The King Praised Through Praises

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Learn to Daven - Day 66.

So yesterday we opened Baruch She'amar, this beautiful bracha that we recite standing, holding the two front tzitzis, right before we launch into Psukei D'Zimrah. And today I want to look at how it ends. Because the closing words are doing something I think most of us race right past.

Listen to the last phrase: melech m'hulal batishbachos - "the King praised through praises." And right at the top of the bracha there's a matching line: God is ham'hulal b'feh amo - "praised by the mouth of His people."

Now stop on that for a second. Praised through praises. Praised by the mouth of His people. The bracha is telling us something about what kind of King God is. He's not just a King who happens to receive praise. He is a King whose very Kingship is bound up with being praised.

And that raises the obvious question - the one we should always ask when we hit a strange line in davening. Does God need our praise? Does the Creator of the universe, who is complete and infinite, get something out of a human being mumbling "wow, You're amazing"? Obviously not. We don't add a single thing to Him. So what are we actually doing when we praise?

Here's the answer, and it changes everything. We're not adding to God. We're crowning Him.

There's a foundational idea in Yiddishkeit: ein melech b'lo am - there is no king without a people. A king isn't a king because he's powerful, or wealthy, or tall, or smart. A king is a king because there's a people who turn to him and say, "You rule over me." Kingship is not a fact about the king. It's a relationship that a people create by accepting him. Take away the people, and you don't have a king - you have a very impressive man standing alone in a field.

This is straight out of the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah. On the Yom Tov of Rosh Hashanah, the day we literally coronate God as King, the central theme of the davening is Malchuyos - verses of Kingship. And the whole avodah of the day is built on this: God says, in effect, "Recite before Me verses of Kingship, so that you make Me King over you." So that you make Me King. The Creator of all worlds is asking us to crown Him - because a King without a people accepting Him isn't reigning as King.

So now go back to our line. Melech m'hulal batishbachos. God is the King who is praised through praises. Meaning: it's precisely through our praise - through us standing here in the morning and saying "You are the merciful Father, You spoke and the world came into being" - that His Kingship becomes real in our world. Not real in some abstract heavenly sense; it was always real there. Real here. Real in our consciousness. We're not informing God of His greatness. We're coronating Him in the only place He wasn't yet King - inside us.

The Chassidic masters take this even further. The whole project of Psukei D'Zimrah - all these chapters of praise we're about to say - is one long coronation ceremony. We're spending twenty minutes every morning building God a throne out of words. B'feh amo - by the mouth of His people. Your mouth. The throne is built from your praise.

And that reframes the entire section we're entering. Psukei D'Zimrah isn't a warm-up. It isn't filler before the "real" davening. It's the part where we make God King over our day - before we ask Him for a single thing in Shemoneh Esrei. First you crown the King. Then you approach the throne.

So when you say these words today - melech m'hulal batishbachos - don't say them like a description. Say them like a coronation. Because that's exactly what they are.

Tomorrow: we step into the praises themselves with a strange and beautiful choice - Mizmor Shir Chanukas HaBayis, a song for the dedication of the Temple, that we somehow recite every single weekday morning. Why? We'll find out.