Breathing New Life: A Blessing for Cheshvan

Yet the Jewish story invites us to imagine that even where we cannot see a way forward, a path may open — and we may find the ruach, and heart, to take it.

In Genesis, the force of life comes to us through a constellation of physical sources: breath, wind, water, and trees, to be precise. Human beings are animated by the “breath of life” in the Garden of Eden, where the “tree of life” also grows. Isaac’s servants discover a well of “living water.” And the creatures who enter Noah’s ark carry within them the “ruach of life.” But what exactly is this ruach?

By process of elimination from the list above, you can already tell, if you didn't know before, that ruach means wind. But it also means "breath" and "spirit." And it isn’t the only Hebrew word that joins the physical act of breathing with the mystery of spirit: the neshama of life, the breath that animates the human in the Garden, also means "spirit." It's like how the Inuit language is known to have many words for "snow": in our ancient, enduring Hebrew mental model of the world, there is, wildly, more than one word that means both "breath" and "spirit." And, together, these two words constitute half of the portals by which the force of life, in the Book of Genesis, enters our physical world.

You'd be justified in asking here, as we live through this time of extraordinary upheaval, entrenched polarization, climate catastrophe, and violent extremism, why, precisely, you're being asked to contemplate the wind.

Consider a pair of moments in the Exodus story. At the beginning, the Israelites are unable to hear the promise of liberation because of hard labor and constriction of ruach — constriction of their collective breath and spirit. Just a handful of chapters later, at the edge of the sea, ruach is powerful, expansive enough to part the waters. Between A and B, something seismic shifted for the people.

Read together, these two plot points map a vector of liberation and invite us to ask: what makes that movement possible? What can we open within ourselves? What can inspired leadership make possible? And where might we encounter help beyond our own power?

None of us knows what will happen this week, let alone over the next five or fifty years. The Jewish people, like all peoples who have walked through many epochs, have known tremendous change: sometimes for worse, sometimes for better, sometimes with mixed blessings. We cannot know where the winds of change will carry us. Yet the Jewish story invites us to imagine that even where we cannot see a way forward, a path may open — and we may find the ruach, and heart, to take it.

With this new moon of Cheshvan, may you be blessed with new life. May the cooling days and longer nights inspire an awe of the seasons — seasons of earth, seasons of sky, seasons of civilization, and seasons of life.

May we each be blessed to find and enact our unique role in the great unfolding of life.

May we be blessed with models of leadership that create the conditions for the best in us to emerge.

And whatever name we give to the mystery beyond us — God, Spirit, nature, the universe — may we feel held by loving arms beneath the chaos, bearing us steadily on.

With each and every breath, may you be blessed with life.

— Yaakov Ginsberg-Schreck Founder & Executive Director