Blessing
When the upper root
And the lower root find each other
They meet at the inner point of truth.
Yes, this is it
The inner point of truth
Will open onto Every-thing
And it will be a secret gracious wisdom.
Yes, this is it
The inner point of truth will lift us into Every-thing
Within and around a seamless version of the Whole
And every individual will be known as a version of G*d.
Yes, this is it
____________
In every place where God dwells there is wholeness.
Wholeness, she-lei-mut [shalom] comes through the vehicle of blessing. It is the inner point of truth.
—Sefas Emes on SukkotLit. Booths or huts Sukkot is the autumn harvest Festival of Booths, is celebrated starting the 15th of the Jewish month of Tishrei. Jews build booths (sukkot), symbolic of the temporary shelters used by the ancient Israelites when they wandered in the desert. Traditionally, Jews eat and sleep in the sukkah for the duration of the holiday (seven days in Israel and eight outside of Israel). The lulav (palm frond), willow, myrtle, and etrog fruit are also waved together.
Shalom-shleimut, the inner point of truth, the particular that opens to the Universal.
—Sefas Emes on Naso
Within every person a living point, n’kudat hayot.
—Sefas Emes on Haazinu
From the Sefas Emes, the Truthful Linguist
And another:
Blessing in Three
Numbers 6:24
May G*d blow your mind
and expand your limits daily
May G*d’s face light up within you
What was obscured by
Ab-so-lute certainty
May G*d’s face be tilted to you
And send you deeper within
Blessed with an insatiable hunger
To grow and learn
[whisper: May this be G*d’s will for you]
__________________
Of course I’ll bring the prayer,
I said, I was thinking of her
and what she must bring
to all the prayers.
The first word of the prayer
is in the jussive mood, I told her,
may G*d bless, etc.
The jussive has a gentler urgency
Than imperative. I was beginning
to feel boring. Didactic.
I love the jussive in other languages.
In English it is treacly but in ancient languages it has a sense of coaxing
for what we are asking for, rolling off the imperative.
Come on, bring it. Please.
She’s a survivor of Auschwitz.
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