bencher

Edit

Pronunciations

bencher (BEN-chur) listen

Record a Pronunciation

Definitions

  • n. Prayer booklet or card with the text of the blessings after meals, and often times including other meal-time blessings and songs.

Example Sentences

  • "At the conclusion of the bar mitzvah meal, they handed out bentchers for use in reciting Birkas HaMazon."

    Listen to recordings of this sentence: ( Recording 1)

  • "'Jewish weddings are the worst thing to ever happen to bentshers!' according to Kalman. 'Because bentshers are now mass-produced, there’s a push to make them smaller, and a push to make them cheaper.'" (source)

  • "It’s always fun to look at the benchers from various simchas and think back about that wedding and the couple who tied the knot that day." (source)

  • "The NCSY Bencher is immensely popular for use in homes, synagogues, schools, youth groups and camps, as well as for weddings, bar and bas mitzvahs, and other simchos." (source)

  • "As someone with a dining room drawer full of well-used egalitarian benchers, some decades old, some from my wedding 18 years ago, I initially wondered what the innovation of Seder Oneg Shabbos was, besides its incredibly beautiful typesetting and illustrations." (source)

  • View More

Record a Sentence

Languages of Origin

  • Yiddish

Etymology

  • בענטשער bentsher 'blesser,' that is, a thing used for blessing.

      • Who Uses This

      • Religious: Jews who are engaged in religious observance and have some Jewish education
      • Orthodox: Jews who identify as Orthodox and observe halacha (Jewish law)
      • Ashkenazim: Jews with Ashkenazi heritage
      • Organizations: People involved in a professional or volunteer capacity with Jewish nonprofit organizations
      • View More

      Regions

      • North America
      • Australia / New Zealand
      • Great Britain
      • South Africa

      Dictionaries

      • The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words, by Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, (Philadelphia, 2001).

      Alternative Spellings

      bentsher, bentscher, bensher, benscher

Notes

Edit     Something missing from this entry? Inaccurate? Feel free to suggest an edit.