Halakhah do Psalmów 100:78

However, you could be roused and open the eyes of your heart to the way of the wisdom of Kabbalah, that blessings are not just the private individual’s need alone, that something in them meets a “need” of the One Above, as Scripture says, “And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God.” This verse permits the heart to understand the secret of blessings, and you will not find in the whole Torah anywhere that the Holy One Blessed be He commands us to bless His name unless it is with “Amen.” And because of this David said, “I will bless Your name”³⁴⁵Ps 145:1.and likewise he said, “Thank Him, and bless His name,”³⁴⁶Ps 100:4. and many other sayings like this. Accordingly you need to comprehend that blessings aren’t for the private individual’s needs at all, and that they are not only an expression of thanks, but they are an expression of addition and increase, as in the connotation of “He will bless your bread and water.”³⁴⁷Ex 23:25. And understand this statement of the sages z”l, when that said at the end of the chapter “The one who receives” on the topic of the creditor:³⁴⁸B. Bava Metzia 114a:
Scripture says (Dt 24:13) “that he may sleep in his cloth and bless you,” thus excluding hekdesh, which needs no blessing. Does it not? But it is written, “And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God.” (Dt 8:10) But Scripture says, “And it shall be accounted to you as righteousness [i.e., charity].” (Dt 24:13) Hence it [the law of returning] holds good only for him [the creditor] for whom the act of righteousness is necessary, thus excluding hekdesh [as a creditor], which does not require righteousness. “that he may sleep in his cloth and bless you,”³⁴⁹Dt 24:13. If you’ve taken a pledge of clothing from a poor person for a loan, you must not keep it overnight, but rather, “when the sun goes down, you shall restore to him the pledge that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you; it will be an act of righteousness – tzedakah – before the Lord your God.”someone who needs a blessing, namely, a private individual, but if it is hekdesh, it doesn’t need a blessing,³⁵⁰That is, if the person pledges something that is hekdesh – property consecrated for use in the Temple for which no blessing is required, hence it must be an exception to Dt. 24:13, which specifies a blessing. “it would be an act of righteousness,” to the One to whom all acts of righteousness already belong. The sages z”l explained this with the interpretation that hekdesh requires a blessing, but does not require tzedakah. And they made this even clearer in tractate Berakhot, “R. Ishmael said to him, ‘Bless me, my son,’”³⁵¹B. Berakhot 7a. and in tractate Shabbat, “The Holy One Blessed be He said to Moses, ‘You could have helped Me,’”³⁵²B. Shabbat 89a. – this deals with the matter of blessings.³⁵³In each of the these examples, someone like “the man who has everything” asks for something from someone clearly his inferior, with a lot less of his own to give. And they also said that the Holy One Blessed be He desires the prayer of the righteous who are much smaller in number than the rest of the large nations, even though they are not “a numerous people, the glory of a king.”³⁵⁴Pr 14:28. But rather, certainly the expression “you shall bless” is an expression of addition and increase, and it connotes a brekhah – a “pool” gushing from its source, and thus we mention in our prayer titromam and titbarakh – “you shall be exalted and be blessed,”³⁵⁵In the blessing Yotzer Or in Shahrit. and in the language of the Kaddish – yitbarakh va-yishtabah, va-yitpa’ar, va-yitromam, vayitnasay. And it also has the connotation of berekhah – “kneeling” and bowing down, to He to whom every knee (berekh) must bend. And so you will find in the Book of Bahir, “What is the meaning of berakhah? It is the “tongue” of the “knee” – berekh, as it said, ‘and to You every knee must bend and every tongue give homage’³⁵⁶Is 45:23.– the One to whom every knee bows down.”³⁵⁷Sefer Ha-Bahir, Ot 9. Behold, this is among the mysteries of the Torah, and the whole issue of kavvanah – “intention”- in prayer follows it, but it is not right to explain and expand upon this further in writing.

It is written, “Serve the Lord with gladness” (Ps. 100:2)¹Berakoth 31a. and “Serve the Lord with fear” (Ps. 2:11), but how so? ²The Midrash on Psalms, trans. William Braude (2 Vols.; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), II, 147.(both fear and gladness?) If a man is over-joyful, let him recall the day of death,³Berakoth 31a. this is fear. If he is sad, let him rejoice his heart with matters of the Law,⁴Shabbath 30b. as it is written, “The precepts of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart” (Ps. 19:9).