“A Blessing For Love,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

January 9, 2026 | 22 Tevet 5786

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can also listen to it as a podcast.

This I share with you the blessing I had the honor of offering at the inauguration of Mayor Wu of Boston.

A Blessing for Love

Though we can’t hold it or see it
like an object before our eyes,
we know love because we feel it,
sense it, experience it and believe in it.
Love is part of our moral compass and leads us
to act in such a way that we bring others in
rather than push them away.

Love is a command offered in sacred texts
in many traditions whose ideas we all can share.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

What is hateful to you, do not do to another.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

None of you truly believe until you love
for your brother and sister what you love for yourself
and
We are the result of the love
of thousands of generations.

All those before us
whose acts of kindness, justice, and caring
sent that love into the future for each of us to receive it.
As much as we are their descendants,
we also become the ancestors to those after us.
This is our sacred responsibility.

What kind of love will we perpetuate for our neighbors,
our brothers and sisters, our families,
our city and our world?
Today, our actions toward one another
informed by our own experience
and desire for love and compassion
set in motion the embrace we offer.

Holy One of Blessing, Your Presence fills all creation,
let us feel the love that surrounds us,
moves through us and with us.
May that love inspire our sacred power
to walk in ways of goodness.
May we recognize that we hold the blessing of love
manifest every day in a bond of interconnectivity
that grows and blossoms as we help one another.

Holy One of Blessing, may you be with our mayor
so that she knows and feels that love
joined by our love
so that we take these teachings from our traditions
and apply them to her:

Love your mayor as you love yourself
Act toward the mayor as you would have
the mayor act toward you.

***Ok, you get the idea.

We, and she, and all those who work tirelessly
on behalf of our glorious city of Boston
are the blessings of love.

So may it be. Ken yehi ratzon, Amen

Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום

I welcome your thoughts and experiences here.

Rabbi Elaine Zecher