Post by Rabbi Neil on Nov 29, 2019 18:46:13 GMT
During our Tikkun Leil Shavuot last weekend, we briefly discussed the Priestly Blessing. This is a text that comes from this week’s Torah portion of Naso in the Book of Numbers. I wanted to share some of that discussion, and expand upon it this evening. You can find the Priestly Blessing in our siddur, on page 299, if you want to see it as I talk about it.
The Mishnah (Sotah 37b-38a) asks how the Priestly Blessing should be recited. In that text, we learn that outside the Temple the priest recites three blessings, whereas in the Temple the three blessings are all recited as one blessing. In the Temple blessing, the priest includes the actual name of God whereas outside the Temple they substitute another name. Outside the Temple, the priests lift their hands so that they are in line with their shoulders, but in the Temple all priests lift their hands above their heads for the blessing. Some say that the High Priest doesn’t lift his hands so high, but Rabbi Yehudah provides a proof text to show that he does.
It is interesting, then, that the custom developed that rather merged these rituals. Those descended from the priesthood would traditionally stand in front of the community, covered in their tallit, raise their hands above their shoulders and recite a three-fold blessing. They would be covered with their tallit, or the community members would cover themselves under their own tallit, so as not to look at priests while they gave the blessing. The priests’ hands would be arranged with fingers spread in a particular traditional way. When actor Leonard Nimoy was told by Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry that his character Spock should shake hands when greeting someone, Nimoy replied that that was what humans do and he suggested a hand-sign for the Vulcans instead. His mind cast back immediately to his childhood in services seeing the priests give the blessing, and he copied the way their arranged their fingers, and thus the Vulcan greeting was born.
Interestingly, the Torah portion of Naso doesn’t actually tell us when and how this Priestly blessing should be recited leading, of course, to much rabbinical discussion. Should it be before tefillah? After? Just in morning prayer? Perhaps during the additional service? The question of content is even asked, since this is not the first time in Torah that we read of a Priestly blessing. In fact, back in the Book of Leviticus (9:22), we read that “Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them.” If we read Torah chronologically as written, this means that Aaron’s blessing in Leviticus was not the same as this Priestly Blessing, which is mentioned in the next book of the Torah! So, there is some ambiguity about this blessing. That said, it is archaeologically speaking one of the very oldest texts in our tradition. We have copies of it in writing from the First Temple period, so we know that the blessing is at least two and a half thousand years old. Despite some ambiguity, then, we can say that it is a really ancient text that has been repeated for millennia.
If that’s the case, then, why do I have the chutzpah to change the words from “May God bless you” to “May God bless us”? Well, I’m not exactly short on chutzpah as you probably know, but it’s not just that. The Sages go to great lengths to suggest that it’s not the Priests actually blessing the people, but acting as conduits for God’s blessing on the people. Nonetheless, I really struggle to see myself in any kind of Priestly role. I totally understand that, as we saw during our Tikkun Leil Shavuot, the only reason our tradition survived when the Temple was destroyed is because the Rabbis demonstrated how service to God did not have to be sacrifice but could, instead, be the service of the heart, which meant prayer. That meant that community leaders were no longer the Priests but the Rabbis, there to guide people in prayer. As we saw on Saturday, though, guidance in prayer did not necessarily mean in a set liturgical text, so the prayer leader was more the person who kept the pace of prayer so that everyone could pray together as one. That’s important, as we’ll see shortly.
Reform Judaism from the very beginning expunged references not just to the sacrificial cult but also to the priesthood because it was seen as archaic and elitist. In that vein, there’s an enormous theological difficulty for me about specific individuals acting as conduits for Divine blessing on behalf of the whole community. Who am I to be conduit for blessing any more than anyone else? Moreover, “May God bless you” separates me from the rest of the community, just as the Priests were separated from the rest of the community.
The timing of the blessing in the service is crucial to this change. Mishnah Tamid (4:3-7:2) says that in the Temple “they recited one blessing, the Ten Commandments, the three paragraphs of Shema, and then they blessed the people with these three blessings – Emet, Avodah and the Priestly Blessing.” That means the Priestly blessing fell at the end of worship. Other sources confirm this, for example, the Alphabet of Ben Sira (50:29-32), which was written while the second Temple was still standing, says of the High Priest that “When he finished then service at the altar and his utterances, he approached, then he came down and lifted up his hands to the entire community of Israel, the blessing of Adonai on his lips, in the name of Adonai, may God be glorified.” Over a thousand years later, 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.
This prayer, then, isn’t about acting as a Divine conduit. It’s about affirmation of the service that has just been. The priest would essentially say this after any individual brought an offering. It would be a way of saying, “May that which you have just offered be accepted!” The priest would use it in the second person because the priest was not the person who had made the offering, it was the person in front of them. That’s why it’s in the singular form, not the plural. That’s enormously important. It shows that this was a way of expressing hope that the offering was heard. Perhaps another way to say it would be “May God bless you and keep you as a result of your offering.” Now transpose that into the prayer service. The offering that we just gave is not a sacrificial offering, but a prayer offering. The enormous difference between those two offerings is that the priest was not offering a sacrifice, just leading the ritual of the sacrifice. I, on the other hand, am not just leading the community in prayer, I am also praying. The role of a priest leading a sacrificial rite and a rabbi leading a prayer service are different. I pray with the community. So, when at the end of the service I say “May God bless us and keep us” I’m taking an ancient expression of intent, and I’m changing the grammar based on the subtle differences between the two kinds of service. “May God bless us and keep us” means “May that which we have just offered with our mouths and hearts be accepted.”
In 2007, I argued successfully for the Reform movement in England to offer this as an alternate reading. For over a decade now, it has done so formally. I believe that the Reform movement in America will follow suit when new liturgy is created.
In changing the grammar from second person singular to first person plural, I’m making a very deliberate statement, which is more than just that I am not a Divine conduit for blessing. I am expressing hope for our prayers. I am saying that all of our prayers are bound together, that our communal voice together creates one entire prayer. Our offering is personal, and yet simultaneously communal. The traditional response to each line of the blessing – ken yehi ratzon – meaning “Let it be so” means something very powerful in this perspective. Three times the community is agreeing with the wish that our prayers are heard. It is a concluding prayer response that there be a response to our earlier prayer. It doesn’t separate us at the end of the service, it binds us all closer together in a final expression of hope. It does not look forward to the future, to material blessing, or anything similar that might come to us after the service. It reflects back at the prayer service that has just happened and expresses hope that it was sufficient. Instead of the old adage that before a prayer service, we should pray that we might pray properly, the Priestly Blessing, especially in the first person plural form, is a concluding prayer hoping that we have prayed properly.
May we, then, in our prayer service, pray with pure intention. May we pray not as individuals but as a community. And may our prayer be heard and bring blessing upon all of us, and let us say, Amen.
The Mishnah (Sotah 37b-38a) asks how the Priestly Blessing should be recited. In that text, we learn that outside the Temple the priest recites three blessings, whereas in the Temple the three blessings are all recited as one blessing. In the Temple blessing, the priest includes the actual name of God whereas outside the Temple they substitute another name. Outside the Temple, the priests lift their hands so that they are in line with their shoulders, but in the Temple all priests lift their hands above their heads for the blessing. Some say that the High Priest doesn’t lift his hands so high, but Rabbi Yehudah provides a proof text to show that he does.
It is interesting, then, that the custom developed that rather merged these rituals. Those descended from the priesthood would traditionally stand in front of the community, covered in their tallit, raise their hands above their shoulders and recite a three-fold blessing. They would be covered with their tallit, or the community members would cover themselves under their own tallit, so as not to look at priests while they gave the blessing. The priests’ hands would be arranged with fingers spread in a particular traditional way. When actor Leonard Nimoy was told by Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry that his character Spock should shake hands when greeting someone, Nimoy replied that that was what humans do and he suggested a hand-sign for the Vulcans instead. His mind cast back immediately to his childhood in services seeing the priests give the blessing, and he copied the way their arranged their fingers, and thus the Vulcan greeting was born.
Interestingly, the Torah portion of Naso doesn’t actually tell us when and how this Priestly blessing should be recited leading, of course, to much rabbinical discussion. Should it be before tefillah? After? Just in morning prayer? Perhaps during the additional service? The question of content is even asked, since this is not the first time in Torah that we read of a Priestly blessing. In fact, back in the Book of Leviticus (9:22), we read that “Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them.” If we read Torah chronologically as written, this means that Aaron’s blessing in Leviticus was not the same as this Priestly Blessing, which is mentioned in the next book of the Torah! So, there is some ambiguity about this blessing. That said, it is archaeologically speaking one of the very oldest texts in our tradition. We have copies of it in writing from the First Temple period, so we know that the blessing is at least two and a half thousand years old. Despite some ambiguity, then, we can say that it is a really ancient text that has been repeated for millennia.
If that’s the case, then, why do I have the chutzpah to change the words from “May God bless you” to “May God bless us”? Well, I’m not exactly short on chutzpah as you probably know, but it’s not just that. The Sages go to great lengths to suggest that it’s not the Priests actually blessing the people, but acting as conduits for God’s blessing on the people. Nonetheless, I really struggle to see myself in any kind of Priestly role. I totally understand that, as we saw during our Tikkun Leil Shavuot, the only reason our tradition survived when the Temple was destroyed is because the Rabbis demonstrated how service to God did not have to be sacrifice but could, instead, be the service of the heart, which meant prayer. That meant that community leaders were no longer the Priests but the Rabbis, there to guide people in prayer. As we saw on Saturday, though, guidance in prayer did not necessarily mean in a set liturgical text, so the prayer leader was more the person who kept the pace of prayer so that everyone could pray together as one. That’s important, as we’ll see shortly.
Reform Judaism from the very beginning expunged references not just to the sacrificial cult but also to the priesthood because it was seen as archaic and elitist. In that vein, there’s an enormous theological difficulty for me about specific individuals acting as conduits for Divine blessing on behalf of the whole community. Who am I to be conduit for blessing any more than anyone else? Moreover, “May God bless you” separates me from the rest of the community, just as the Priests were separated from the rest of the community.
The timing of the blessing in the service is crucial to this change. Mishnah Tamid (4:3-7:2) says that in the Temple “they recited one blessing, the Ten Commandments, the three paragraphs of Shema, and then they blessed the people with these three blessings – Emet, Avodah and the Priestly Blessing.” That means the Priestly blessing fell at the end of worship. Other sources confirm this, for example, the Alphabet of Ben Sira (50:29-32), which was written while the second Temple was still standing, says of the High Priest that “When he finished then service at the altar and his utterances, he approached, then he came down and lifted up his hands to the entire community of Israel, the blessing of Adonai on his lips, in the name of Adonai, may God be glorified.” Over a thousand years later, 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.
This prayer, then, isn’t about acting as a Divine conduit. It’s about affirmation of the service that has just been. The priest would essentially say this after any individual brought an offering. It would be a way of saying, “May that which you have just offered be accepted!” The priest would use it in the second person because the priest was not the person who had made the offering, it was the person in front of them. That’s why it’s in the singular form, not the plural. That’s enormously important. It shows that this was a way of expressing hope that the offering was heard. Perhaps another way to say it would be “May God bless you and keep you as a result of your offering.” Now transpose that into the prayer service. The offering that we just gave is not a sacrificial offering, but a prayer offering. The enormous difference between those two offerings is that the priest was not offering a sacrifice, just leading the ritual of the sacrifice. I, on the other hand, am not just leading the community in prayer, I am also praying. The role of a priest leading a sacrificial rite and a rabbi leading a prayer service are different. I pray with the community. So, when at the end of the service I say “May God bless us and keep us” I’m taking an ancient expression of intent, and I’m changing the grammar based on the subtle differences between the two kinds of service. “May God bless us and keep us” means “May that which we have just offered with our mouths and hearts be accepted.”
In 2007, I argued successfully for the Reform movement in England to offer this as an alternate reading. For over a decade now, it has done so formally. I believe that the Reform movement in America will follow suit when new liturgy is created.
In changing the grammar from second person singular to first person plural, I’m making a very deliberate statement, which is more than just that I am not a Divine conduit for blessing. I am expressing hope for our prayers. I am saying that all of our prayers are bound together, that our communal voice together creates one entire prayer. Our offering is personal, and yet simultaneously communal. The traditional response to each line of the blessing – ken yehi ratzon – meaning “Let it be so” means something very powerful in this perspective. Three times the community is agreeing with the wish that our prayers are heard. It is a concluding prayer response that there be a response to our earlier prayer. It doesn’t separate us at the end of the service, it binds us all closer together in a final expression of hope. It does not look forward to the future, to material blessing, or anything similar that might come to us after the service. It reflects back at the prayer service that has just happened and expresses hope that it was sufficient. Instead of the old adage that before a prayer service, we should pray that we might pray properly, the Priestly Blessing, especially in the first person plural form, is a concluding prayer hoping that we have prayed properly.
May we, then, in our prayer service, pray with pure intention. May we pray not as individuals but as a community. And may our prayer be heard and bring blessing upon all of us, and let us say, Amen.