Parshat Chayei Sarah: A Blessing on Your Head…I Think
Two old men are sitting on a park bench together one afternoon watching the people walking by (stop me if you’ve heard this one). A group of young girls stroll by chatting. One old man leans to the other and says ‘I can’t believe how short their skirts are, you can see everything, including their pupiks!’ The second man turns to his friend and says, ‘I agree! What a bracha…I mean a broch!’
For non-Yiddish speakers, the punchline is the second man saying ‘what a blessing…I mean a disaster!’
As much as we believe that a blessing would be a universal thing, the truth is that blessings are usually quite subjective. They are layered with assumptions and expectations that we then project onto each other almost without thinking. When I was growing up, if I was at a wedding it would be only polite for women to wish single women ‘Mirtzem bi-you’, (God willing this should happen to you). The assumption is that every woman would want to be married and that single women should not feel envious of the bride because we have prayed that God should make her a bride soon. We don’t say that so much anymore, I hope that’s because we have understood that blessings have the power to communicate more than we intended.
Judaism views blessings as double edged swords. The very general, non-specific ones are great. We bless each other with happiness and long life. I have had occasions to sit with family members discussing insurance policies a few times over the years. Most of those occasions involved insurance agents who were Jewish (once it was a friend of ours who is a Lubavitch Rabbi). The conversation took much longer than it needed to. Life insurance discussions would always involve following any example with ‘you should live to 120’; disability insurance policies were explained with every other sentence being ‘you shouldn’t know from this, not you, not your family, not anyone we know’. After signing the policy with our friend, the Lubavitch Rabbi, he reminded us that he is also a sofer (scribe) and set aside time to check all our mezuzahs. Once, I sat in such a meeting with a non-Jewish insurance agent —I couldn’t do it. I kept wanting to say ‘God should keep us all safe and healthy (amen)’.
Blessings are powerful and empowering moments we offer each other, but we’re not often taught how to do that. When someone sneezes, we may offer the traditional ‘God bless you’. Historically, that is not because we are worried the sneeze indicated they were getting sick, but because during the instant of sneezing they were left unaware and that’s when Satan can enter the soul. We protect them by invoking God’s name. The Hebrew sneeze response, ‘livriyut’, means ‘to health’, more of a Jewish response —the offer of a blessing. Even when we say goodbye to each other, most of us forget that the word ‘goodbye’ is a short form for the original phrase ‘God be with ye’, the blessing we offered each other before departing and encountering danger on the roads (God forbid). In Yiddish, the traditional parting phrase is ‘zei gezunt’, ‘be healthy’ —another blessing offered to each other.
While we all exchange and feel positively about the general blessings we offer each other, the specific ones are when it can get tricky. Offering the blessing of an upcoming marriage to a single woman assumes she would want that for herself; offering the blessing of children to a woman who has suffered a recent miscarriage is well intentioned but often times painful to the recipient. There is an art to crafting a blessing, but most of us are not taught the technique.
In this week’s parshah, Chayei Sarah, the upcoming matriarch, Rebecca, has chosen to leave her home, her family, and marry Isaac, sight unseen. Her family offers her a blessing: “May you become (the mother of) hundreds of thousands and may your seed inherit the gates of their enemies.” It’s a beautiful blessing, who wouldn’t want hordes of descendants and to inherit gates of enemies? If I inherit their gates, it means I outlived them. I didn’t have to battle them, I simply endured longer than they did —I waited them out. What could be the problem?
The midrash points out that this blessing is a double edged sword. For me to inherit the gates of my enemies, I must accept the inheritance and claim their cities. What if they don’t live near me? What if I don’t want what they had? What if their things are a constant reminder to me of the suffering experienced at their hands? What if I want to close that chapter, feel relieved that they’re gone, and never have to think of them again? Why would I want their past constantly in my present and speaking into my future? What if I don’t think it’s a blessing?
Then the midrash points out that these sentiments were also expressed to the patriarch, Isaac. Now what has been offered to Rebecca is her own legacy of blessing to bring to her marriage. She will not fulfill her future by trying to find ways to enter the blessings of Isaac. That’s what happened to Sarah, that’s how Abraham ended up with Hagar, fathering Ishmael.
Between the first generation of ancestry and the second generation, we watch the balance of blessings be introduced between patriarch and matriarch. The blessing sits in the balance.
It’s not so easy to bless each other. We must always be careful of nuance, personal preferences and the appropriate opportunities to offer someone our most heartfelt prayer of something beautiful. We’ll never learn the skill if we don’t take a risk and start offering a blessing to each other.
May we all stay healthy and well, and may God bring wisdom to those seeking cures and vaccines. Amen.
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