Let's bless each other – endlessly...!
by Cindi Sutter, Founder & Editor of Spirited Table® - content written by Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin - director@chabad.org
Rosh Hashana link here
So many of us today are feeling distressed, their lives disrupted. Anxious and unsettled about the present, many worry about the future.
Rosh Hashanah arrives this Sunday night (Sept. 9) not a moment too soon.
We will beseech G-d to grant us a Happy, Healthy and Sweet New Year. We will explicitly request that He grant us tranquility. And surely He will!
But our Sages teach us that in order to achieve the maximum return on our prayers, we must also take firm, resolute action, to ‘prime the pump,’ to increase in our mitzvot.
So here’s an idea to establish some new facts on the ground, jumpstart a better year and encourage and facilitate G-d’s blessing:
Let us all simply, right here and now, bless everyone we know. That’s right: Let’s shower one another with blessings!
Regardless of how we've been treated by others or how we've treated them, irrespective of what we think of others' views or what they think of ours, let us each bless everyone we know: Friend, foe and everyone between.
Once. Twice. And again.
The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, taught deeply and passionately of the impact the act of blessing has on our interpersonal relationships – helping us to discover and focus on the inherent goodness contained in every single person, and of the tangibly transformative effect the blessings have on each recipient, on the one who offers blessing, and on the entire universe.
Our heartfelt blessings to each other have the power to elicit from G-d His deepest blessings to each of us individually, to all of us as one, and to the world in its entirety.
Boy, could our world use this positive energy now! Let's flood the world with blessing, and G-d will surely reciprocate!
We’d be remiss if we didn't point out another very poignant form of blessing, the one elicited by the holy act of charity. Giving of our own hard-earned resources to the “other,” tangibly demonstrating that we are all one, brings immense additional blessing to the giver, and helps further saturate the entire world with goodness and blessing.
The potent, blessed combination of charity and blessings holds the potential to heal our world and usher in a year of goodness and happiness.
One more thing: It is an age-old Jewish tradition to pray at the resting place of the righteous before Rosh Hashanah. It would be our pleasure to help get your personal prayer petitions to the Rebbe's resting place. You can reply to this email, or click here to send your letter. Please be sure to include the Jewish names and mother's names for each person you are praying for (or the father's names of each non-Jewish person you are praying for).
May you and all yours be inscribed and sealed for a good and sweet New Year, a year of unity and tranquility!
On behalf of all your friends and family at Chabad.org,
Sincerely,
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin
Director