Thank you very much

Today, we’ll introduce the common, day-to-day expression of thankfulness: ‘to•da ra•ba.’

This is something seemingly quite simple: you do something good for someone and the beneficiary thanks you for the good deed.

Nice, but not as frequent as it should be. Take ‘corporate America,’ for example. Many corporate employees rarely hear this word, if ever. The reason is simple: if your employer is constantly happy with your work, it will naturally require some form of reward. There is no need to name the reward that we expect from the employer for whom we work so hard. The employer knows as well this type of reward and, therefore, will refrain from giving reasons to expect rewards. In other words, they will be very economical with gestures of thankfulness, and ‘to•da ra•ba’ will become quite infrequent in the corporate environment. This is very sad because we do need to hear words of thankfulness for our wellbeing. You know what a torture it is not to hear clear, happy feedback for what we do many times with great effort. Lukewarm feedback that is much more common is good just for keeping us afloat, but it keeps us constantly worried.

Now test yourself − are you generous in thanking others? Real generous? Very generous? If you find any room for being better in this area, do so, even in Hebrew. If you want to pick the right word, then ‘toda,’ which means ‘thank you’ or ‘thanks,’ is good. A more generous form of thanks (of course, if the deed warrants it) would be ‘Toda Raba’. Personally, I never felt that it is too much to use the second option.

Biblical thanksgiving:

“Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, even as you were taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving”

“And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of those who make merry; and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small”