I love Poppa Bar Abba’s question, and I also love the fact that, although people have tried to shove a meaning upon him that doesnt seem to fit into the word, he has stuck to his guns in search of emes. I have always been troubled by this word-If words are “kasuv”, does that mean that they are the source of all words??-then why should “Baruch”, which is the same construct, mean the source of all blessing??-we say “Barchu es Hashem Hamvorach”-that is, without the backtwisting, a command to bless Hashem-Hashem asked R Yishmoel to bless him-so, why is the concept that we can bless Him so bizzare that the meaning of Baruch needs to be “backtwisted”-I think, that when a Jew blesses Hashem, THAT is the ultimate blessing for Hashem-in other words, He wants us to recognize Him, give thanks to Him, ask Him to help us, etc-when we do that, then THAT, for Him, is the ultimate good. I need to find someone with a longer beard than mine that agrees with me, though-Well, Boruch Poppa Bar Abba for asking it-The tragedy is that most Jews go through their lives and never even THINK about it, and that, to me, is a criminal negligence on the part of the educational system-I think that we need the entire Yeshiva world to close their Gemorras for a year and just focus on Tefilla, and utilizing Tefilla to develop a deep relationship with Hashem. We are creating spiritual skeletons that, although they may know every single last legal detail about every mitzvoh, and every argument about every legal detail, they know nothing and think very infrequently about the Giver of those Mitzvos. I dont know how this happened, but I think it is a true tragedy, and is the reason for all these “kids at risk”-they just simply dont feel a connection to Hashem, so why hold yourself back from the fun?-And I dont blame them, I blame the system for focusing too much, too early, on laws, and never on Hashem.
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