Post by Rabbi Neil on Jun 2, 2023 22:58:25 GMT
My relationship with the Priestly Blessing, which is found in this week’s Torah portion of Naso, is a complex one. My most vivid memory of its recitation was in an Orthodox shul in Jerusalem when I was in my early twenties. As it came to Birkat Cohanim – The Blessing of the Priests – all the Cohanim present went up to the Bimah, put their tallitot over their heads so that they could not be seen, spread their arms up high and began rocking while reciting the blessing in a low moaning voice. It was meant to be a solemn momentous moment of blessing, but I couldn’t help but think that they looked like a wall of ghosts who had come to haunt our service. The person next to me told me not to look – apparently that was the custom – but that just made me want to look even more. While the rest of the community around me sat heads hung low humbly not looking at this divine recitation, I sat there totally horrified. Who were these people to go up and give me a blessing, wobbling around moaning and groaning? What made them so special just because they were descended from one particular family? Why were the rest of the men around me so afraid to look, as though they wanted to avoid any possibility of seeing the face of God itself? There was a power dynamic in that moment that not only made me deeply uncomfortable but that felt totally isolating as a Reform Jew. The hierarchy in the ritual that I had apparently inappropriately witnessed was not my experience of Judaism at all. This was ancient, but not in a positive way for me.
That moment helped, at least in part, to define how I saw myself as a student Rabbi and then subsequently a Rabbi. Years later, an essay called Authority, Power and Leadership in the Jewish Polity: Cases and Issues, Daniel J. Elazar helped develop my feelings further. In that essay, Elazar said that there were three traditional crowns of Jewish authority – keter torah (the crown of Torah), keter kehunah (the crown of Priesthood) and keter malkhut (the crown of kingship / civil rule). Elazar explains that “the Crown of Torah is responsible for the communication of God's will to the community. Torah was communicated to the community first through the Eved Adonai (…the Servant of God, a title bestowed only on Moses and Joshua), then through the seers and the prophets, and ultimately through the sages and rabbis. [Meanwhile]… the keter kehunah – the Crown of Priesthood - is responsible for enabling the community to communicate with God, whether through sacrifices, prayer, or whatever. This domain is explicitly separated from the Crown of Torah by a separate covenant. The Crown of Torah was transmitted through Moses; the Crown of Priesthood was transmitted through Aaron.” Elazar explains that “After the destruction of the Temple and the disappearance of the priests as an active political force, the Priestly Crown ceased to have institutional embodiment for the community as a whole, but new institutions were developed in the communities, such as the chazan (originally the governor of the synagogue, now the reader or cantor) and the modern congregational rabbi, to carry out those purposes and to exercise authority in that domain.”
As I read this article, I was reminded that Rabbis aren’t priests. They can take on part of the traditional role of priests in terms of helping the community to communicate with God, but the role of a Rabbi is primarily to hold the Crown of Torah, not the Crown of Priesthood and the role of the priest is… or was… to help communicate with God through prayer and through sacrifice. And I’m not a priest. I’m really not. I’d be the worst priest. They’d be offering animals in front of me and I’d be all squeamish and I would have to smoke the meat and I’d probably burn it and not in a good burnt offering kind of way, and they’d offer me parts to eat and I’d refuse them as a vegetarian. I’d be the worst priest. But that’s not the reason I have difficulty in reciting the Priestly Blessing as we find it in Torah.
It is usually said that it’s not the priest who is blessing the people, but that the priest acts as a conduit for God’s blessing to the people, but I’m certainly no Divine conduit either. Conduit or no, Moses Maimonides wrote (Hilchot T’midin U’Musafin 6:5) that during Temple times, the Priestly Blessing was recited after the priests had placed the offerings on the altar. In other words, it’s not really about being a Divine conduit but about giving approval to the sacrifice that has just been offered by the individual in front of the priest, which is why the blessing is in the singular form. So, reciting this blessing in its original format is an echo of the priesthood. It not only acknowledges the historicity of the priesthood but it also approves the priesthood. It denies the reality that the priesthood, thank God, is over.
The Priestly Blessing was the utterance of a male religious authority figure on another man who presented a clean and appropriate animal sacrifice. Placing identical words at the end of the prayer service, I have come to realize, would not only separate the clergy from the rest of the community, but would bring ancient masculine authoritarian approval into a progressive, pluralistic prayer service. We can see that from this week’s Torah portion, which starts with the census, with the counting of the male Gershonites whose task it is to preserve the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness, it briefly moves into an egalitarian mode when discussing whenever a man or woman commits a wrong, but then returns to form with the ritual of the woman suspected of adultery and the institutionally male response to the man’s insecurity. In that ritual, the priest is the authority responsible for the woman’s public humiliation. In the portion of Naso, we then return to egalitarianism with the Nazirite, the vow of abstention that can be taken by man or woman and then return once again to the priestly blessing which is in the male singular form because it’s the blessing for a man when he brings his sacrifice. I have come to realize that my dislike of the recitation of the original form of the Priestly Blessing is not only because of the ghostly men of specific DNA, or of the way it separates me from the rest of the community if I ask God to bless you and not us, or because of my discomfort at the idea of being a Divine conduit. At the core of my dislike of the original form of the Priestly Blessing is my profound dislike of the original expressions of keter kehunah, of the Crown of Priesthood.
The priest, to quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (https://www.rabbisacks.org/archive/kehunah-and-kedushah-the-priestly-role/), “sees God in revelation: in God’s word and will, His command. The task of the priest is to ensure that God’s will is done. He is an expert, a teacher, and a judge. Above all, however, he is a tender of holy spaces and holy times.” Rabbi Sacks adds that, “Among the most important words in the priestly vocabulary are kodesh and chol, holy and common, secular, everyday; and tahor and tamei, pure and impure, that is to say, a state that allows access to the holy and one that debars it.” And that’s my current problem with the priesthood and with the traditional Priestly blessing – because it’s an expression of gatekeeping. It’s approval from one group of men who were the keepers of God’s commandments. But that’s not how Judaism developed. The Priests as keepers of God’s commandments gave way to Rabbis who were interpreters of God’s commandments. Holy space is not created nowadays by having clergy set boundaries on pure and impure, but by a shared conversation on how we might encounter God together. The priest who says “May God bless you” in Torah is the same priest who publicly humiliates the woman suspected of adultery. “May God bless you” means “May God bless you since you behaved in the ways that were commanded to us and kept solely by us.” “May God bless you” in the context of Naso means “you didn’t rock the boat, you didn’t challenge the system, you did what you were told.” Part of me wonders if that’s why there’s a tradition of not looking at the priests when they recite that blessing – because if we looked long and hard enough at it, we would see the problems with it. Stare too hard at patriarchal domination and you expose it for what it is – a means of control through terms such a “pure and impure” or “holy and profane.”
Our is no longer a tradition of received control, but a tradition of exploration of the meaning of one extraordinary encounter. When we pray “May God bless us…” we do so not with the certainty of the priests but with the hope of the rabbis. We pray from a position of fragility… of the hope that what we have prayed today will bring blessing upon us. In so doing, we specifically separate ourselves from the institutionalized violence of the priests – specifically the violence towards anyone and anything that fell outside the normative male human paradigm. By praying “May God bless us…” we show revelation not as law but as creative opportunity, not as something in the past but something in the present moment. By praying “May God bless us…” we reject division and Othering and instead celebrate diversity. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I’m such a big fan of Aleinu near the end of the service – because it’s in the first person plural form – Aleinu… “It is upon us.”
Tonight, we say goodbye to Ziva as she heads off to Rabbinical school. Ziva, as you start your journey into the Rabbinate, we know that you will find your own unique path in between the Crown of Torah and the Crown of Priesthood. Anyone who knows you knows that you will challenge the gatekeeping, that you will stare long and hard at the patriarchal domination of our tradition and expose it for what it is. We know that in being part of this community for the last seven years that you have helped to bless us and keep us, that you have helped God’s face shine upon us and be gracious to us, and that you have helped lift up the Divine countenance toward us in order to give us peace. And with that in mind, with wishes of mazal, we share the traveller’s prayer as you go on your journey…
That moment helped, at least in part, to define how I saw myself as a student Rabbi and then subsequently a Rabbi. Years later, an essay called Authority, Power and Leadership in the Jewish Polity: Cases and Issues, Daniel J. Elazar helped develop my feelings further. In that essay, Elazar said that there were three traditional crowns of Jewish authority – keter torah (the crown of Torah), keter kehunah (the crown of Priesthood) and keter malkhut (the crown of kingship / civil rule). Elazar explains that “the Crown of Torah is responsible for the communication of God's will to the community. Torah was communicated to the community first through the Eved Adonai (…the Servant of God, a title bestowed only on Moses and Joshua), then through the seers and the prophets, and ultimately through the sages and rabbis. [Meanwhile]… the keter kehunah – the Crown of Priesthood - is responsible for enabling the community to communicate with God, whether through sacrifices, prayer, or whatever. This domain is explicitly separated from the Crown of Torah by a separate covenant. The Crown of Torah was transmitted through Moses; the Crown of Priesthood was transmitted through Aaron.” Elazar explains that “After the destruction of the Temple and the disappearance of the priests as an active political force, the Priestly Crown ceased to have institutional embodiment for the community as a whole, but new institutions were developed in the communities, such as the chazan (originally the governor of the synagogue, now the reader or cantor) and the modern congregational rabbi, to carry out those purposes and to exercise authority in that domain.”
As I read this article, I was reminded that Rabbis aren’t priests. They can take on part of the traditional role of priests in terms of helping the community to communicate with God, but the role of a Rabbi is primarily to hold the Crown of Torah, not the Crown of Priesthood and the role of the priest is… or was… to help communicate with God through prayer and through sacrifice. And I’m not a priest. I’m really not. I’d be the worst priest. They’d be offering animals in front of me and I’d be all squeamish and I would have to smoke the meat and I’d probably burn it and not in a good burnt offering kind of way, and they’d offer me parts to eat and I’d refuse them as a vegetarian. I’d be the worst priest. But that’s not the reason I have difficulty in reciting the Priestly Blessing as we find it in Torah.
It is usually said that it’s not the priest who is blessing the people, but that the priest acts as a conduit for God’s blessing to the people, but I’m certainly no Divine conduit either. Conduit or no, Moses Maimonides wrote (Hilchot T’midin U’Musafin 6:5) that during Temple times, the Priestly Blessing was recited after the priests had placed the offerings on the altar. In other words, it’s not really about being a Divine conduit but about giving approval to the sacrifice that has just been offered by the individual in front of the priest, which is why the blessing is in the singular form. So, reciting this blessing in its original format is an echo of the priesthood. It not only acknowledges the historicity of the priesthood but it also approves the priesthood. It denies the reality that the priesthood, thank God, is over.
The Priestly Blessing was the utterance of a male religious authority figure on another man who presented a clean and appropriate animal sacrifice. Placing identical words at the end of the prayer service, I have come to realize, would not only separate the clergy from the rest of the community, but would bring ancient masculine authoritarian approval into a progressive, pluralistic prayer service. We can see that from this week’s Torah portion, which starts with the census, with the counting of the male Gershonites whose task it is to preserve the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness, it briefly moves into an egalitarian mode when discussing whenever a man or woman commits a wrong, but then returns to form with the ritual of the woman suspected of adultery and the institutionally male response to the man’s insecurity. In that ritual, the priest is the authority responsible for the woman’s public humiliation. In the portion of Naso, we then return to egalitarianism with the Nazirite, the vow of abstention that can be taken by man or woman and then return once again to the priestly blessing which is in the male singular form because it’s the blessing for a man when he brings his sacrifice. I have come to realize that my dislike of the recitation of the original form of the Priestly Blessing is not only because of the ghostly men of specific DNA, or of the way it separates me from the rest of the community if I ask God to bless you and not us, or because of my discomfort at the idea of being a Divine conduit. At the core of my dislike of the original form of the Priestly Blessing is my profound dislike of the original expressions of keter kehunah, of the Crown of Priesthood.
The priest, to quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (https://www.rabbisacks.org/archive/kehunah-and-kedushah-the-priestly-role/), “sees God in revelation: in God’s word and will, His command. The task of the priest is to ensure that God’s will is done. He is an expert, a teacher, and a judge. Above all, however, he is a tender of holy spaces and holy times.” Rabbi Sacks adds that, “Among the most important words in the priestly vocabulary are kodesh and chol, holy and common, secular, everyday; and tahor and tamei, pure and impure, that is to say, a state that allows access to the holy and one that debars it.” And that’s my current problem with the priesthood and with the traditional Priestly blessing – because it’s an expression of gatekeeping. It’s approval from one group of men who were the keepers of God’s commandments. But that’s not how Judaism developed. The Priests as keepers of God’s commandments gave way to Rabbis who were interpreters of God’s commandments. Holy space is not created nowadays by having clergy set boundaries on pure and impure, but by a shared conversation on how we might encounter God together. The priest who says “May God bless you” in Torah is the same priest who publicly humiliates the woman suspected of adultery. “May God bless you” means “May God bless you since you behaved in the ways that were commanded to us and kept solely by us.” “May God bless you” in the context of Naso means “you didn’t rock the boat, you didn’t challenge the system, you did what you were told.” Part of me wonders if that’s why there’s a tradition of not looking at the priests when they recite that blessing – because if we looked long and hard enough at it, we would see the problems with it. Stare too hard at patriarchal domination and you expose it for what it is – a means of control through terms such a “pure and impure” or “holy and profane.”
Our is no longer a tradition of received control, but a tradition of exploration of the meaning of one extraordinary encounter. When we pray “May God bless us…” we do so not with the certainty of the priests but with the hope of the rabbis. We pray from a position of fragility… of the hope that what we have prayed today will bring blessing upon us. In so doing, we specifically separate ourselves from the institutionalized violence of the priests – specifically the violence towards anyone and anything that fell outside the normative male human paradigm. By praying “May God bless us…” we show revelation not as law but as creative opportunity, not as something in the past but something in the present moment. By praying “May God bless us…” we reject division and Othering and instead celebrate diversity. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I’m such a big fan of Aleinu near the end of the service – because it’s in the first person plural form – Aleinu… “It is upon us.”
Tonight, we say goodbye to Ziva as she heads off to Rabbinical school. Ziva, as you start your journey into the Rabbinate, we know that you will find your own unique path in between the Crown of Torah and the Crown of Priesthood. Anyone who knows you knows that you will challenge the gatekeeping, that you will stare long and hard at the patriarchal domination of our tradition and expose it for what it is. We know that in being part of this community for the last seven years that you have helped to bless us and keep us, that you have helped God’s face shine upon us and be gracious to us, and that you have helped lift up the Divine countenance toward us in order to give us peace. And with that in mind, with wishes of mazal, we share the traveller’s prayer as you go on your journey…