The Priestly Blessing
Numbers 6:23-27 “May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord shine His countenance upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord display kindness toward you and grant you peace.
יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ. יָאֵר יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וִיחֻנֶּךָּ. יִשָּׂא יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם .דברים ו,כג
On April 7, 2015 Haaretz newspaper reported, “More than 75,000 Israelis and tourists went to the Western Wall yesterday morning to receive the priestly blessing – birkat hakohanim in Hebrew. Hundreds of kohanim – Jewish men thought to be descended from the line of the biblical Aaron, who are often referred to as Jewish priests because of their prominent role in ancient Temple worship – recited the blessing.”
The priestly blessing - three verses, fifteen Hebrew words in all – distills the sacred and the poetic into a moving benediction which was delivered daily by the priests in the ancient Temple service. As they recited the blessing, they raised their hands over the congregation, separating their four fingers to form a ‘v’ shape. Some scholars trace this custom back to the Exodus of Egypt, when the fleeing Israelites may have been joined by the persecuted priests of the cult of the sun god Ra. In this brief Egyptian flirtation with monotheism, worshipping priests looking into the sun protected their eyes by peeking only through their slightly opened fingers. A mystical, mysterious gesture, it may have been adapted by the early Israelite priests on their journey into the wilderness.
The raising of the hands still accompanies the recitation of the priestly blessing in the synagogue today. It made a big impression on young Leonard Nimoy; later on in his life, it inspired Dr. Spock’s famous Vulcan Salute. Here’s how Nimoy experienced it:
“So I’m with my father, my grandfather, and my brother, sitting in the bench seats—women were upstairs. Five or six guys get up on the bimah, the stage, facing the congregation. They get their tallits over their heads, and they start this chanting… And my father said to me, ‘don’t look’. So everyone’s got their eyes covered with their hands or their tallit down over their faces… And I hear this strange sound coming from them. They’re not singers, they were shouters. And dissonant… It was all discordant… it was chilling.
I thought, ‘something major is happening here.’ So I peeked. And I saw them with their hands stuck out from beneath the tallit like this… Wow. Something really got hold of me. I had no idea what was going on, but the sound of it and the look of it was magical.”
