BLESS, MY SOUL

I like blessings. I like to give them and I like to get them. Who wouldn’t welcome a blessing now and then? There is a tradition to bless our children every Shabbat, a practice that my wife and I have followed since the birth of our three great kids. We don’t really hear of our ancestors blessing their children on such a regular basis, but this week, we do witness Isaac blessing his children, and of his timing for such a blessing, we might as well say—Finally!!

You see, when our father Isaac chooses to bless Esav, his first born, he does so at an advanced age and when his eye sight was already impaired. He tells Esav, lo yadati yom moti, I do not know the day of my death. Isaac—did you have to wait so long to bless your eldest? Ovadia Sforno, an Italian commentator of the 15th century, notes that a blessing that is delivered just before death is a blessing of superior quality. He reminds us that Jacob blessed his children just before death and Moses blessed the Children of Israel just before his death. Both choose propitious times to deliver a blessing, and Isaac seems to do the same. But why would a blessing before death be any better than a blessing recited with sincerity at any other time? Sforno teaches us that as one approaches death, the soul and the body begin to separate as the soul prepares for departure. And so a blessing that comes from the soul at the point of death is, in a sense, a blessing of deep spiritual quality, for it is already distanced from the constraints of the physical shell that contains it. It is no wonder that Isaac says to Esav, tevarekhekha nafshi b’terem amut, let my soul bless you before I die.

We don’t need to wait until the point of death before we bless our children. A blessing that comes from the heart is precious beyond gold no matter how often it is recited. But you know, there are souls that are in shape and there are souls in need of exercise. And a soul that has been given proper attention, via prayer and Torah study, will invariably be a soul more prepared to deliver a blessing of enduring worth. We need not wait until the time of death to have souls that are prepared to fully bless others. So let’s think about this… Are our souls in shape? Do we need to exercise them more? Are we delivering those blessings to our loved ones as regularly as we should?

I hope the answers to those questions are yes, and if not, I hope you will be able to answer yes to these questions, real soon.