Choosing Blessing

Behar-Bechukotai

Thirty-five years ago this week, I stood at the bimah at my father’s synagogue in Oak Park, Illinois, and became a bat mitzvah. I chanted from this week’s Torah portion, Behar-Bechukotai — which ends the Book of Leviticus with a stark vision of blessings and curses.

My d’var torah (speech) that morning was about the choice between blessings and curses. I have always been drawn to language, and at the time, I read Bechukotai not as an if-then theology of reward or punishment, but as a reminder that our choices matter. Our language matters. The way we speak, the way we listen, the way we care for one another, and, in a community like ours, the way we honor the generations that came before us while nurturing and building for our youngest. These choices shape the kind of community we become, the examples we set, and the people we are.

In this sense, blessing is not only something we receive. It’s something we choose. With our words, our actions, and our gifts.

And, at GRS, we choose blessing when we show up for one another. When we refuse division. And when we teach our children that Jewish life and community are theirs: to inherit, to own, and to celebrate. We choose blessing when we pass on stories and language and song, and when we model kindness, inclusivity, and love.

That is why I love this Shabbat more than almost any other on our sacred calendar. This Friday night, we will celebrate our Consecration and Siddur Ceremonies at GRS. And as some of our smallest kids receive their siddurim, blessing becomes not an abstraction but a lived tradition: the passing down of language and lineage, a community gathered in support, and the reminder that Jewish life persists because we choose to nurture and prioritize it.

When I stood on the bimah 35 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined I would one day become a rabbi. I wanted to be a novelist. Three decades later, Behar-Bechukotai reminds me that if we bless our children with love, tenderness, and the sense that the tradition they are inheriting is a sacred gift, the choices they make as adults may surprise and delight us.

L’dor va’dor. In each generation, Judaism has always depended on Jews choosing Judaism. Choosing to learn, choosing to pray, choosing to gather, choosing to stand in solidarity when the world outside is hostile, and choosing to cherish and love this tradition so deeply that we pass it, with great tenderness, into the hands of our children.