D'var Torah for Shiva Minyan for a Congregant
We are saddened by the unexpected passing of Zerina Wolirsky and extend our deep condolences to her husband Paul, and to her entire family.
Proverbs 31:10--31
(10) A woman of valour who can find? For her price is far above rubies. (11) The heart of her husband safely trusts in her, And he has no lack of gain. (12) She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. (13) She seeks wool and flax, And works willingly with her hands. (14) She is like the merchantships; She brings her food from afar. (15) She rises also while it is yet night, And gives food to her household, And a portion to her maidens. (16) She considers a field, and buys it; With the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
Our parashah, or Torah portion for this coming week is parashat Lech Lecha, where God speaks to Avram (later named Abraham), saying ’Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.’
The Talmud tells us that ‘And I will bless those who bless you’ means that God will bless the priests who bless Israel, and and the phrase ‘I will bless those who bless you’, found in the book of Numbers 6:27, means that the priests will bless Israel and God will concur with them.
We learn from this that we, as a nation of priests, are given the ability from God to be a conduit for blessing. We can become people who bless others with the lives that we live and the many actions that we take over the course of our lives.
Zerina was a woman who lived a life of blessing. She served as a leader to several communities, many of them Jewish communities. She was a past president of Haddasah at her resident community, Canal Walk, an important organization for Jewish women across the world. She was committed to her family. She gave and received a lifetime of blessings.
The poet Mary Oliver writes:
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
to let it go, to let it go.