A Teaching for the Month of Sh’vat as we stand again together at Sinai :

As we celebrate the month of Sh’vat together and prepare for our T”u Bishvat seder, we are reminded that the essence of this celebratory meal is for us to affirm our essential task in sustaining the Universe.  We bring thanks and mindfulness to the gifts of trees and their fruits.  The Rabbis taught us that if we eat without a blessing, we are like robbers, taking that which is not ours. The Kabbalists teach us that our blessings maintain the flow of life force and bounty into the world.    

The Chernobler Rebbe[1] reminds us that everything contains a spark of holiness.  When we taste food, the sweetness that we taste is this spark of Divine vitality.  When we attend fully to the godly nature of our food – the underlying intention of blessing food before we eat it – our life force can then be fully augmented by the holy sparks in the food as we elevate those sparks back to their Source.

This is the lesson we learn, too, in our cycle of Torah readings.  When the Israelites received the Transmission at Sinai, they were enjoined to live a infused with the awareness of Divinity – “I am YHVH…there are no other gods” [Exodus 20 2-3].   Our core nature is Divine and so is our food.  Gratitude and awareness is how we stay connected to this truth.

With blessing for maintaining a wise-hearted connection to trees and fruit and all of nature,

Rabbi SaraLeya
12 Sh’vat 5771
January 17, 2011

[1] My thanks to Rabbi Margie Jacobs for showing me this text from Parashat Matot by Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl (1730-1897).