How Rabbi Chanina Silenced a Disciple's Flattery of God

Midrash Aggadah Berakhot 33b (Hebraic Literature, 1901)

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 14, 2025

A student once stood before Rabbi Chanina in prayer and reached for every adjective he could find. O God — who art great, mighty, formidable, magnificent, strong, terrible, valiant, powerful, real, and honored. He piled the praise like a man stacking coins.

Rabbi Chanina let him finish. Then he spoke. Are you done? Have you exhausted the praises of your God?

The rebuke was not sarcasm. It was theology. Even the three terms of praise we use daily, said Rabbi Chanina — great, mighty, and awesome — we would not have dared to utter, had Moses, our teacher, not written them in the Torah (Deuteronomy 10:17), and had the men of the Knesset HaGedolah, the Great Assembly, not fixed them in our liturgy.

And you — a nobody, with no prophetic mandate — have added your own stack of adjectives to the top of that pile.

Rabbi Chanina offered a parable. Imagine flattering a king by complimenting his silver — when the king is the master of a thousand thousands of gold denarii. Would the king find your praise charming, or insulting? (Berakhot 33b.)

The teaching cuts hard against the instinct to pile on words in prayer. In Judaism, the highest praise of God is to say less than you feel, because more will always be less than He deserves.

Themes

Prayer Humility Moses Speech

Biblical References

Deuteronomy 10:17

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