Dear Friends,
I so appreciate it when I hear the words: Have a blessed day! Truly, I appreciate it. Especially since Covid changed our lives so much, I have grown to appreciate the simplest kindly human interactions as enormously precious.
Still, the phrase “Have a blessed day” often is meant to imply that blessing is bestowed upon us from some external place or from some external power and, no doubt, it may, at times, be so.
Yet, in our weekly Torah portion of Lech-Lecha, God says to Abraham: V’heyeh beracha [You shall be a blessing!]. What an awesome thought! Rather than depend on some external place or power to bestow blessing upon us or hope that it will be so, we, as Abraham’s descendants, are blessed to “be a blessing.”
What does that mean?
To my mind, to “be a blessing” means to greet each person, each opportunity in life, each moment, with a realization that our attitude makes a huge impact on the world around us. If we make the effort to speak in kindness to others, if we reflect our appreciation of the opportunities that are presented to us, if we meet the “moment” with a combined sense of humility and of awe then we, ourselves, may hope to truly be a blessing!
I hope we will take God’s words to Abraham: “You shall be a blessing”, as a gift to each and every one of us, and may we all be blessed “from above” as well as “from within.”
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Gilah Dror
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