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Every morning, people stand up, hold their tzitzit and sing a blessing of exactly 87 words. Tradition says its words were found on a note that fell from heaven. Here is the whole prayer, word by word, with its story, its meaning and every source. Tap any word.
Baruch She'amar ("Blessed is He who spoke") opens Pesukei DeZimra, the verses of song: the psalms and praises said every morning before the Shema and the Amidah. Tap any word to see what it means. Then count them.
The text here is Nusach Sefard, the order many chassidic and Israeli communities pray from. Nusach Ashkenaz has the same 87 words, with one vowel that is a story of its own (see 87 words). God's four-letter name is printed as יְיָ, the way many siddurim print it, and the name Elokim is written with a k, because this page can be printed.
Want to daven it? It is in the Torah Tech Siddur, where every word of the morning prayers is explained the same way.
The best-known thing about Baruch She'amar is where it is said to come from.
The Mishnah Berurah is one of the central commentaries on Jewish law today. It was written around 1900 by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known as the Chafetz Chaim. When it reaches the laws of the morning psalms, the very first thing it tells you is a story:
The Men of the Great Assembly (Anshei Knesset HaGedolah) were the council of sages at the start of the Second Temple period, in the days of Ezra. A petek (in Aramaic pitka) is a note, a slip of paper. So the claim is that these words did not start with a person. They arrived written.
Where does the story come from? It did not appear all at once. Follow it back through the books, from the Gemara to the Mishnah Berurah. Tap any stop.
Here is what the books on the trail show, and what they do not.
The note story is late in the record. The Tur, in the 1300s, counts the 87 words but says nothing about a note. The earliest book we know that tells it is Tola'at Yaakov, a kabbalistic book on prayer from the 1500s. The Bach and the Taz, commentaries on Jewish law from the 1600s, quote it from there. The Gemara has a note from heaven, but it is a different one, with one word on it: "truth." The two stories use almost the same words. That link is ours. None of these sources draws it.
The written text is old, and it was not the same everywhere. The earliest written siddur we have, from the 800s, already has these blessings. The Rambam's version had lines that ours does not. Some say the blessing was composed in the time of the Geonim (the heads of the great yeshivot of Babylonia, about 600 to 1000); others date it to the time of the Mishnah.
The tradition changed how people treat the words. The Mishnah Berurah concludes that not one word may be added or dropped. The Kaf HaChaim concludes that this blessing is unlike others, because it came by way of the note.
Is the note the report of an event, or a way of saying how holy these words were held to be? The sources on this page do not say. Both readings leave you with the same practice: these 87 words are said exactly, with care, and with a tune.
Why does it matter how many words there are? Because of a verse in Shir HaShirim.
The Tur (Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, Spain, 1300s) wrote one of the great codes of Jewish law. On Baruch She'amar he says two things. Sing it. And count it. For the count he relies on Sefer Heichalot, an early mystical book.
The "sign" is a memory trick. Shir HaShirim describes the beloved: רֹאשׁוֹ כֶּתֶם פָּז, "His head is fine gold" (5:11). Every Hebrew letter has a number value. The word for fine gold, paz, is spelled with two letters:
The Mishnah Berurah explains the verse: Baruch She'amar is the "head" of the morning prayer, and it is a blessing of 87 words, paz. That is why he rules that no word may be added or taken away.
One vowel, one number. Look at the middle card. The line "praised by the mouth of His people" can be read befeh amo or befi amo. Both mean "by the mouth." The Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the great kabbalist of Tzfat in the 1500s) insists on befeh, because its letters add up to 87 as well:
The Mishnah Berurah and the Aruch HaShulchan (the law code of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, about 1900) rule befeh too, and Nusach Sefard prints it. Many Ashkenazi siddurim still print befi. Either way the count of words is the same: 87. Go back up and press "Count the words."
The first half is a string of short lines, each one starting with "Blessed." Three great commentators read the same lines three ways. Switch between them.
These readings do not compete. Abudarham hears the ten sayings of creation in the lines. The Rema hears history, from creation to the Exodus. The Sefat Emet hears creation and the Torah side by side. The lines are short enough to carry all three.
Abudarham also explains why the first line names God this way. "The One who spoke and the world came to be" is a name the Sages use often, as in "it is revealed and known before the One who spoke and the world came to be" (Kiddushin 30b). It comes from a verse in Tehillim:
And on "Blessed is He who says and does," he quotes an older book, Malmad HaTalmidim by Rabbi Yaakov Anatoli (1200s): among people, "the one who says does not do, and the one who does does not say." God says, and does.
Most blessings begin "Blessed are You, Hashem." This one gets there only halfway through.
The first half never says God's name. It says "He who spoke," "He who makes," "He who has compassion." The Rema explains why. We cannot know what God is. We can only know Him through what He does. So the lines walk through His deeds, from creation to the Exodus from Egypt. Through the Exodus His name became known in the world, and only then does the prayer turn and say "Blessed are You, Hashem." (Press "God's name" on the prayer above: all three times it appears are in the second half.)
Where does the real blessing start? The Aruch HaShulchan asks this. He suggests an answer: the blessing over the morning songs begins at "the compassionate Father, praised by the mouth of His people," since only that part is about praise and song. The first half was added because the Men of the Great Assembly wanted prayer to open with a reminder:
One blessing opens, another closes. The Rif (Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi, North Africa, 1000s) explains the job of this blessing. The Sages set a blessing before the morning psalms and a blessing after them. Baruch She'amar is the one before, and Yishtabach is the one after:
The Rambam (Maimonides, Egypt, 1100s) records the same pair: וְתִקְּנוּ בְּרָכָה לִפְנֵי הַזְּמִירוֹת וְהִיא בָּרוּךְ שֶׁאָמַר וּבְרָכָה לְאַחֲרֵיהֶם וְהִיא יִשְׁתַּבַּח, "they set a blessing before the songs, Baruch She'amar, and a blessing after them, Yishtabach" (Laws of Prayer 7:12). Everything in between is held inside those two blessings. That is why, as you will see below, you do not talk in the middle.
The Gemara says that saying Hallel every day is an insult to God. So what are we doing?
One main source for the whole section of morning psalms is a line in the Gemara. Rabbi Yosei said he wished to be among those who "finish Hallel every day." The Gemara objects:
Why would Hallel, the psalms we sing on holidays, be an insult on an ordinary day? Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, France, 1000s, whose commentary is printed in every Chumash and Gemara) explains that Hallel was set for special times, as praise and thanks. Saying it all the time turns it into "just singing a song, and joking around."
The Maharal (Rabbi Yehudah Loew of Prague, 1500s) goes deeper. Hallel was set for miracles:
Say it every day, he explains, and you are saying that every day is a miracle, as if the world had no order at all. That denies the wisdom God built into His world. In another place (Gevurot Hashem, chapter 61) he adds a second reason: if God runs the world by open miracles every day, people will ask why good people suffer and why idol worship is still around. It ends up sounding as if God cannot fix it.
So what is the daily praise about? Look at how its blessing opens: "He spoke and the world came to be," and "who makes creation," in the present tense. The Aruch HaShulchan, quoted above, says these lines are there to say that God created the world with His word and renews it every day. The Maharal does not mention Baruch She'amar, so the link is ours. But the two fit. Hallel is kept for the days when the usual order was broken. The praise for every other morning begins with the usual order itself.
Speech needs a mouth, breath and someone to hear. Before the world existed, there was no one to hear.
The Rambam raises exactly this in his book of philosophy, the Guide for the Perplexed (1:65). A command is given to someone who exists and can receive it. So every "God said" in the creation story means "God willed." The Torah uses the language of speech because at first a person cannot picture something getting done by will alone. We assume that whoever wants something must make it, or tell someone else to.
The Ramban (Nachmanides, Spain, 1200s) reads "God said: Let there be light" the same way: מִילַת אֲמִירָה בְּכָאן לְהוֹרוֹת עַל הַחֵפֶץ, "the word 'saying' here points to will." Then he adds what the word teaches: וְהָעִנְיָן, לוֹמַר שֶׁלֹּא הָיָה בְּעָמָל, "the point is that it was without toil" (Ramban on Bereishit 1:3).
That is how Abudarham explains our first line: the world was created by saying, with no effort at all. He brings a Midrash that this world was created with the letter hei, the lightest letter to say:
One more question. If it was so easy, why ten sayings? The Mishnah asks it:
Its answer is about us. The ten are there so that the wicked, who wreck a world made with ten sayings, are held to account, and the righteous, who keep it going, get a good reward. Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura (Italy, 1400s) explains: ruining work that took many days is not like ruining one day's work. One way to put it: the world is worth more than it had to be, so what we do in it counts for more.
Short ideas from the Zohar, the Chassidic masters and Rav Kook.
The Zohar, the central book of Kabbalah, says prayer repairs four things, in order: yourself, this world, the world above, and God's name. The psalms that start here are the second: you bless God for each piece of creation, to keep this world standing. And so, it says, Baruch She'amar goes "blessed, blessed": blessed over everything.
Rabbi Chaim of Chernowitz (Ukraine, about 1800), known by his book Be'er Mayim Chaim, writes that God gives life to all of creation at every moment. If that stopped for even one moment, the world would be as if it had never been. That is why we say "says and does," not "said and did": at every moment He is saying, and doing.
We praise God "with the songs of David Your servant." Why his words and not our own? Rav Kook (the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, died 1935) answers in his commentary on the siddur, Olat Re'iyah: our private feelings are not enough. We draw on the pure feeling stored in the treasury David left us, because David had the soul of the whole nation.
No words can match God's greatness. Tehillim says that to God, silence is praise. So spoken praise has to quiet the feeling down to fit it into words. But a feeling from the heart goes past the narrow circle of words and ideas. That, Rav Kook says, is the power of melody, which goes along with praise. The Tur, too, says to sing this blessing.
"He lives forever and lasts for all time." In everything we know, those two do not go together. Life means changing all the time, and something that never changes looks to us like something that is not alive. Only about God, Rav Kook says, can both be said at once: fully alive, and never changing.
The Sefat Emet reads "says and does" as the ten sayings of creation, and "decrees and carries it out" as the Ten Commandments. The Torah is what sets the whole of creation right.
What you will see people do, and why. Customs differ between communities; ask your rav what yours does.
The custom is to stand for Baruch She'amar (Rema, Orach Chaim 51:7). The Mishnah Berurah adds: stand even when you pray alone, hold the two front tzitzit while you say it, and kiss them at the end (51:1). The Arizal's custom is the same: stand until the last words, holding the two tzitzit in front of you (Sha'ar HaKavanot).
The Tur says to say it with a tune, because it is a song. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) adds that the morning psalms are said calmly, not in a hurry: א"א הזמירות במרוצה כי אם בנחת, "one should not say the songs in a rush, only calmly" (51:8).
צריך ליזהר מלהפסיק בדבור משיתחיל ברוך שאמר עד סוף י"ח, "be careful not to interrupt by talking from the start of Baruch She'amar until the end of the Amidah" (Shulchan Aruch 51:4). The Rema adds that between Baruch She'amar and Yishtabach you do not talk even for a mitzvah. These two blessings hold the psalms between them.
If you finished Baruch She'amar before the chazan (the person leading the prayers), answer amen to his blessing (Shulchan Aruch 51:2). The Mishnah Berurah explains that this is not an interruption: amen is praise too. If you both finish together, do not answer, because it looks like answering amen to your own blessing.
The Shulchan Aruch and the Rema give a shortened order for someone who arrives late, so he can say the Amidah with everyone. Even the shortest version keeps three things: Baruch She'amar, Ashrei and Yishtabach (Orach Chaim 52:1). If even that is not possible, you pray with the congregation and say the psalms afterward, without Baruch She'amar and Yishtabach.
They may. Whether they must is a disagreement. The Aruch HaShulchan says women are not obligated, and can say it: "Why should they not sing to God, as Miriam and all the women of Israel did at the splitting of the sea?" (70:1). The Mishnah Berurah, based on Rabbi Akiva Eiger, writes that they are obligated, because these psalms were set up mainly for the sake of the Amidah (70:2).
Short answers, with sources.
The blessing that opens Pesukei DeZimra, the psalms and verses of praise said every morning before the Shema and the Amidah. Yishtabach is the blessing that closes them (Rif; Rambam, Laws of Prayer 7:12). It begins "Blessed is He who spoke and the world came to be."
That is the tradition the Mishnah Berurah records (51:1): the Men of the Great Assembly set this praise "by way of a note that fell from heaven." The Bach and the Taz quote it from Tola'at Yaakov, a kabbalistic book from the 1500s. The Tur, earlier, counts the 87 words but does not mention a note, and the oldest written siddur, from the 800s, already has the blessing. The sources do not say whether the note is a report of an event or a way of saying how holy the words are. See the trail.
The Tur cites Sefer Heichalot for the count, with a sign from Shir HaShirim 5:11, "His head is fine gold." Fine gold is paz, whose letters add up to 87. The Mishnah Berurah reads it as: the head of the prayer is a blessing of 87 words, so no word may be added or taken away.
Both mean "by the mouth of His people." The Arizal says befeh, because its letters add up to 87 (Sha'ar HaKavanot). The Mishnah Berurah and the Aruch HaShulchan rule the same. Many Ashkenazi siddurim print befi. The word count is 87 either way.
Standing is the custom the Rema records (Orach Chaim 51:7). The Mishnah Berurah adds: stand even alone, hold the two front tzitzit, and kiss them at the end (51:1). The Arizal's custom is the same (Sha'ar HaKavanot).
No. From the start of Baruch She'amar to the end of the Amidah, do not interrupt by talking (Shulchan Aruch 51:4). Between Baruch She'amar and Yishtabach, not even for a mitzvah (Rema there). Some answers, like amen, are allowed in certain places; ask your rav.
They may. The Aruch HaShulchan says they are not obligated and can say it (70:1). The Mishnah Berurah, based on Rabbi Akiva Eiger, writes that they are obligated (70:2).
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Prayer text: Siddur Sefard (Metsudah, 1981) via Sefaria, as used in the Torah Tech Siddur. Other Hebrew texts are from Sefaria. English renderings and explanations are Torah Tech originals, and any mistakes are ours.
This page is for learning. It is not a halachic ruling; for practice, ask your rav.
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