Origin of the Grace After Meals – Ask the Rabbi
Q. What is the origin of the Grace After Meals?
A. It is from the verse, “You shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God for the good land which He Has given you” (Deut. 8:10).
This makes bensching a Torah commandment. In fact the rabbis say that only the first three blessings are Biblical; the third was introduced by the rabbis.
The first blessing is ascribed to Moses when God fed the Israelites manna, the second to Joshua when the people entered the land, and the third to David and Solomon when Jerusalem became the capital and the Temple was built.
The fourth, rabbinically-ordained blessing is hatov v’hametiv, a praise of God “who is good and does good”. This is attributed to the scholars of Yavneh after the fall of the fortress of Betar in the time of the Romans.
Very large numbers fell in the defence of Betar, and at first the Jews were not permitted to bury their dead – an indignity which compounded their distress. When the Romans finally relented, the relief felt by the Jewish survivors was commemorated for all time by this insertion in the bensching.
But is there any intrinsic connection between Grace After Meals and the events at Betar? One view is that when people eat they feel full and at ease with the world and tend to forget realities of the world around them. A reminder of Betar should spur us on to remember that life is not only simchot.
