The blessing! The most famous passage in Naso is the Priestly Blessing, a familiar part of worship and countless rituals. The three part blessing emerges from chapter 6:22-26. No doubt many of you who attend Torah study this Shabbat will spend some time on these verses. The idea of blessing is a powerful one and, as you know, common to all religious traditions. The root for the Hebrew : bet, resh, koph, stems from the word for knee, as bending the knee or bowing before something or someone to show respect etc. According to a 2d century Rabbi Meir, we are asked to recite 100 blessings a day, and as many of you who have studied the issue of blessings, we have blessings for everything, from the miracles of our bodily functions to seeing rainbows. Yes, blessings are a key part of our life, culture and how we interact with the world, all the time recognizing that the blessing places us in sacred relationship with God. Just unpack the usual first words of many blessings and you can reflect on an entire theology.
But for this Shabbat, in this time in our lives, I want to pose another question. We hear much regarding our responsibility to be a blessing to the world. Some see the concept of “tikun olom” as a call to be a blessing via our actions, to the world at large. All this is fine. Yet, let me ask you about how, at this stage of life, we can be a blessing to our own self. Increasingly, in classes and conversations, I am hearing this shift take place. As we get older, and the reality of our own mortality sets in, many of us begin to reflect and reimagine this blessing idea in such as way as to make is very personal.
So, many of us now ask how we can be a blessing to our self. This does not take away from the communal call to action. Rather, it awakens in us a reality that we need to also look at the inner world of our soul. How can we live and act so that we bring that sense of blessing to each of us. This is very personal. It may mean letting go of some responsibilities, guilts and obligations. It may mean taking more time for our own health and wellness. It may mean re-orienting priorities to focus more on friends and family. It may mean so many different things, but the idea of how we can be a blessing to our own self and soul is something that I suggest, will become more important in each of our lives as we age. In doing so, we may also attain that blessing of peace that we pray for so often. How many of us are in search of that personal sense of peace?
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Richard F Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
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