A Message from Rabbi Yitzhak (June-July, 2007)

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Moments of Awe and Wonder

So often, I find myself scurrying across the surface of my days hurriedly paying attention to a seemingly ever-increasing list of things to do. I know that I’m hardly alone in this experience. I so often encounter friends and members of our community that appear stressed with the number of commitments they are attempting to honor while having little time for reflection and appreciation of the value and the infinite depth of the moments that fill our busy days.

In the medicine cabinet of our tradition, one of the primary treatments for this ailment is the power of saying blessings. Our tradition prescribes an MDR (Minimum Daily Requirement) of one hundred blessings each day. On the surface this might sound like a burdensome and intimidating expectation that could cause one to feel quite alienated from our tradition. But consider the possibilities, the potential positive impact of this tradition. There are blessings for countless occasions. Upon seeing a beautiful animal or a rainbow, our custom is to say a blessing. Upon smelling a fragrant flower or seeing a person who is of unusual physical form, there is a blessing. Upon sipping water from a fountain or seeing the ocean there is a blessing. Even greeting a friend after a long absence is cause to say a blessing. The list goes on and on offering countless moments of opportunity to experience and to cultivate a sense of awe. The point of all of this is to awaken us to awe and wonder even as we rush along our busy days. In a sense, blessings are a Jewish form of meditation practiced in the midst of our seemingly commonplace activities. They offer us moments of WOW! And remind us to pay attention and to be fully present as we experience common everyday experiences. Blessings cultivate in us a sense that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called “radical amazement.”

Our tradition understands awe as the beginning of wisdom and a gateway to faith. These words of the great Rabbi Heschel help us understand this idea, “The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life, or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”

We are given moments of special awareness to remember how awesome and miraculous it is to be alive and what a gift it is to be within the weave of this magnificent creation. A blessing can serve as a little stop sign encountered, as we are about to experience something that may be seemingly mundane. It is a moment to pause and gain perspective about an action we are about to undertake. It is a moment of pause allowing for the elevation of our life experience by pointing to the preciousness of experiences we may otherwise take for granted. It is a gateway to awe. The simple act of eating an apple becomes far more than simply nourishing our body. It opens to a moment of realization, bringing one to wonder about the tree that gave this fruit, the seed from which that tree grew, the rain and sunshine that nourished the sapling and the earth that embraced its roots as they spread. Ultimately, this inexhaustibly expanding sense of wonder leads one to encounter ultimate questions about life, leaving us at the threshold of awe as we glimpse the miraculous nature of life. It can be a joyful and enlivening experience to simply pause in our busy pace and wonder. So, I wish you each a wonder filled summer with many awesome moments of inspiration.

Shalom,
Rabbi Yitzhak