This Ritual Life Archive
Welcome to This Ritual Life.
Here you will find out about ways to enhance your holiday experience, to celebrate or mark a meaningful life cycle event, and to deepen your experience of the everyday.
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Healing Relationships
Every relationship endures conflicts and disappointments that strain or wound. Being images of God, we can learn about mending a strained relationship from God’s reconciliation with humankind after the flood. God placed a rainbow in the clouds to remind us that the covenant, the eternal relationship between God and humanity, is strong enough to survive conflict. To mend after human conflicts, we need to see the "rainbows" between us and affirm: we can get past this.
Meditation
This is the sign of the covenant which I set between me and you…when the rainbow
is in the clouds, I will look at it and remember our covenant.
(Genesis 9:15,16)
The rainbow is a sign of peace, wholeness and permanence; it signals accepting limits for
the sake of healing a broken world.
(Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, The Jewish Way)
Hineh mah tov u’mah na’im shevet achim gam yachad.
It’s good to be together in relationship again.
Ritual
When a conflict has severely strained or wounded a relationship, and you succeed in coming together, even to sit in the same room or eat bread at the same table, dayenu! It is sufficient and admirable. This is particularly true for families that have been stressed by conflict: if you find yourselves together at a wedding, a seder, a birth, a funeral, dayenu! Just coming together once again is sufficient and admirable. Beyond this, be attentive to the "rainbows" between you, signs of enduring commitment: the same things that make you laugh, the concerns you share, your memories. If you the moment is right, speak of the "rainbows" you share or create new ones.
Blessing
(When you commit yourself to the possibility of mending your relationship)
Barukh atah zokher habrit.
Blessed are You who remembers that relationships are for keeps.
Help us see the rainbows between us, and to trust the power of our connection.
Teaching
Jacob and Esau had become bitter enemies, according to midrash. Childhood rivalries had
led to threats, fear and years of estrangement. But after decades of separation, they came
together. "Esau ran to greet Jacob. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he
kissed him. And they wept…and Jacob said…’I have seen your face, as one
sees the face of God.’"
(Genesis 33:4,10)
When two Babylonian sages disagree with each other about the law, there is no untruth
there. Each justifies his opinion. One gives a reason to permit, the other a reason to
forbid. One compares the case before him to one precedent; the other compares it to a
different precedent. It is possible to say, "Both speak the word of the living
God." At times, one reason is valid; at other times, another reason. For reasons
change in the wake of even only small alterations in the situation.
(Rashi’s commentary, Babylonian Talmud: Ketubot 57a)
Barukh atah zokher habrit.
Blessed are You who remembers relationship.
(CLAL Faculty)
CLAL's National Jewish Resource Center develops and publishes rituals that
help to bridge the gap between our contemporary lives and the ancient wisdom of the Jewish
tradition. We invite you to become a partner with us in thinking about the place of ritual
in our lives and in developing new ritual resources for our time. If you are interested in
being part of this exciting endeavor, visit with us in the Ritual Resource Area
of the CLAL website by clicking here.
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