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     This week's Torah portion, Hayyei Sarah surprisingly describes Abraham as blessed with everything. It is a particularly strange thing to say because his wife Sarah has just died. Like this week, it reflects that our lives are a mixture of triumphs and disappointments.
                    
                                                                                                  Michael   
                                                                                                  mjstrassfeld@gmail.com 
                                                                                      photo by Frank McKenna                                                          
                                             
Intention/kavana for the week
This week's practice is to cultivate hope and face the challenges of truth

From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
from the laziness that is content with half-truths,
from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
O God of truth, deliver us.
                          Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan

and it's worth repeating:
 Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
                        From the movie Shawshank Redemption
Song:

a nigun of Bobover hasidim
known as the mashiakh (messiah) nigun for its longing for better days. This is a different version than last week's. It has an added part and is up tempo which seems appropriate for this week.
(You can still hear last week's version on my website)
To listen to the song

 A word of Torah:    
        Abraham was now old, advanced in years, and God blessed Abraham ba-kol, in all things. [Gen. 24:1]

         What does it mean to be blessed “in all things,” ba-kol? After all, Abraham’s life, like that of all human beings, was filled with triumph and tragedy. His wife of many years, Sarah, has just died. Why now is Abraham described as being blessed in all things?
         Despite everything that had happened to him in life, he experienced his life as full with blessings. Abraham is the person of faith who is willing to leave everything behind in order to journey to an unknown land. His faith carries him throughout his life and brings to him, near the end of that life, a sense of years well lived and a life blessed with everything.
         At the end of his life, Abraham has achieved the blessing of ba-kol, of everything. In fact, his whole life is framed by the letters of lamed and khaf. At the beginning of his life, with those two letters he is told, lekh lekha, “go forth”. At the end of his life these same two letters are reversed; he is blessed with kol, “everything.” The blessing of ba-kol means that Abraham has achieved a clarity of vision to see all of life as a blessing from God. He has an equanimity about life.
         While we may never achieve that level, we still strive to come close to an understanding of the truth about ourselves, a truth that validates who we are in our failures and our successes. Yet, we desire to move beyond the acceptance of our present flawed reality to strive to be one of the children of Abraham.

          This was a momentous week in America. There was both triumph and defeats. There was no lopsided victory in the political arena. The challenges of the virus, inequality, justice and division are still with us. We need to take a moment to celebrate our successes even as we are inspired to work on what still needs to be done.

                   As Kamala Harris, Vice-President elect said:
“Every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
         Bimheirah be-yameinu—so may it speedily be true in our days.
 
 
 
Click here for additional readings
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