Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld Blessing for Rosh Hashanah
Dear friends,
As we move into this new month and this new year, I am thinking about wells.
I am thinking about the ways in which Torah itself is a sustaining well of water. But I am also thinking about each of us as an ever-flowing well—a be’er mayim hayim, a well of living water.
Many of the Hasidic masters speak about the importance of making ourselves, as learners, into living wells. We must become not only borot—cisterns striving to catch and contain as much water as possible—but be’erot, with an aleph: living wells that draw upon a deep and sustaining reservoir that can never be depleted.
There is a rabbinic interpretation of a verse from the Book of Ecclesiastes that reflects a related insight. The verse as it appears in Ecclesiastes is Zechor et bor’echa—“Remember your Creator.” But in Tractate Sotah of the Talmud, it is also read creatively as Zechor et be’er’cha—“Remember your well.”
This ancient wordplay suggests something profound: To remember that you are a creature of God is also to remember that you come from an ever-flowing well.
As we move into this new month and this new year, I invite each of us to reflect: What might it mean to remember that we come from a deep and ever-flowing well?
Strikingly, wells are central to the Torah readings for Rosh Hashanah—and to much of the Book of Genesis that we will read over the coming weeks and months. What clues might these wells contain for our own process of renewal? What wisdom can we draw from them to help us unblock the life-giving waters stirring within us?
The well that features prominently in the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah is the well that miraculously appears to Hagar after she and Ishmael have been sent into the desert by Abraham and Sarah:
“God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”
What would it mean to remember that we come from this well?
This well does not flow from Hagar’s hard work. Nor does it necessarily flow from her faith. Hagar is no longer capable of either. Her despair is so deep that she cannot even bear to look at—much less accompany—her own child in his moment of distress.
Sometimes, when we are most parched, most lost, teshuvah means remembering that we come from this well: the well that is always there and has always been there, waiting for us to open our eyes to a possibility we hadn’t seen before, an alternative we hadn’t imagined, a source of sustenance we hadn’t dared to let ourselves thirst for.
On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, we will read about the binding of Isaac—the terrifying moment at the top of Mount Moriah from which father and son are unable to return together. That story is punctuated by impenetrable silences that we will never fully fathom. Abraham’s silence. Isaac’s silence. Sarah’s silence.
But a few weeks later, we encounter Isaac again. After a long absence, he returns from a place called Be’er L’Chai Ro’i—the very place where the well had appeared to Hagar, the place she had named “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” Some commentators understand this to have become Isaac’s regular place of prayer after the Akeidah.
Not long after this, we read:
“Isaac dug anew the wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them.”
What might it mean to see ourselves as coming from these wells?
What might it mean to join Isaac on his journey as he returns—after all that has happened—to dig once again in his father’s wells, to let them flow with water again, to call them by the names he remembered from a childhood lost long ago?
This, too, is part of the journey of teshuvah: remembering that we come from the deep wells of our own past. Our mothers and fathers also had mothers and fathers, and our own waters carry their wisdom and their wounds. If we want to dig within ourselves a well of living water, we may need to return to old wells that have become sealed and blocked.
Teshuvah beckons us to remember that we come from all of these wells, there to be rediscovered, repaired, and renewed for as long as we are granted life.
Sometimes this entails an act as small and brave as opening our eyes, as we learn from Hagar.
Sometimes it entails digging into our past, uncovering the wells of our fathers and mothers, as we learn from Isaac.
And as we journey through the cycle of Torah readings in the coming year, still others will teach us what it means to stand at the well:
Rivka, with a rush of generosity and a strong and steady hand on the rope.
Jacob, with a burst of tears and strength he didn’t know he had.
Moshe, in a wordless encounter of loneliness and love.
Ma’ayan ganim.
Be’er mayim hayim.
May you remember that you are a garden spring, a well of living water.
May you discover and draw upon the deep, clear waters that flow from within and beyond us all.
May you be renewed for a year of sweetness and life.
Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld is President of Hebrew College in Newton, MA.
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