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Rabbi Karp's Sermons ... THE BLESSING OF BLESSINGS As many of you know, I am a serious Trekkie. I admit it. I love Star Trek in every one of its incarnations - Star Trek; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Deep Space Nine; Voyager; and of course, all the movies, each of which I own on video - I love them all. Shira and I have even gone to Star Trek conventions. I
share this with you because, believe it or not, there have been times when
my Jewish interests and my Star Trek interests have actually crossed
paths. And one such time involves tonight’s Torah portion, so
beautifully chanted by our Sisterhood President, Roberta Kelinson. The
section Roberta chanted this evening is probably one of the most familiar
of Torah texts to most Jews, or at least to most Jews who occasionally go
to services. It is the
Priestly Benediction, which is the most significant blessing offered in
Judaism. While it is uttered
only under the strictest of halachic guidelines in traditional Judaism, we
in Reform Judaism tend to use it and use it a lot.
Indeed, the Cantor has already invoked it this evening and I will
yet invoke it twice more: In the beginning of our service, the Cantor
invoked this blessing as our parents blessed their children.
In just a little while from now, I will include it as part of the
special blessing for Jan and Lou in honor of this wonderful occasion of
their 50th wedding anniversary, and then at the end of our
service, once again I will invoke it as a closing benediction, just as I
do every Shabbat. For next
Shabbat, we have invited 46 couples with anniversaries in the months of
May, June, and July to receive their anniversary blessings, and I will
invoke it then. Next Shabbat
morning, Jonathan Krell will become Bar Mitzvah, and I will bless him with
this blessing, as I bless every one of our B’nei Mitzvah with this
blessing. At Brit Milah and
Brit Chaim ceremonies, welcoming the infants of our congregation into the
covenant between God and Israel, I bless the children with this blessing. At family services, when we have monthly birthday blessings,
I bless the children with this blessing.
When someone converts to Judaism, I bless that person with this
blessing. Under the chupah, I
bless the bride and the groom with this blessing, just as I did several
years ago when I blessed Roberta and Len.
One could easily say that this blessing is truly the blessing of
blessings! As
I stated earlier, in traditional Judaism the utterance of this blessing is
far more restricted under halachic regulations.
Being the Priestly Benediction - the blessing that was offered by
the Kohanim, the priests, from the time of the Torah through the days of
the Temple in Jerusalem - according to tradition, this prayer should only
be uttered by a Kohein, a descendant of the priests, a direct descendant
of Aaron. And even then, its
utterance is reserved for the most significant of communal occasions - the
pilgrimage festivals and the High Holy Days.
At those times, the Kohein stands before the congregation, with
arms raised and the fingers of his hands forming the Hebrew letter
“shin”, standing for “Shaddai,” as in “Eil Shaddai,” “God
Almighty”, as you see depicted on the panels above the ark, while the
congregants lower their heads and close their eyes as the Kohein utters
this blessing. Now,
believe it or not, all this brings us back to Star Trek.
If you are at all familiar with the original Star Trek, then you
will know that one of its characters is a Vulcan, an alien, by the name of
Mr. Spock. Well, Mr. Spock
was played by the actor, Leonard Nimoy, who happens to be Jewish.
As Leonard Nimoy was developing this alien character, one of the
pieces of Vulcan culture which he created was a specific Vulcan greeting.
That greeting was “Live long and prosper,” and it was offered
while holding up one’s hand, with fingers split apart, much the same as
in the priestly benediction. Now
the similarity between this Vulcan greeting and the hands of the Priestly
Benediction is far from coincidental. Indeed, the Vulcan hand sign was born out of Leonard Nimoy’s
childhood memories of Yom Kippur. As
Nimoy tells it, he would go with his father to services.
When it came time for the Priestly Benediction, he, and all the
other children, were told by their parents that they had to close their
eyes, turn their heads down, and they must not look.
Of course, Nimoy, like most children, was overcome by curiosity and
could not help but sneak a peak. And
the power of that moment impressed him so much that he carried it with him
all his life, and it just floated to the surface as he sought a way to
express this Vulcan greeting, which in its own way, is a blessing all its
own. Now
that’s a nice story, but it is more than that.
It is more than merely a piece of pop culture trivia.
It is a story with layers upon layers, and if you pull back the
most obvious layer - the trivia layer - you will find that it is a story
about the power of blessings. Leonard
Nimoy has carried that memory all the days of his life.
It touched him. It
moved him in ways that he could not even begin to understand. And then, when least expecting it, it burst forth from him. Nimoy’s
story is vivid testimony as to how blessings can be more than mere words;
how blessings have the power to impact upon our lives.
For reasons we may not even begin to understand, blessings can
change us, even if just for the moment; blessings somehow or other make
the moment significantly better. It
is strange how, when it comes to moments of blessings, we tend to live in
two worlds. The first world
is this 21st century world of intellectual sophistication, with
its ever expanding universe of human knowledge and its ever expanding
universe of human cynicism. We
human beings can do so much that we have convinced ourselves that we can
do everything, that we can explain everything.
It is all in our hands, and as such, we have left very little room
in our lives for God and things spiritual.
Receiving a blessing may be a nice sentiment, but nothing more.
And as nice as it may be, it is definitely not a necessity in our
lives, for it will not really change anything.
As I said earlier, for next Shabbat, we have invited 46 couples to
receive an anniversary blessing. But
the fact of the matter is, probably no more than ten of them will actually
show up for it. Why? Not because they are bad people.
Not because they reject the possibility of God in their lives.
But simply because, in all honesty, to them it doesn’t really
matter. There are just so
many other more important things for them to do on a Friday night in the
Quad Cities. And the same is
true when we offer our children birthday blessings. Yet
in spite of this cynicism, and in spite of this seeming lack of desire for
a spiritual connection in our lives, there is this other world in which we
live. In this other world,
there are moments in our lives in which we not only want, but need and
demand blessings. Indeed, if
we are refused those blessings, we are outraged. Of
course, we live in this world during the significant moments of life cycle
events. While the annual
birthday blessings of our children are not important to us, their Bar and
Bat Mitzvah is. While
anniversary blessings may not mean that much to us from year to year, not
to have been married by a rabbi under a chupah is unthinkable.
We can live our lives choosing not to expend even the least amount
of our energy in the pursuit of things spiritual, yet when we die, a
religious funeral is expected. Why
is this so? If things
spiritual really don’t matter to us, why do these ceremonies mean so
much to us? Some people say, “It’s just a family thing.
It is a social thing.” But
if that were truly the case, we really wouldn’t need the rituals.
If that were the case, then we could hold these big parties for our
children’s 13th birthdays without a worship service.
We could rent the same halls, hire the same caterers, invite the
same guests, and that should suffice for us.
If that were the case, why would we need a rabbi and chupah for a
wedding? A justice of the
peace could fulfill the legal requirements.
If that were the case, then upon our deaths we would be satisfied
with simply having some of
our friends and relatives sit around, sharing their memories of us.
But none of these things are enough for us. We want something more. Whether
or not we realize it, whether or not we understand it, that something more
which we want is blessing. At
these significant moments of our lives, we want - indeed we need - to
connect with God. We need to
bring God’s presence into these moments.
It is not enough for us that we acknowledge
that our children have reached an age of responsibility, as well as
puberty, in the presence of friends and family.
We need to acknowledge it in the presence of God.
It is not enough for us that as a couple, we affirm our loving
commitment for each other in accordance with the law of man and in the
sight of fellow human beings. We
need to do so according to the law of and in the sight of God as well.
And when we pass away, it is not enough for us to be lovingly
remembered by those people dearest to us.
We need to know that God cares about our passing as well. God
cares about us. That’s what
this is all about. We need to
know that. It does matter to
us. At these significant
moments of our lives, we reach out to God because we want God to reach out
to us. As cynical as we may
be - as sophisticated as we may think ourselves to be - still there are
moments in our lives when we absolutely need to affirm our connectedness
to God; when the thought of the mere possibility of God being absent from
our lives, and maybe not even caring about our lives, completely
devastates us. At those
moments, for us, the blessings that we seek, are far, far more than merely
nice sentiments. They are the
very fabric of those moments. They
are what lends meaning to our lives.
The blessings we receive at those times are what make those moments
so important to us. They are
what fuel the transformation of those moments from wonderful moments lived
to wonderful memories that last a lifetime. One
of the sad ironies of our lives is that we reserve these wonderful
experiences to those occasional moments, and we don’t have to.
We don’t have to wait for these “landmark” occasions in order
to experience the restorative power of blessing.
For our lives are filled with opportunities to both receive and
bestow blessings. We only
have to open ourselves to the possibility of those opportunities.
For whether or not we acknowledge it, God is ever present in our
lives. The act of blessing
serves both to awaken us to that presence, and to draw God closer to us
and into our lives, even if just a little.
And when God is drawn closer into our lives, we do feel it, and it
can feel great. That
is part of what makes an occasion such as this evening so very special,
not only for the Nachbauers and their family, but for all of us who are
privileged to share it with them. For
as they bring God closer into their lives this evening through their being
blessed, they also help to bring God closer into our lives as well.
Through their blessing shall we all be blessed. Last Friday night, we held our Confirmation service, as our five tenth graders concluded their formal religious school education. Each one of them spoke about the importance of their Judaism and their God in their lives, and most of them identified as a major turning point in their lives, their Bar or Bat Mitzvah. That moment of blessing awakened within them all sorts of thoughts and feelings that they never realized they had, and it changed them, for the better. Whether or not they will be able to retain those benefits will be determined, at least in some part, by the blessings they receive, or fail to receive, as they move into their future. And so it is with all of us. We can, if we so choose, fuel our lives and our souls on the blessings we choose to receive and on the blessings we choose to bestow. For blessings are truly more than mere nice sentiments. They are our reaching out to God, and God’s reaching out to us, and the sacred embrace in which it results. AMEN
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