Journey to the Center of the Earth Birkat Ha-Mazon and the Quest for Holiness, Conservative Judaism, Vol. 47 No. 2, 1995

The article utilizes the Birkat Ha-Mazon (Grace After Meals) to explore the relationship between real and symbolic space in the context of  the transformation of the sacred center world-view, or locative myth.”This myth posits a cosmic point of time and space which links the earth, heaven, and the underworld. At this point creation or primordial time is connected with present time and end time. Thus the sacred center is the spatial and temporal axis between humanity and divinity. The center also functions as the source of an ongoing re-creation, through the ritual reenactment o f the creation
story.” This article tries to show how a Jewish prayer can be reinterpreted to understand our relationship with Creation from a modern environmental context.

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