Shalom Chaverim,
The “highlight” of this week’s Torah portion, Nasso, is something you are all familiar with: The Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing of the people of Israel.
You know the one [from Numbers 6:24-26]…
May the Eternal bless you and protect you;
May the Eternal’s Face give light unto you and show you favor;
May the Eternal’s Face be lifted toward you and bestow upon you Peace.
In fact, the original Hebrew is even more concise and sublimely structured, with the first line composed of only 3 words, the second line 5 words, and the last line 7 words. The first word is “יְבָרֶכְךָ֥” – ye’varechecha, “may [God] bless you”, and the concluding word is “שָׁלֽוֹם” – shalom, “peace”.
There is yet another crucial insight we learn from the ‘structure’ of this blessing. The priestly blessing concludes chapter 6 of Numbers, and the Torah portion itself concludes at the end of chapter 7 by emphasizing that the words of Torah – including the words of our priestly blessing – are transmitted to Moses when Moses comes to the Tent of Meeting and hears the Voice of God speaking to him from atop the Ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubim.
Comparing the closing verses of these back-to-back chapters perhaps provides the answer to the question so many of us have: Why do we need the Cohen priests to ask God for God’s blessing on our behalf? Isn’t this prayer asking God for a blessing rather than suggesting that the priests themselves are bestowing some magical blessing on us?
Perhaps the kol ha-medaber, the Voice of God in the Holy of Holies, speaking to Moses from the space between the face-to-face cherubim, is what reverberates in the cadences of the priestly blessing for the people, from the face-to-face space between kohen and community. From the face-to-face encounter, from the face-to-face greeting.
Noted philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who was deeply learned Jewishly, based his entire philosophy of ethics on the face-to-face encounter. Martin Buber, too, found holiness residing in the dialogical encounter between two people, in an intimate, authentic face-to-face relationship of true communication.
And perhaps, if we listen carefully, if we look carefully, whenever in life there is a true face-to-face relationship between people, between ourselves and another, we may hear the bat kol– the small echo of this Voice – affirming indeed that God is lifting up the Eternal countenance, blessing us in that moment, in that encounter with the other, and bestowing upon God’s creatures a measure of the Holy One’s most precious blessing, the blessing of shalom.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Michael Schwartz