Berakhot
The short fixed blessings said over food, drink and ordinary acts.
Short fixed blessings, each opening with the Hebrew word barukh, blessed, cover the textures of daily life: bread, wine, other food and drink, and ritual acts, with a longer grace after meals. A Talmudic tradition urges one hundred blessings a day. The habit trains attention: in traditional practice nothing is eaten without a word of gratitude first.
A berakhah is a short fixed blessing, and the class of them covers the textures of an ordinary day: bread, wine, other food and drink, smelling something fragrant, seeing lightning, hearing bad news, wearing something new.
Each opens with the same formula, blessed are you, and then names what is specific to the occasion. A longer grace follows a meal that included bread.
A Talmudic tradition urges a hundred blessings a day. The habit trains attention rather than filling time: in traditional practice nothing is eaten without a word of gratitude first.
Does it have a text?
Each blessing is a fixed text, and they are short enough that the edition question is the whole question. None is printed here. Singer's prayer book carries them, in its 1904 seventh edition under Blessings on Various Occasions, with the English readable in the scan and the Hebrew not.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Judaism
- Nichum avelim: what Jews say when someone dies — The Jewish practice of comforting mourners, and the two fixed phrases that carry it: Baruch Dayan HaEmet on hearing of a death, and HaMakom yenachem etchem said to the bereaved.
- Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv — The three daily Jewish services, and the fixed liturgy each one follows.
- The Shema — Less a petition than a declaration, and the prayer that bookends a Jewish day and a Jewish life.
- The Amidah — The standing prayer at the centre of every Jewish service.
- Kaddish — An Aramaic praise of God's name that marks the joints of every service, and that mourners recite.
- Jewish prayers of healing and memory — Mi Sheberach for the sick, and El Malei Rachamim for the dead.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.
Content last changed 15 October 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.