I will bless those who bless you, he who curses you, I will damn. Without more than this, Abraham and Sarah set forth to travel to the place God will show them. As they take the lonely, and sometimes seemingly endless, journey within oneself, they show how the loss of external power is often requisite to finding personal power. And in this search for realization of self, the first Jews will find God. Five times in the creation story we hear the word light repeated.
Light helps birth a new universe, and blessing helps birth another world, the world of our people.
Blessing in Hebrew is brakhah , connected to the word, breikhah , a spring of water. As water flows to many, so shall the blessing given to Abraham and Sarah flow from heaven throughout the world. Brakhah is also related to berekh , or knee. We bend the knee to pray as a posture of obeisance and humility. Blessing requires both knowing the power and source of the spring , and it also depends upon having humility, which comes from setting forth into an unknown land and leaving everything behind.