Can you bless someone? 🤧

Any Yid can bless anyone else.

True. But I feel sorry for anyone who values my blessing.

The Wolf

Anyone would be lucky to get your blessing, Wolf.

If you wish to be wrong, so be it.

The Wolf

LB: Yes, but you’re right that we’re really asking Hashem to bless them. In the few instances in which we “bless” people rather than just davening for them, such as the father’s blessing of children at the Shabbos table and the Birkas Kohanim, the phrasing of the blessing makes clear it is a prayer that Hashem bless them. When I sign a letter “Kol tuv,” my intent is “May Hashem bless you with everything good/all good things (kol tuv).”

אל תהי ברכת הדיוט קלה בעיניך
let not the blessing of a layperson be light in your eyes

-Megilla 15a

GHadorah won’t like hearing that. He’ll soon be telling us that we need to scratch out that Halacha for the 21st century. We’ll have to remind him that we live in the 58th century.

Hey Joe….I forgot to give you my “blessings” for a successful 2018….not sure what are the top 10 New Years’ resolutions for trolls but hopefully your Streimlach hanging over the fireplace was filedl to the brim with seforim on Secrets of a Successful Troll etc.

To others, speculating on Joe’s different screen names, don’t waste your efforts. If the theme of the posting is a xenophobic and myscogenistic rant cloaked in distorted citations to chazal or some meforshim, you probably have the right guy.

In any event, most of us don’t walk around giving “blessings” to anyone, yiddin or goyim. If a goy you work with sneezes, its OK to say “god bless you” if that is the norm in your culture. If a goy is sick, its ok to wish him/her a speedy recovery. Not sure what a blessing is but generally, you might draw the line on saying “I’m going to shul to daven on your behalf” although even that might be mutar if the outcome will be to create good will for you, your family or the yiddeshe tzibur in general.

I’m sorry you feel that way.

Maybe it’s because afaik lo sischanem only applies to idol worshipers and not all goyim. Now goyim are allowed to believe in shitfus or more than one power, even though a yid can’t, so that means christians are not necessarily aku”m which means that unless you live in India, blessing most non Jews shouldn’t be an issue.

Neither that Gemara nor Rashi say that one is not allowed to daven for goyim. There is no such halacha. (If so, where is it in the S’A? However, some such as Sefer Chassidim hold that one should not daven for a non-Jew who is doing evil to the Jewish people, which makes sense.) The Gemara and Rashi only discuss the very specific situation of using the word “Shalom,” which is one of Hashem’s names, to greet goyim.

From Ramak’s Tomer Devorah:
“And he should constantly pray for mercy and blessing for the world just as
the Supernal Father has mercy on all His creatures. And he should
constantly pray for the alleviation of suffering as if those who suffer were
actually his children and as if he had created them. For this is the will of the
Holy One, Blessed is He”
“Furthermore, his mercy should extend to all creatures, neither destroying nor
despising any of them. For the Supernal Wisdom is extended to all created
things- minerals, plants, animals and humans. This is the reason why we
were warned against despising food. In this way man’s pity should be
extended to all the works of the Blessed One just as the Supernal Wisdom
despises no created thing for they are all created from that source, as it is
written”

No one is talking about praying for goyim, so that’s just a strawman fallacy. The halacha, as codified in the Shulchan Aruch, is that a Jew is forbidden to bless a goy or praise a goy in any way. The Shulchan Aruch (YD 151:14) writes: “One may not speak in their praise, even to say how beautiful or handsome or well formed they are, and definitely not to praise their actions or be enthralled with their words”.