Musing - Should we say ‘Grace’ before or after the meal?

Hebraic Musing - Should we say ‘Grace’ before or after the meal?

Are we losing the art of family conversation around the dinner table?  Maybe family members, including children, could or should be taught to remain at the table until a formal end of the meal is established.  Have you ever felt the meal-time conversation was incomplete or dropped or ignored because somebody simply vanished from the table?  Worse yet, without excusing themselves! (That was a “mortal” sin when I was growing up!)

Related experience -- let me repeat the introduction to insight #53 from in my Hebraic Insights book.  We encountered an interesting difference between Hebraic and Christian customs when we dined with our group in a Tel Aviv hotel.  The maître d’ pointed out he knew we were Christians. “How did you know that?” I asked.  He pointed out that Christians pray before their meal; Jews pray after the meal.  I was wondering why, that is until studying the Christian mind-set the last few weeks.  Notice that Christian thinking feels a need to bless the food because it is physical matter and therefore providing physical pleasure and satisfaction.  So we must pray over it to make it okay to eat.  Hebrew thinking accepts that everything God created is for our pleasure.  It would therefore be an insult to pray before eating in order to sanctify the food.  It is already blessed by the Creator by virtue of the fact He gave it to us.  However, the Jewish-Hebrew mind-set wants to be thankful for the bounty, thus offering a prayer of thanksgiving after the meal.

The meal prayer that I grew up with was clearly a ‘before the meal” prayer.  “Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord.  Amen.”

The Jews are probably basing their after meal prayer custom on Deut.8:10 “When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.”  NKJV

Maybe there could be another value to the Jewish custom?  Could it be that the Jewish custom offers a solution to truncated conversation at meal-time?

Suggestion – Establish a formal end to every meal and everyone is expected to remain till the end by labeling it “Grace after meals.” Even children can be taught to understand that leaving the table before thanking God is even worse behavior than leaving a meal without thanking their parents.

Point to Ponder

How can we sanctify the preciousness of a family breaking bread together?

Is dinner-time conversation an opportunity
for father to fulfill his responsibility for the child’s education?

“These commandments … Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Deut. 6:6-7  NIV

Yosef   a.k.a.  Joe Brusherd                                               August 22, 2017

Author: “Hebraic Insights – Messages exploring the Hebrew roots of our faith” 
“Biblical Marriage”   Weekly “Hebraic Musings”      www.InsightsByYosef.com