Rabbi’s Corner

Rabbi’s Corner: Back in Blessing

By Rabbi Daniel A. Weiner

DANIEL A. WEINER

SENIOR RABBI

I usually tune out from the few commercials I’m forced to endure on the little broadcast television I still watch, but this one cut through the filters that sustain my sanity in these stimuli-saturated times.

Accompanying the images of unmasked families enjoying unhealthy chain-dining cuisine was a meta-melody—one that elicited the very nostalgia that was its subject. It was John Sebastian’s twangy, folky ode to yesteryear, “Welcome Back,” serenading an on-thenose celebration of our post-pandemic longing to get out and feel normal again, fortified by a blooming onion and stuffed potato skins. But cleverly, it was also a trigger for Boomer nostalgia for the 1970s, when it served as the theme song for the classic sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter,” a Proustian madeleine projecting many of us back to the era of big cars, little gas, disco suits, and the other kitschy artifacts of our halcyon days.

Though I won’t link a similar hot hit of the 70’s to our return to Temple, I feel I need to qualify my impulse to “welcome all of us back” in that we never really left. Though cyber-shul was less than ideal, we celebrate our success in moving much of our communal life online, offering ease of use to greater numbers than in the pre-pandemic world of physical space. But there is an undeniable sense that we are returning to home from someplace else—joining together again in ways that are deeper and more enduring than what Zoom and best intentions could offer.

To welcome back blends memory with imagination, a reclamation of the past towards a re-embrace of the future. And our tradition adds an additional layer of meaning and purpose to this concept, for welcoming is more than a gracious gesture of return. We say:

Bruchim Ha-baim—Blessed are those who

come. To offer a blessing is more an aspiration than an imperative, more a hopeful plea to God than an invoking of divine power. It amplifies the gesture of welcome beyond politeness and etiquette to encompass gratitude for reunion and reconnection. Such a blessed welcoming reveals an awareness of the tenuousness of life, the uncertainty that is inherent in our being. And it is an affirmation of the fortune, fate, or Force that has enabled us to come together again as a Temple family—hopefully a bit wiser, more road-tested, and more resilient for the trials of our absence.

And so, in welcoming all of us back to Temple with the blessing of Bruchim HaBaim, we celebrate what is renewed, offer thanks for the ties that bound us while we were apart, and pray that we are strengthened by the challenges that have forged us as we, once again, walk our shared path toward the promise that lies ahead.