Sometimes, the best way to understand the message of a book is to look at the beginning and the end. Genesis starts with the creation of the world and ends with Jacob blessing his children. From this, we learn that God is Sovereign over all, but the Torah will be about the family and nationhood drama of a particular people. But the brackets of Genesis also teach a remarkable and enduring lesson about human potential.
At the beginning of Genesis, blessing is the province of God. God blesses Adam and Eve in the garden, Noah with salvation, and Abraham and Sarah with a child. When Isaac blesses Jacob, there is great disruption, and we begin to see the seeds of a change.
Now as Genesis concludes with Jacob blessings his children, we finally understand. God blesses us so that we can bless one another. Ultimately, as a Hasidic Rabbi once put it, we are God’s hands in this world.
Human beings can bless one another not because we are the source of blessing, rather because we are the conduits. Blessing moves through us; imperfect, flawed, limited people, we can nonetheless act as the prisms through which Divine light shines.
When a parent blesses a child on Friday night, or a visitor to the hospital blesses a patient with healing, we are carrying on the tradition of Genesis. We have moved from a world in which all blessings are directly from God to a world in which we can – indeed we must – learn to bless one another. Genesis does not only move from creation to Israel, and from family to nation. It moves from supernal blessing to human blessing.
Once in the halls of my synagogue, a congregant, Hamid Soomekh who has since passed away, stopped me as I walked by. He put his hands on my head and with fervor intoned the Birkat Cohanim, the Priestly blessing. I felt blessed and the impression stays with me, as my father’s blessing each Friday night stays with me. We can bless one another today, as Jacob did thousands of years ago. Genesis teaches that people are channels in this world for goodness beyond ourselves. May we spread it in this new year.
