Rabbi Siegel

Blessed comings and goings

This week’s parashah, Ki Tavo, “When you come in”, which follows the parashah Ki Teitsei, “When you go out”, is replete with the word ברכה/Berakhah-Blessing.

Perhaps the capstone to this parashah is the beautiful sentiment that should grace our homes and schools:

ברוך אתה בבואך וברוך אתה בצאתך

May you be blessed upon your coming in

and

May you be blessed upon your going out

As our family and friends, students and staff enter and exit the doors of our homes and school, this would be a fitting welcome and farewell.

Yet, one’s being blessed, in our Jewish tradition, extends beyond one’s self. To experience blessing Is to recognise that we are blessed by those who give us life, when we enter our world, and by those whom we give life, before we leave this world.

To be truly blessed is to live a life in which we reap the great and unique fortune with which each of us has been bestowed and provide the possibility of the same for our loved ones that will live on after us.

We are in the month of אלול/Elul, which our tradition sees as serving as an acronym for, אני לדודיודודי לי – “I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me”. As we approach Rosh HaShannah and begin to reflect upon the new year coming in and the present one going out, we are reminded of the bonds of family and friends in our life’s journey.

As descendants of Avraham, we are reminded as well that between entering and exiting our world we are all to live by the command heard by this first Jew – הייה ברכה – “Be a blessing”! The doors of our family and community that welcome and farewell us can only prescribe and describe the blessed life that is up to us to live.