Rainey Blogs on Some Days

This was a written and read at a men’s meeting at our church in April 2008 on the topic of “Our Need for Friendships and How Governor Eliot Spitzer Fell.” If a Jew has not seen a friend in over 30 days, tradition calls on that person to greet that friend with this blessing: "Praised are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings the dead back to life." The blessing is a response to the rabbis' belief that when we lose touch with a friend, we lose a little bit of ourselves too. The author went on to explain: "To renew contact is to reawaken the part of us that no one but our friend animates. For each friend enlivens a specific constellation of our spiritual lives, impulses, our desires, our strengths, our hopes, and our memories." As I thought about this, I felt the rabbis were on to something important. What they seem to suggest is that the richness of a person's life is determined by the friendships they have. The blessing affirms this b...