This, you say, is a blessing? V’zot Ha’brakhah

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday just before the Jewish New Year started. The significance of this was not lost on those of us who observe and follow the Jewish calendar. 

So many of us mourn her death. We know how she held on so, so tight, through numerous bouts of cancer, to the very end, trying to make it through until the elections. But we ask, How could she die now? The dread associated with her death adds to the other dreads we’ve been carrying. 

“V’zot Ha’brakhah,” begins the last Torah reading of the year: “This is the blessing that Moses, man of God, gave the Israelites before he died.”

There is a tradition that says that God arranges for the righteous, the tzaddikim, to die right before or after a new year begins. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a woman of God, for sure.

But is this the blessing RBG is giving us? Her death??

Indeed, the new year is a turning point, and the tradition states that she will be able to help more from the “other side” in a more widespread way. 

On Saturday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I went to the park and sat with my machzor, the prayer book for the High Holy Days, reviewing and preparing for the next day when I would be leading a Rosh Hahsanah service for my first time. I sat leaning against a huge boulder, the kind that inspires awe with its height and breadth, feeling the support and energy of this rock, and I thought, “This is what our prayers mean when we say to God, “You are the rock of our salvation.” 

Rocks are solid. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was rock solid. 

But the story doesn’t end there. To my amazement, as I sat there on the ground, my knees bent in front of me, a tiny yellow bird, probably a finch, flew over and landed directly on the toe of my shoe, not 3 feet from my face. It sat there looking at me, cocking and turning its head back and forth as birds do, and after about eight seconds, it left as quickly as it had come and disappeared into the tall bushes across the path. It was an experience I will never forget. It felt as if the bird were talking to me. 

“What does it mean??” I asked a friend. And she looked it up for me: yellow birds carry messages of personal power, and they show up in your life when you feel defeated, are confronting someone who is suppressing your potential, or you are scared because you are starting something new. They come to remind us that we are stronger than we think and that we can make it through the storm. 

I laughed with delight at the thought because I was feeling all these things personally at the moment: That there was someone trying to suppress my potential, that I do have a fear of being defeated, that I am starting something new, and it’s all more than a little bit scary. Could I make it through the storm? 

The next day, I led that Rosh Hashanah service in Central Park to a group of almost 20 people. It was a great triumph for me. It was scary. I was not defeated. 

But I’m not special. Everyone has way more power than they think. That bird came to remind me of mine, and I am passing on the message to you. 

May we open ourselves to the indomitable spirit of RBG and allow it to flow through us and spread among us.

Thank you, Ruth, for the work you’ve done on earth. We will carry it on. 

We have not been defeated.