Help for Hebrew-learners

It is to be counted among the beauties -- nay, the graces -- of Classical Arabic,

as indeed still practiced by the more observant in our own day,

that, before reading-forth Scripture
(or indeed  any text  indited in that language 
wherein the Koran was revealed),

you utter the word  -- just this! -- :

“Bismillah.”

Which, being Englished, is as much as to say:  In nomine Dei.

(Let us pause as we contemplate the majesty of al-ism -- ha-Shem.)

~

And now  this winter evening,  reading poetry by candle-light,

and savoring a bit of brandy
(forbidden to the devotees of al-Rasûl,  

but mercifully permitted to those of Moses,

or of the Nazarene Carpenter)

I happened upon these passages,

from the pen of Charles Reznikoff (1894 - 1976;  born in America
of emigrant Ashkenazi parents):

How dificult for me is Hebrew:

even the Hebrew for mother, for bread, for sun

is foreign. How far have I been exiled, Zion.

I have learnt the Hebrew blessing before eating bread;

is there no blessing before reading Hebrew?

~

Time was, one time,  back in the day,

that I fared forth at lunchtime  in the company of damsels:

a lovely Jordanian muslimah, whose name in Arabic means ‘gentle rain’,

and a stern German, a Swabian Christian

(brought along quasi as chaperone)

at a time when I myself,  all pagan and unbaptised,

was quietly Christianizing:

and requested that the Muslimah  should say grace before our meal.

Expecting something elaborate, along the lines of

words I had heard

at the table-grace  of comfortably Protestant-raised relatives,

(“Bless this food to our use,

 and us to thy service … “)

instead she said,  just this:

“Bismillah.”

(Such polyvalent brevity 

is actually not characteristic of Arabic,

which seems to have a distinct blessing for every occasion,

along with an appropriate rejoinder.

As, to someone who has just had a haircut:

“Na`îman !”

℞ :

“Allah yin`im `aleek !”  )

~

E’en so!  May not the Hebrew words

that bless the bread,  thus bless the text?

O ye of Zion and of Judah,

of all the Diaspora,

℞  !