How Shall We Bless Those Who Come After Us?

According to Jewish tradition, on the eve of Shabbat and holidays, before reciting kiddush, parents bless their children.

You can find these blessings in Mishkan T'filah, the siddur (prayer book) of the Reform Movement. There you will see that sons are blessed with these words: "May God inspire you to live like Ephraim and Manasseh."¹ Rashi teaches that the blessing for boys is based on Genesis 48:20 in this week's parashah, when Jacob blesses his grandsons, the sons of Joseph.

There is no equivalent blessing for daughters in the Five Books of Torah. But there is a blessing in the Book of Ruth (4:11) that comes close: "May God make the woman who is coming into your house [Ruth] like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built up the House of Israel." And so in many Jewish homes today, one or both parents offer this blessing found in Mishkan T'filah² to their daughters: "May God inspire you to live like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah."

I remember the first time that I witnessed this ceremony. When we were graduate students in Israel, my wife Terry and I were invited to Shabbat dinner at the home of dear friends in Tel Aviv. I was spellbound as the father placed his hands on the heads of his children and spoke those blessings. At that moment, I felt a profound connection to my Jewish past and future, and to my family. I promised myself in that dining room in Tel Aviv that if we were fortunate enough to have our own children, I would offer those blessings to our offspring.

Beyond my own family, the most powerful moment that I have experienced with these blessings was in 1983 when Terry and I sat in the Moscow apartment of Itzik Kogan, one of the leaders of the refusenik movement in the Former Soviet Union. We had flown to there to bring support to refuseniks: the women, men, and children who were demanding the right to emigrate to Israel in order to lead full Jewish lives. Itzik placed his hands upon the heads of his children and offered roughly the same blessing as Jacob had pronounced. As he did so, this father was saying, in effect: "We will make whatever sacrifices we must in order to live freely as Jews. We are determined that our children will live proudly in the Jewish State."

Itzik never knew when the KGB, the Soviet secret police, might knock on his door and take him away for interrogation, or worse. The threat we face in North America is not such a knock on the door. But we do confront the real possibility that our children and/or grandchildren will not be Jewish.³

If we want there to be Jews in North America a hundred years from now, we need to do everything we can to make Judaism joyful and relevant. One great way to do that is to place our hands on the heads of our children and grandchildren (or in their absence, nieces, nephews, or even children of friends, of course, with permission). With this blessing, we ask God to inspire them to perform acts of tikkun olam, and to experience the joy that flows from Shabbat and the wisdom that streams from study of Torah.

You don't have to be a rabbi or a cantor to offer a blessing. You do it when you say the HaMotzi prayer over bread or the brachah over candles. You can make up your own blessing. But most of us probably don't do it often enough, or at all, because we feel self-conscious or uncertain about what it means.

With his blessing, Jacob asked God to help him do what he could not do by himself. At the Shabbat table, we cannot take God's place, but neither can God take the place of a parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle. Offering a blessing is an opportunity to be in a covenantal partnership with God.

Rabbi Laura Geller asks why we bless our sons in the name of Ephraim and Manasseh? Perhaps, she says, "because these are the first two siblings in the Bible who do not fight. With Ephraim and Manasseh, the family pathology that unfolds in the Book of Genesis, in which siblings struggle with each other, finally comes to an end. They teach us that we do not have to fight over blessings: there are enough of them to go around."⁴

That's quite a nice thing to remember about those two fellows. What do we want our lives to teach those who come after us? After we have passed on, when those who knew us and loved us invoke our name, how would we like to be remembered? What values of ours do we hope will be passed down to the next generation? What are the things we have done that we hope will live on in the lives of those who follow us? What will be our immortality?

We have reached the conclusion of the Book of Genesis. In synagogues throughout the world, as the Torah reading concludes, we recite these words: Chazak, chazak, v'nitchazeik, "Be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen one another."

I wish for you strength. And I wish for you the blessing of being part of a synagogue and Jewish community where we strengthen each other and the world around us.

1. Elyse D. Frishman, ed., Mishkan T'filah (New York: CCAR Press, 2007), p. 603. Note that the transliteration of "Manasseh" was changed for consistency.
2. Ibid., p. 603
3. See the recently issued report of the Pew Research Center
4. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, Andrea L. Weiss, ed., The Torah: A Women's Commentary (New York: WRJ/URJ Press, 2008), p. 300)

Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff , past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and of ARZA, is rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, Westfield, New Jersey. He is vice-president for special projects at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and author of When Elijah Knocks, A Religious Response to Homelessness (Behrman House) and Reform Judaism, A Jewish Way of Life, (Ktav).