When I was in rabbinical school, our mentors would tell us that we each had one sermon to give, and that we would have to figure out how to give that sermon in various ways throughout our lives. At the time, I found the instruction comforting, for I understood it to mean that our essential work was to be true to our own souls and our unique insight, and labor creatively to share that teaching over and again through our Torah.
What our mentors didn’t tell us is that we might find one, single verse through which we would strive to give that message in new ways, over and over again. I would have found that instruction to be frighteningly limiting, overwhelmingly challenging, and confusing. How could one verse yield new aspects of my one teaching, endlessly?
And yet, that is exactly what I am learning this year through my study and teaching* of the Birkat Avraham, Rabbi Avraham Weinberg (the third), as part of the Institute’s “Torah Study for the Soul,” created by Rabbi Jonathan Slater. Through his own study, Rabbi Slater discovered that every week, likely during the Seudah Shleesheet (the third meal on Shabbat afternoon – a special, tender time for study and prayer), Rabbi Weinberg would give a drash on the coming week’s sedra (Torah portion), through the lens of one particular verse: Psalm 69:14. “Va’ani tefilati Adonai et ratzon; Elohim b’rov hasdechah aneini b’emet yisheicha. As for me, may my prayer come to You, O YHVH, at a favorable moment; Elohim, in your abundant love, answer me with Your sure deliverance.” Psalm 69, verse 14 was for the Birkat Avraham a never-ending fountain of inspiration, truth and delight.
So what is the message, endlessly given, through a reading of these twelve words, turned over again and again, deconstructed, reimagined and variously emphasized, to yield an ever new presentation of the central insight at the core of Rabbi Weinberg’s soul?
Well, in truth there are a few core teachings that Rabbi Weinberg shares through the lens of this verse, but one of them is this: We have the power to work with our minds in such a way as to see God unfolding through all events that happen to us. We pray for the entrance into that awareness. Any time our prayer reveals to us the fundamental and overriding reality of hesed (love) is indeed, a favorable moment; and it is this that delivers us from suffering and delusion.
Now, this is not likely to be a message one hears once and “gets,” even through the brilliant investigation and serious Torah play of Rabbi Weinberg. Rather, it is a message one might hear and perhaps be inspired to try embodying through contemplative, devotional practice. But then, inevitably, the clarity of the teaching will slip away, and one will need to hear it yet again from the mouth of one whose life embodies it. Such reinforcement, such refinement is necessary for the constant deconditioning and reconditioning of our habits of perception. Which may be one reason Rabbi Weinberg, in his wisdom, comes back to share this teaching in so many different ways.
I am grateful for Rabbi Slater’s inspired translation and commentary of the Birkat Avraham, and am delighted to hear the echoes of Rabbi Slater’s one sermon through this Torah, as well. Curious? Subscribe! (email jonathan@jewishspirituality.org).
* I, like others in the Institute network, am teaching Birkat Avraham this year every week. That nearly twenty people show up every Tuesday morning at 8 am from far and wide, even through a New England winter, tells me that this year’s “Torah Study for the Soul” is truly inspired.
– Nancy Flam
Email newsletter February 2013