. It is in the “asher kidshanu” form (“who makes us holy through mitzvot… “), and ends, “La’asok b’divrei Torah” — literally, “to involve ourselves with words of Torah.” My form is untraditional in that I use “YAHH” instead of “Adonai” and “ruaḥ ha’olam” instead of “melech,” explaining that these are aimed toward experiencing God as the Breath of Life rather than King and Lord; and I usually suggest that for me, “mitsvah” means not “command” but “connection.” (In some Semitic languages, including Arabic, the cognate verb means “connect.” With or without this “etymodrushic”^[1] an etymology based on midrash   connection — if an act does not help connect the world into One, it isn’t a mitsvah.)

I often, teasingly but also seriously, translate “La’asok” as — “to soak ourselves in the living waters of the Torah.” Sometimes I will add that Torah itself means not “the Law” or even “the Teaching,” but is a word that comes from archery and means the process of aiming toward the target. (From the same root, “moreh/ morah” is a teacher who aims or points toward the truth; “yoreh” is rain that comes down like arrows. “Ḥeyt,” usually translated “sin,” is also an archery word; it means “missing the target.”)

So I will explain some of that, say “Blessed are You, Breath of Life, Who makes us holy through connections and teaches us to connect by soaking ourselves in the living waters of Torah,” and then say the brokha in Hebrew with “YAHH” and “ruaḥ” and sometimes feminine verbs, and with “b’mitzvot” rather than “b’mitzvotav” or “b’mitzvoteha,” so as to avoid the masculine or feminine “his” or “her.”

Then when the class or discussion is over, I will ask people to stand — if possible, in a single circle. I explain that I will use only the central paragraph of the Kaddish d’Rabbanan, mostly in English, and then proceed: