TORAH PORTION

See that I place before you today a blessing…

~Deuteronomy 11:26

As we prepare for the upcoming High Holidays and the beginning of the next Jewish year, this is the perfect opportunity for our community to reflect on what it means to begin again. When we think of new beginnings, what usually comes to mind are major milestones such as moving to a new city—or country as Sonia and I just did—entering into a new stage of life, or starting a new enterprise. However, our tradition teaches us that all of existence is constantly being recreated—and re-re-recreated—every single infinitesimal moment. We see this from the line from our morning Shacharit liturgy which states “[God], the one who continuously renews the act of creation each day in His goodness,” meaning that God is actively renewing the work of creation, each day, continuously.

The fact that this belief is so central to Judaism, led the early Hasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740-1809), to probe the inner meaning of the first verse of this week’s parshah, Re’eh, quoted above. He asks, since we know that God renews everything each day, why does the verse need to specify that God is placing a blessing “today” (Heb. ha-yom)? Every single day is a new blessing

To answer this question, he reads the Hebrew word ha-yom, “today,” as b’chol-yom “every day,” and declares that the first word, re’eh—from which the parshah gets is name and means “see”—is the key to understanding this verse. Thus, he reads the verse as “See! Every day I place a blessing before you…,” and that the Torah is telling us that we need to actively cultivate our consciousness so that we can “see” the newness of the world every single day.

As you prepare for the upcoming high holidays, and even each morning you wake up, I urge you to look for the blessings in your lease—each day has a unique one for you to treasure. So often we get so busy we forget to look for them, and miss out on seeing the blessings God places before us, continuously, each day.

Sonia and I wish you a week filled with awareness of just how blessed you are,

Rabbi Cody R. Bahir, Ph.D.