Dear Members and Friends,

I’ve included in this month’s Koleynu what is now an annual offering – prayers and blessings that can be said as we go through the summer months which may involve journeys to new places and meetings with new potential friends. Traditional blessings, as I noted elsewhere in the Koleynu, usually try to capture positive emotions. Importantly, Judaism also has blessings to recognize and spiritually engage with difficult, traumatic moments.

The prime example is the blessing (yes, a blessing!) that is recited when one is informed of the death of a loved one. The blessing is: Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheynu Melech haOlam, Dayan ha emet. Its traditional translation is: “Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, King of the universe, the True Judge.” As you know, I translate these things differently and, I hope, reflecting the Hebrew deeply. Here’s my translation: “We are in awe and in wonder before and within the Oneness-of-Being, aware that the core of this moment is truth.”

This blessing, as for those that are said at times associated with more positive emotions, engages the occasion and recognizes it for what it is. Regarding death, the blessing (quite beautifully, I believe) frames our focus and steers us away from euphemisms, gently, compassionately and with severe honesty encouraging us to deal with death in

a way that is both respectful to the one who died and constructive for us and our lives ahead. Would that there were a series of blessings to prayerfully address the many quagmires in which we find ourselves in our local  communities, our region, our state, our country and our world. Perhaps this forthrightness of this traditional blessing can serve as a paradigm for blessings we might create for some of these challenges:

For homelessness and poverty in our city:

We are in awe and in wonder before and within the Oneness-of-Being, appreciative that the shelter and

sustenance experienced by some is not shared by others.

For the challenges of our state economy:

We are in awe and in wonder before and within the Oneness-of-Being, aware that a state’s budget must be

not only balanced but also create economic justice for all citizens, doing so without taking resources from the education of our children or support from those at risk.

For war:

We are in awe and in wonder before and within the Oneness-of-Being, knowing that war attains the kind of peace

that can only be sustained by the readiness to defend it with more war – and this accomplishes nothing.

Finally, for the BP oil spill, the human and animal deaths it has caused and will continue to cause for decades to come, for the death of the Gulf of Mexico as we have known it – we return to the paradigm with which we

started

We are in awe and in wonder before and within the Oneness-of-Being, aware that the core of this moment is truth.

Thank you!

© Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
July 2010