Berakhot 125

8:
All berakhot start with the same Hebrew formula: Barukh atta Adonai, Eloheynu Melekh ha-olam [Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe]. The text of the berakhah then almost invariably continues "Who did or does something". This formula raises two difficulties: why the double reference to God both as Deity and as Sovereign, when the first would have been sufficient? and why the very awkward switch from 2nd person to 3rd person between the permanent part of the berakhah and the variable part? If one's halakhic detective instincts suggest that there is some kind of compromise at work here one would not be far from wrong!

9:
One of the giants of Babylonian Jewry in the Talmudic period was Rav. His real name was Rabbi Abba ben-Ayvo, but he is universally known by the sobriquet Rav. He had been a prize student of Rabbi Yehudah the President of the Sanhedrin in Eretz-Israel – who was the compiler of the Mishnah – but later returned to his native Babylon to establish the first yeshivah in the town of Sura. There he created a revolution in the study of the Oral Torah, that eventually led to the creation of the Talmuds. The "text book" that had been used in the Bet Midrash of Eretz-Israel was obviously the Written Torah which was the basis for the creation and transmission of midrashic expositions and amplifications of that basic text. Rav told his students that the "text book" in his yeshivah would not the the Torah, but the Mishnah of his teacher Rabbi Yehudah (who died in 217 CE). Rav in Sura and his "opposite number", Shemuel who founded a similar yeshivah in the town of Pumbedita, were the driving forces that set the tone and pace for the first generation of Talmudic development in Babylon (about 220-250 CE). There was a similar yeshivah in Tiberias, on the shores of lake Kinneret in Eretz-Israel, where the giant authority was Rabbi Yoĥanan (a very much younger contemporary of Rav and Shemuel).

10:
In the Gemara [Berakhot 40b] we are told that Rav was of the opinion that "any berakhah that does not contain the personal name of the Deity [today, pronounced Adonai] is no berakhah". Rabbi Yoĥanan, we are told, was of the opinion that any berakhah that did not contain a reference to God's sovereignty [Melekh ha-olam] is no berakhah. Since these two opinions are not mutually contradictory it was with no great difficulty that it was decided to combine the two opinions. In the Talmud of Eretz-Israel [Berakhot 12d] we find the above opinion of Rabbi Yoĥanan attributed to Rav! But we also find there recorded a maĥloket [difference of opinion] between Rav and Shemuel: Rav says that in a berakhah God must be addressed directly in the 2nd person, whereas Shemuel says this is unnecessary. In other words, the formula of a berakhah according to Rav must be Barukh ATTAH Adonai [Blessed ARE YOU, Adonai], whereas according to Shemuel it could (should?) be Barukh Adonai [Blessed is Adonai] (which is the format found most often in the Bible). Because they are mutually contradictory, the combination of the two opinions this time produced the awkward compromise that we noted above: the permanent part of the berakhah follows the opinion of Rav and addresses God in the 2nd person, but the variable part of the berakhah is in the 3rd person, as if it were the continuation of a first part as formulated by Shemuel. Every time we feel the awkwardness of the text of a berakhah (from the grammatical and syntactical point of view) we should be reminded how far the sages of an earlier age were prepared to go to maintain the spirit of compromise. From their mouths to our ears!

To be continued.

Rémy Landau sends the following comment concerning the midrash that was the subject of discussion in Berakhot 114:

With regards to the opening verses of Bereshit, could I share with you what I believe to be the single most obvious observation? The refrain which counts the day of creation, the first, the second, and so on, indicates that Creation was an ordered, well planned, rational act, and not some random, chaotic event, as would have been the case if this sequential numbering process had not been included. I really don't care what the scientists may have to say concerning the creation of this universe since they still haven't figured out where all that matter, needed for their theories, originally came from.