Rabbi David Segal • Aspen Jewish Congregation
May 21, 2010 • Shabbat Naso/Shavuot Week
“God bless America.”
Have you ever heard a State of the Union that didn’t end that way?
“Bless you.”
Have you ever heard a sneeze that wasn’t followed by these words?
“God bless the whole world. No exceptions.”
I saw this on a bumper sticker yesterday on an SUV parked in Aspen.
But what are these words really saying?
Are they...a request?
An invitation?
A description?
A manifesto?
Or maybe just a soundbite?
And does saying these words do anything,
or are they just words?
We can ask the same questions about the Priestly Blessing, found in Parshat Naso, our Torah reading this week.
May God bless you and keep you.
May God’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May God lift God’s face to you and grant you peace. (Num 6:24-26)
Ancient Jews might have seen this blessing as magical,
as if the priests had special powers to “force God’s hand,”
to bring God’s blessing into the world by uttering this incantation.
After all, we are a tradition
in which words have power:
in our daily morning prayers we say,
baruch she-amar v’haya olam,
blessed is the One who spoke and the world came to be.
In our creation story, God’s creative power
emanates from words:
“Y’hi or -- Let there be light -- va-y’hi or -- and there was light.”
Even the “magic word” abracadabra, some say,
comes from the Aramaic,
avra kedavra, I will create as I speak.
(Now you can impress your friends at parties!
Not to mention that this phrase seems to have inspired J.K. Rowling
to create the lethal Dark magic spell in Harry Potter, Avada Kedavra!)
To the modern Jew,
the blessing-as-magic idea is uncomfortable.
We know too much about science
to believe that we can force God’s hand
merely by saying the right words.
Anyone who has prayed the Mi Shebeirach
by the bedside of an ailing loved one
knows it’s not that simple.
Although Santa Claus may be endearing to some
as a motivator for good behavior,
we generally no longer believe in a God
who sees if you’ve been bad or good,
and simply punishes or rewards you accordingly.
So what are these words of blessing,
if not tools for harnessing God’s coercive power?
What role do blessings play in our lived experience?
Are they merely symbolic,
or do they actually do something?
To answer these questions,
we should look to the Hebrew word for blessing, ברכה/b’rachah,
and it’s root Bet-Reish-Chaf.
The same root forms the word ברך/berech, knee,
so some say it came to mean blessing
through association with the physical act of kneeling.
But there is another word we can form
with the root Bet-Reish-Chaf:
b'reichah, which means in modern Hebrew, swimming pool.
But, deep within its linguistic DNA,
there is encoded another layer of meaning:
The word that today means manmade pools
also means natural pools, fed by springs,
often at the mouths of rivers,
the source that feeds them.
When we say
Baruch Atah Adonai, Blessed are You, God,
We are really saying,
You, God, are the ultimate Source.
From You meaning and goodness flow.
Let it flow to us. Let it feed us.
Let us be open to receiving it.
This deeper meaning should resonate
with the spiritual skeptic,
who refuses to suspend reason entirely,
who rejects the idea of blessing-as-magic-spell,
but who also knows that reason doesn’t have all the answers
to the mysteries of human existence,
and cannot express our deepest yearnings, fears, and loves.
There is an old rabbinic story
about the Wind and the Sun,
locked in an argument about who is stronger.
The Wind says, “I’ll show you my strength:
I’ll get all those people to remove their jackets.”
So the Wind started blowing and blowing,
but the harder the gusts,
the more the people clutched their jackets tight.
The Sun smiled knowingly.
“You’re using the wrong kind of strength.
Watch.”
And the Sun simply radiated light and heat.
As the Sun’s warm beams beckoned,
the people loosened their jackets,
and eventually took them off,
to enjoy the beauty and warmth of the Sun’s radiance.
So too with our God:
Not the God of the ancients who compels by force,
but a God of invitational power,
who promises warmth and beauty,
if we will open ourselves up to it.
How timely that we celebrate Shavuot this week.
Blessing as prayer, as invitation, as communal commitment
is exactly what we affirm
in accepting the Torah again every year.
Not that following the Torah,
heeding the 10 Commandments,
will literally cause rain to fall and crops to grow.
Nor that we will be free from disease and misfortune,
or be guaranteed long life.
Rather, the gift of Torah is the gift of purpose.
The power to create an ordered cosmos
from the chaos of life.
The foundation upon which to build
a life of meaning and immortal impact,
a life that matters.
When we bend our human berech, our knee,
to the invitational power
radiating from the divine b’reichah,
the Source of All,
We prepare ourselves to receive God’s blessing.
ken y’hi ratzon, indeed may it be God’s will.
Shabbat shalom u’mvorach.
