The Priestly Blessing
STUDENT
SUMMARIES OF SICHOT OF THE ROSHEI YESHIVA
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Yeshivat Har Etzion
cordially invites you
to attend its Annual Dinner
Honoring Chief Rabbi
Lord Sacks
David '73 and Faye Landes
Rabbi Seth '96 and Leba Grauer
For
details see our website: www.thegushdinner.org
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With gratitude and
in honor of the bar mitzva,
this year b'ezrat Hashem, of our twin sons,
Michael and Joshua - Steven Weiner and Lisa Wise
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Parashat
NASO
SICHA OF HARAV
The Priestly
Blessing
Translated
by
“God
spoke to Moshe, saying: Speak to Aharon and to his sons, saying, Thus shall you
bless the Children of Israel. Say to them, ‘May God bless you and may He keep
you; May God cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious towards you; may
God lift His face to you and grant you peace.’ And they shall place My Name upon
the Children of Israel, and I shall bless them.” (Bamidbar
6:22-27)
Who
blesses the Jewish people? On one hand, we find, “Thus shall you bless… say to
them”; on the other hand, God concludes by saying, “and I shall bless them.” In
other words, it is God Who blesses the Children of Israel, via the
kohanim. The role of the kohanim here is to declare or recite to
the Children of Israel three verses, which “place God’s Name upon” them, and
following this “I [God] shall bless them”. What is the meaning of this process,
and what is the essence of the role of the kohanim?
Blessing
– “berakha” – means bringing down Divine influence or abundance
(shefa) into the world. A prerequisite for achieving this is an
acknowledgment on the part of those who receive this gift that its source is
from God. This acknowledgment causes further Divine influence or abundance to
descend into the world, and the cycle continues. A person who recites a blessing
is thanking God for the good that He has given, and in the wake of this
acknowledgment the person becomes worthy and deserving of further and continues
kindness from God.
The
role of the kohanim amongst the Children of Israel is an educational one:
“For the lips of the kohen shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek
instruction from his mouth” (Malakhi 2:7); “They shall teach Your
judgments to Yaakov and Your instruction to
1.
“May
God bless you and may He keep you.” Simply, this means Divine provision of
physical needs – food, physical health, sustenance.
2.
“May
God cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious towards you.” “Shining His
face” refers to spiritual illumination, “For a mitzva is [like] a candle, and
Torah is light” (Mishlei 6:23). “Graciousness,” too, is understood in
this context in the spiritual sense.
3.
“May
God lift His face towards you and grant you peace.” The “lifting of God’s face”
means peace, completion, perfection of all worlds. There are people who have
merited perfection in a certain sphere – whether the physical or the spiritual.
There are some people who have been whole in body and have enjoyed great
financial wealth, but have not achieved spiritual wholeness; there are also
those who have achieved the opposite. In other words, there are those who
achieve “blessing” but no “shining of the face,” while others achieve a “shining
of the face” but without “blessing.” A situation of perfection entails wholeness
in both spheres. As Chazal teach, where the Torah says that Yaakov “came
[to] Shalem” – he was ‘shalem’ (whole) in body, whole in his wealth, and
whole in his Torah” (Bereishit 33:18 and Rashi ad loc). Wholeness means
harmony throughout God’s world.
The
kohanim emphasize and repeat the source of all blessing, the source of
all Divine influence and abundance. “May GOD bless you,” “May GOD cause His face
to shine upon you,” “May GOD lift up.” Through this emphasis, they fulfill “They
shall place My Name.” God’s Name will be mentioned frequently amongst the
Children of Israel; they will know and understand that all goodness, blessing,
illumination, graciousness and peace emanate from Him. Those who recognize God’s
goodness and know that He is the source of goodness, will be blessed: “And I
shall bless them.” The secret to opening the floodgates of goodness is to
recognize and acknowledge goodness and the source of goodness. By educating the
Jewish people towards gratitude, the kohanim cause God to continue to
bless them.
This
idea would seem to be connected to the location of this unit within parashat
Naso. The preceding units deal with the guilt offering brought for
misappropriation of sacred property, the laws pertaining to a woman suspected of
adultery, and the laws of a nazirite. Each of these subjects involves some
dimension of crisis, of spiritual deficiency – defilement, monetary or sexual
lust, requiring atonement and/or separation.
The
priestly blessing, appearing after these units, comes as a repair for these and
similar human deficiencies. A person who constantly invokes God and is conscious
of His blessings, will attribute all goodness in the world to the Creator. A
person who recognizes that God is the source of all goodness will overcome his
desires and will not submit to them in ways that are forbidden; he will not be
led astray easily and will not come to sin.