Top Secret Rules?

After eating a meal with bread (or any meal really) there are a series of prayers that we say, a type of Grace After Meals, that Jews call bensching. You go to b'nai mitzvah, you go to weddings, you go to any kind of simcha and you walk away with a little book full of prayers and blessings and the Birkat Ha'Mazon.


Every Shabbos, or even when I'm out with friends, I've noticed something: I take lightyears longer than every other Jew on the planet to bensch. Now, I read my Hebrew really quick, but I read it all. I've noticed people flipping pages faster than Forrest Gump running cross-country.

Am I missing something? Am I not privy to the top secret rule that there really are parts you don't need to read? Am I wasting my time going through the entire series of prayers? What am I missing? Is there a set of rules on what is "required" and what isn't?

Help!

(Note: I also wonder this about prayers in synagogue, too, as sometimes I find myself ahead of people in the Shemonai Esrei and then suddenly they're done and I'm like "wah!?")

(Second Note: I've always wondered where the word bensch comes from, and I always assumed it was Yiddish. Turns out it is Yiddish, but it derives from Latin, not German or Hebrew. How bizarre! It means to bless or make a bracha, but generally it's used when referring to saying the Birkat HaMazon, or blessing after meals.)

A quickie birkat?

Any legitimacy or kosherness to this? Found on Jewish Virtual Library.

"Since it was felt that the full Grace after meals was a bit too long, many prayer books have a shortened form alongside the full text, One of them is quoted in O.H. 192 in B.H. 1, and it contains all the essential elements required by the Talmud. The shortened Grace may be used when brevity is desired. The United Synagogue has adopted one, with additions in English, for general use in Conservative synagogues.

Alternative Grace after Meals

B'rich rahamana malka d'alma mareih d'hahy pita."

A Few Questions + My Guest Post!

I am pleased to announce that a guest post by your blog's faithful leader (that's me) is up over at A Simple Jew.

On an unrelated note, but an important note none the less, I have a couple of questions. Of course, I know that asking my rav is the key route for answering such questions, but I like to hear what you guys have to say about some of these things because I think you all are a wealth of information and you also allow me to come up with even more in-depth questions. So let me know what you think about some of the following. They're weighing on me!

• Why are there so many different versions of the Kaddish? Rabbi's, reader's, mourner's? Significance of each?
• How come when we have kiddush at shul after Saturday services we don't bensch afterward? How much food must you consume to require bensching? 
• If you say a b'racha (borei p'ri ha'gafen), but not the motzei at kiddush, do you have to re-say it at home? Also, if you say a wine/grape juice blessing at kiddush, do you have to say anything else? 
• Um ... what else ... I had so many questions! 

I'm going to look about today for some books on kashrut, brachot, and the like. I'm a little worried about my knowledge of brachot over various foods since it's been one of the most difficult things for me to get into the swing of doing. Kashrut, as you'll note in my guest post at A Simple Jew, is something that, in my mind, allows an individual to fully envelope themselves in the holiness of all things. I'm the kind of person who seeks to practice what she preaches, so this is going to be my ultimate focus until I scoot off to Middlebury and can only read in Hebrew.