Hebraic Studies – A Gem found in Amnos - with Dr. Rabbi Reuven ben-Avaraham.
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Doctorates are as follows:
1. of Literature, 2. of Philosophy, 3. of Hebrew Literature/Letters.
4. of Hebrew Studies. 5. of Hebrew (Jewish)
Studies.
Please Note: on this page and site I will be showing the most blessed four
letter *“Memorial Name” of our beloved Creator in Ivrit 
*“This is My Name forever, and this is My
Memorial to all generations.” Shemot
- Exodus 3:15. (JPS version of the Torah).
“Is There a Blessing for the Czar?”
“A Blessing on your Head … Mazeltov, Mazeltov”
I will begin with the
question: “Is there a
blessing for the Czar?”
I am sure that most of us have seen the play,
or the movie “Fiddler on the Roof” and we will well recall, that question one of
the townspeople asks the rabbi of ‘Anatevka’
very early in the story. And it’s a good question, right? Of course
right! After all, we have a blessing for everything,
we have a blessing for this, and a blessing for that. Thus surely we must have
a blessing for the Czar. If so, what would it be?
The rabbi’s answer
was, as we all know, quite clever: “May Elohim bless and keep the Czar (short pause - with a fast finish) far away from
us!” Of course the rabbi
did not have to do much thinking to come up with this reply, for he knew it
quite well. In fact, everyone in Anatevka should have
known it of by heart:
But
we should ask ourselves, “should we pray for the welfare for the leaders
of the country we live in?”
First: When and how did the notion of Jews praying for
the emperor, king, queen or ruler of the land wherein we happened to live,
arise?
Second: What can we learn from this history that can
help us understand how and why we pray for the officers or representatives or,
collectively, the government, of the land in which we live today, a country
that will be so very different from where we Hebrews originally used to live?
First, where did it all
begin? Where did we first start praying for the rulers of the land where we
happened to live?
The answer is of course,
is in the Tanakh.
When Yisrael -
“Now these are the
words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from
And what does he say to
them? Well in brief he really says - “Settle down there! Take a
Wife! Have children! Multiply!” But here it is as he
wrote it;
“Thus saith 
of hosts, the Elohim
of Israel, unto all the captivity, whom I have caused to be carried away
captive from Jerusalem unto Babylon: Build ye houses, and dwell in them, and
plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; take ye wives, and beget sons and
daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands,
that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply ye there, and be not
diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be
carried away captive, and pray unto
And, in addition:
“Seek the shalom”, translated as
“the welfare” - “of the city to which you have been exiled.
And pray for its welfare, for in its welfare you will find your own.” 
- “Vi’shlomah
Yih’yeh La’chem
Shalom.”
There is a similar message
in the Apocryphal Book of Baruch ostensibly the work of Jeremiah’s
scribe. He writes: “Pray for the
life of Nebuchadnezzar.”
This is shocking. “Nebuchadnezzar?” Let’s face it
Nebuchadnezzar was the conqueror of 
- “
“Pray
for the life of the king and of his sons” Ezira - Ezra 6:10 (JPS).
So, we have a tradition
going back millennia that, wherever we happen to live, we should pray for the
welfare of the community, and of its rulers even if they have caused us
misfortune.
So the Tanakh and the
texts of early prayers make clear not only we should pray, but also why:
because we’re strangers; and aliens and thus we lack rights. We live at
the sufferance of, at the mercy of, the ruler or rulers of the land where we
happen to live. We employ our Elohim for the rulers to be good to us.
Hence, although we may
literally be praying that Our Heavenly Father should be merciful to the rulers
of our land, the ultimate concern of our prayer is in reality for our own
safety and security.
By the Middle
Ages, in our prayer schedule arrived a widely adopted text to fulfil this
object. This text is known by its first words, “Ha-noten
teshuah la-melachim”
– “Who givest salvation unto kings”
(Tehillim - Psalms
144:10 JPS). This prayer soon
became a prominent part of the regular public worship of us Jews on Shabbat in
most parts of the world.
The prayer reads as
follows:
“May the One Who
grants victory to kings and dominion to princes, ... bless,
protect, guard and help, and exalt, magnify and uplift (the rulers of our land). May the supreme King of kings mercifully grant
them life and protect them, and save them from every trouble, woe and injury, … and may they succeed in all their endeavours. May the Supreme King of Kings mercifully inspire them to deal kindly
with us.” (emphasis added).
What kind of a prayer is
this?
It really does not matter
where we live, for this generic prayer suggests that somehow we do not belong,
and I suppose many of us know it, whereas many have gotten very much used to be
where we are!
But like it or not the day
will come when we will all, and I do mean every single Yid on earth will be
going home to Eretz Yisrael! How do I know that, it says so in the Tanakh and I
believe every single Word of it!
But let me commence without dispersion over 2,000 years ago:
First, we need to
understand that the prophets, foretold so many things, and I have just covered
our dispersion to Babylon, but of course currently we are still living in a far
larger dispersion from the one when the Romans destroyed the second Temple, and
we were scattered because sadly’
“
… ye shall be plucked
from off the land …And among these nations shalt thou have no repose, and
there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot; but
It was estimated that at
that time, there were around 6 million Yidden in the land, and just over 5
million were dispersed far and wide, whilst around just under 1 million
remained somehow, but they suffered greatly by the hands of the Romans
fulfilling Moshe’s prophecy:
“And ye shall be
left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude;
because thou didst not hearken unto the voice of
However, Moshe also
prophesied that that the dispersion would be in his own words, to the four
corners of the earth”;
“And shall scatter thee
among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the
earth” Devarim
- Deuteronomy 28:64 (JPS).
Of course the great news
is that Eretz Yisrael is a Nation once more, and there are yidden
who have gone home from hundred’s of countries living there now. But
sadly Yisrael is far from being a great Nation, like it will be one day in the
future, for the country today is very much a secular nation, to say the least
and it is sadly not one that is dedicated to Elohim, blessed be He!
The truth is that the
great return as prophesied has not as yet occurred and lets
face it, myself and most reading this are still living in a foreign land! But
it will be Elohim that will finally move us!
have builded the ruined places … I
Thus in the meantime we
will have to continue to pray for our leaders, regardless who they are.
In the meantime we will
always remember that “Fiddler on the Roof” is a wonderful memory
one we will never forget; Oy Tevye
you’re still singing?
“If I were a rich
man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba
dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I'd biddy biddy bum … ”
For those who have not
been to Shul for a long time, yet you have a yearning to learn more about the
Torah and grow in being a good and faithful Jew, why not read the other studies
online as well as the guides on top of the Main Index.
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seen on the logo at the top of this page: “The More Torah, the More Life”, for
Dr. Rabbi
Please remember our motto seen on the image above:
“The More Torah, the More Life”
For 
Elohim, blessed be
His Sanctified Name, is the one who gave us our Life!
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