Blessing the Children

This is something I wrote last year that I wanted to share.

December 17, 2007

Blessing the Children

In this week's Torah Portion, VaYehi (Genesis 47:28-50:26), we come across the blessing the Jacob give to Manasseh and Ephraim. They are his grandchildren, the children of Joseph. The blessing they are given is:

"The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
The God who has been my shepherd from birth to this day -
The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm-
Bless the lads.

In them may my name be called,
And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth." (Genesis 48:15-16, JPS Translation)

Later on it continues:
"By you shall Israel invoke blessing, saying: God make (put/appoint) you like Ephraim and Manasseh." (Genesis 48:20)

And so it is that on every Friday night, we bless our children with the blessing that for boys begins: May God put/appoint you like Ephraim and Manasseh, and for Girls begins: May God put/appoint you like Sarah, Rebbecca, Rachel, and Leah. It continues: May God bless you and keep/guard you, May God illuminate his face (presence) for you and teach you, May God turn his face to you and put/appoint peace for you.

We were talking about this in class today and what does this actually mean. What was the blessing the two grandchildren received, and what exactly does it mean to bless someone like Ephraim and Manasseh?

People were throwing out some very good ideas of what it means to be blessed like these two, such as that these are the first example of brothers without sibling rivalry in the bible, so we should all be so lucky. Or that they were really fathers to our people, and we should all be blessed with such fertility. Or that they grew up comfortable and didn't really seem to experience many struggles or hardships, so we should all be blessed to have such uneventful lives. (We know very little about their lives as their only role in the bible is to receive these blessings, but given what others had to go through, that's maybe a good thing.)

I sat quiet for the first part of class because I was lost trying to figure out how I would bless my children. I mean, I say this blessing every week, and my wife always does a wonderful job of giving each of the girls their own personal blessing after I do the traditional one. Things like: "a week of health", "A week of good sleep", or "A week of new words." But I've never really thought about how I would want to bless my children. And I was at a loss.

I think often of the blessing I gave a good friend's daughter at her naming. There is a chassidic story that goes something like this: Reb Zusya was dying and was very anxious and worried. He was known far and wide as a tzaddik, a righteous man, and those around him said: don't worry, you have lived as righteous a life as Moses or King David, surely God will accept you into the world to come. When Reb Zusya heard that, he cried even more and answered: When I get to the world to come, I won't be asked if I've been a good Moses, I'll be asked if I've been a good Zusya. I'm worried if I was the best Zusya that I could be. My blessing for my friend's child was to be the best her that she could be.

I always thought that my blessing for my daughters was something similar to that one, it's how I try to parent, so it would make sense. But how then to make sense of this blessing that I say every week. It feels very powerful and I enjoy saying it, but how to make sense of it?

It then came to me to understand it slightly differently: not to be blessed like Ephraim and Manasseh, but to be blessed like they were blessed. Jacob blessed them by connecting them to his lineage, to his God and the God of his fathers. The Torah portion continues with Jacob's blessings to his own sons, which are pretty stark. Some of them even sound like curses, but these two boys were blessed with the connection to God, and with Jacob's spiritual lineage. And maybe that's why we are commanded to bless our children as they were blessed - we give our children our spiritual lineage, our connection to God and the Jewish people. It's a call to me to work on my own spirituality so that I have more to pass on. We are not commanded to bless our children to be any particular way, but we are blessing them to be connected to God like our forefathers and mothers were.

The blessing for daughters is then read that they should be blessed as our foremothers were blessed. Each of whom was blessed with a strong and powerful direct relationship with God. I will continue to try to help my daughters to be the best persons that they can be, and in terms of blessings, I'm not sure what else I could hope for other than a strong connection to God who can help them be the best them that they can be.