Charles Lamb and the Difficulties of Praising God in an Age of Plenty

Sept. 30 2022

In his 1823 essay, “Grace before Meat,” the writer and poet Charles Lamb reflected on the awkwardness with which his fellow Englishmen utter benedictions before meals. Can the well-to-do, he wondered, really offer such prayers properly when they live without fear of going hungry? Ephraim Fruchter appreciates Lamb’s point, yet argues that the question yields different results when applied to the Jewish blessings said before and after eating, and the attitudes that underpin them:

For one thing, blessings over food are not merely proclamations of thanks; they also serve as the redemption of heavenly property (Talmud, Tracate B’rakhot 35a). Regardless of the intensity of one’s personal gratitude in any particular moment, there remains a requirement to receive permission prior to partaking.

Jewish tradition, moreover, has a ready answer to the following challenge, which Lamb poses at the beginning of his essay:

It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of food—the act of eating—should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence. I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakespeare—a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen?

By contrast, Fruchter points out, the Talmud indeed mandates blessings for all sorts of other experiences, from enjoying fragrant smells to seeing a rainbow. And although there is no blessing for the reading of Milton, there is one to be said before Torah study. “Finally,” Fruchter notes, Lamb’s preference for “occasional heroic piety runs counter to the Jewish approach,” which instead values above all the more modest “daily effort of those who care, which preserves the continued presence of God.”

Read more at Tradition

More about: Food, Judaism, Prayer

The Democratic Party Is Losing Its Grip on Jews

Since the 1930s, Jews have been one of America’s most solidly Democratic ethnic groups. Although, true to form, a majority again voted for Kamala Harris, something clearly has shifted. John Podhoretz writes:

Over the course of the past thirteen months, Jews in America have been harassed, threatened, seen their ancestral homeland derided as a settler-colonial genocidal state. They have seen Jewish kids mistreated on college campuses. And they have seen the Biden administration kowtow to Muslim populations hostile to Jews and the Jewish state in Michigan. They have heard the criticisms of Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and have noted the silence from the administration when it came to anti-Semitic assaults and the refusal of college presidents to condemn the treatment of Jews and Jewish topics under their ambit.

And Jews have acted.

The initial evidence from last night’s election is that there has been a significant shift in the Jewish vote from previous elections, a delta of anywhere from 10 to 40 percent overall.

Read more at Commentary

More about: 2024 Election, American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Democrats, U.S. Politics