Elokai Neshama

Before Modeh Ani, this was the wake-up prayer

In the Gemara, the words you say when you wake up are not Modeh Ani. They are these. The Rambam (Maimonides, who wrote his code of Jewish law in Egypt in the 1170s) says you say them "while still on your bed." Now look at the middle of the blessing: "modeh ani lefanecha," I thank You. The three words that open Modeh Ani are already here. Modeh Ani as its own short prayer came much later. The oldest book we have it in was printed in 1599, more than a thousand years after the Gemara.

Why it moved out of bed

If it belongs to the moment you wake up, why do we say it later? The Kol Bo (a medieval collection of laws and customs) answers: by rights you should say it the second you wake, but you are not dressed and your hands are not clean, so it was set for after washing. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) gives a similar reason for why all the morning blessings came to be said together in shul. In Nusach Sefard this one comes right after the blessing on washing hands and Asher Yatzar.

It does not start with "Baruch"

A blessing that stands on its own normally opens with "Baruch Atah." This one opens with "My God." The Shulchan Aruch gives the reason: it is a blessing of thanks, and blessings of thanks do not open with Baruch. There is a second explanation. The Raavad (a leading rabbi in Provence in the 1100s) said it needs no opening of its own because it follows HaMapil, the blessing said before going to sleep. The night's sleep in between does not count as a break.

The word for soul means breath

Neshama (soul) shares a root with neshima (breath). The blessing says "You breathed it into me." That goes back to the making of the first human in the Torah: God "blew into his nostrils the breath of life," nishmat chayim. Bereishit Rabbah (the classic Midrash on the book of Bereishit) builds on the wordplay. Rabbi Levi said in the name of Rabbi Chanina: for every single breath a person takes, he should praise the Creator.

Three verbs, three parts of the soul

"You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me." Why three verbs for one soul? The Maharsha (Rabbi Shmuel Eidels of Poland, who died in 1631) answers that the word neshama covers three parts of the soul: nefesh (the natural soul), ruach (the spirit of life) and neshama (the thinking soul). One verb for each. A detail about the text: the Gemara as printed today has only "formed" and "breathed." The Rambam's version has all three.

The one verb that is yours

Go through the verbs. You put it in me. You created it, formed it, breathed it in. You guard it. You will take it. You will return it. Every one of those is God's. Then comes the only thing in the whole blessing that you do: "As long as the soul is inside me, I thank You." Abudarham (the classic commentary on the prayers, written in Spain around 1340) links those words to a verse you may know from Hallel: "The dead do not praise God... but we will bless God."

A proof everyone knew by heart

Around 1140, Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, a poet and thinker from Spain, wrote the Kuzari. The book is a conversation between a rabbi and a king. Part of the rabbi's answer is that the Jewish sages already spoke of the next world. One proof is "the opening of our prayer," which he says "the women know, and all the more so the scholars." Then he quotes this blessing, with its line that God will take the soul and return it "in the time to come."

Pure, even in the darkest rooms

Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) says "You guard it inside me" covers two things. A soul begins full of light. Then it is put into a body, and the light gets dimmer and weaker. You would expect it to go out. First, God keeps the light from going out, even in the dimmest state inside a person. Second, the soul itself stays pure through all our falls, even "in the darkest inner rooms of life." Only God could do that, he writes. Try saying this line on a day you are not proud of.

הרי הנשמה עצמה נשמרת ועומדת בקדושת טהרתה... בכל חדרי חדרים היותר אפלים של החיים

Breath comes from the inside

The Tanya (the core book of Chabad Chassidut, by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who died in 1812) says every Jew has a soul that is "an actual part of God above." It proves this from the Torah's verse about the first human, "He blew into his nostrils the breath of life," and from this prayer: "You breathed it into me." Then it brings a line in the name of the Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah): one who blows, blows from within. When a person blows hard, the Tanya explains, what comes out is from the inside, from that person's own life.

הִיא חֵלֶק אֱלוֹהַּ מִמַּעַל מַמָּשׁ... וְ״אַתָּה נָפַחְתָּ בִּי״, וּכְמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב בַּזֹּהַר, מַאן דְּנָפַח מִתּוֹכֵיהּ נָפַח

A glassblower's breath

Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (who founded the Volozhin yeshiva and died in 1821) says neshama, breath, does not mean a person's breath. It means, so to speak, the breath of God's mouth. He uses the Gemara's example of blown glass. First the breath is in the craftsman's mouth. Then it moves through the pipe. Then it spreads inside the glass and rests there. The soul has the same three stages, he says. Neshama is the first: the breath itself, whose source is still, so to speak, in the mouth.

אין הכוונה בחי' נשימת האדם. אלא כביכול נשימת פיו ית"ש. כמ"ש ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים.

A wooden box covered in gold

The Maharal (Rabbi Yehudah Loew of Prague, who died in 1609) sees a picture of the soul in the Ark, the box that held the Tablets. The Ark was made of wood, with pure gold inside and outside, and the gold was not fused to the wood. He says this hints at the divine soul, which is separate from the body. And it is pure gold, he adds, as in the line you say here: "The soul You put in me is pure."

שהארון של עץ, והוא זהב טהור מבית ומבחוץ, ואין הזהב מחובר בעץ. רמז על הנפש האלקית הנבדלת מן הגוף. והוא זהב טהור, כמו שאמרו... "נשמה שנתת בי טהורה"

Imagine you were dead for a day

Reishit Chochmah (a guide to loving and fearing God, written in Tzfat in the 1500s by the kabbalist Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas) asks you to imagine you were dead for one day and came back. How much love would you owe God? Now think about sleep, which the Gemara calls one-sixtieth of death. Many people lay down in bed and did not get up. This prayer was written for that, he says. He quotes a midrash: because God renews us every morning, we know God can be trusted to revive the dead. His teacher said that is why this prayer mentions the future.

ואלו ידמה האדם שהיה מת יום אחד... כמה יחוייב האהבה לבורא שכל כך הטיב עמו

Where is the pause?

After the first word, "my God." This siddur prints a comma there. The reason is in "How to say it." The Ben Ish Chai (a book of practical law by Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad, published in 1898) rules the same.

Does it have to come right after Asher Yatzar?

Ideally, yes. This blessing does not open with Baruch. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) explains: it is a blessing of thanks, and those do not need to. So the Mishnah Berurah lets it stand alone, but says it is better to say it right after Asher Yatzar. Then, explains Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the first Chabad Rebbe), it can rely on the Baruch that opens Asher Yatzar. The Ben Ish Chai and the Aruch HaShulchan (a code of law by Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, from around 1900) rule that it must.

I skipped it and already davened. Can I still say it?

Most morning blessings can be made up after davening. This one is disputed. The Mishnah Berurah cites the Pri Chadash (a law commentary by Rabbi Chizkiyah da Silva, 1600s): no, because in the Amidah you already blessed God "who revives the dead." The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (a short guide to daily Jewish law from the 1860s) and the Ben Ish Chai rule that way. The Mishnah Berurah lists those who disagree, and its author concludes that you can rely on either view. His advice if you come late: say it before you start.

I was up all night. Do I still say it?

Customs differ. One view is that only someone who slept can say it. The Mishnah Berurah leaves the question open and advises: hear the blessing from someone else and mean it to count for you. If you slept "sixty breaths" that night (about half an hour, according to the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch), all agree you say it. The Aruch HaShulchan rules that you say it even with no sleep. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) reports that all Sephardim and some Ashkenazim say it themselves.

I woke up at 3 a.m. and went back to sleep. Which time counts?

The end of your sleep. The Mishnah Berurah explains that this blessing is for when you finish sleeping, not for every time you wake up. What if you get up for a while after the middle of the night and plan to go back to bed? He rules: say it then without the closing line ("Blessed are You, Hashem..."), and in full in the morning. Rabbi Shneur Zalman rules the same. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary from the early 1900s) records the Sephardic custom: say it in full the first time, and not again.

Do girls say modah here too?

Some siddurim print it that way. This blessing contains the same words as Modeh Ani: modeh ani lefanecha, "I thank You." Modeh is the masculine form of "I thank" and modah is the feminine. One edition of the Sephardic siddur (Edot HaMizrach) prints an instruction inside this blessing: "A woman says: modah." The Koren siddur prints both forms side by side.

My Sephardic friend's siddur skips a word. Why?

Nusach Sefard, the wording of this siddur, is the Chassidic wording. Despite the name, it is not the siddur Sephardic Jews use. It says tehorah hi: the soul You put in me "is pure." Siddur Edot HaMizrach has tehorah without hi, as the Gemara does. The Chida (Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai, 1700s) wrote that he left out hi from his youth. His reason: in most cases the soul has sinned and is not pure. The Ben Ish Chai also rules to leave it out. The Rif (Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi, 1000s) already has the longer wording.