While the Priestly Blessing is a central ritual at my family’s Shabbat table, that hasn’t always been the case. For whatever reason, it wasn’t part of my parents’ repertoire when I was growing up.
That changed when, at age 12, I attended the bat mitzvah of a family friend and saw her parents place their hands on her head and recite the words. I told my folks, “I’d like us to do that.” Soon thereafter, my dad started blessing my brothers and me. (For whatever reason, my mom left it to him to do.)
In both the relationship with my father and my relationship with my children, I have experienced real power in this ritual.
Parent-child relationships aren’t easy, and Friday afternoons can be tense. Teenage children can be moody (okay, so can the rest of us), and I imagine ours is not the only family in which we’ve sometimes been forced to decide whether to wait for a child who was having a hard time making it to the dinner table that week, or just proceed with dinner. In those cases, I have found that the laying of hands and the recitation of this bracha can work as a kind of solvent, melting some of the ice that can form.
On my dad’s last Shabbat, as we gathered in a small conference room in the hospital palliative care wing for a dinner prepared by friends, my brothers and I—all full-grown men with families of our own—each went to him to receive what we knew would be our final blessing from him. It’s hard to describe how that memory makes me feel. Suffice it to say that if you know, you know, and it made me grateful for advocating for the ritual when I was young.
“Thus will you bless the children of Israel,” the Holy One instructs Moses to instruct Aaron and the kohanim (Num. 6:23). It is in Parashat Naso that we find the words of this ancient blessing that we still recite today.
Koh, “thus,” shall you bless. The Seer of Lublin comments, “The Priestly Blessing is the blessing that the people of Israel should be blessed with the traits of Aaron: to pursue peace and love one another.” Similarly, Rabbi Avraham of Gur points out that the commandment here is not actually to bless but is rather in an instruction in how to bless when blessing. Why? Because the default state of the kohanim is understood to be hesed, loving connection. Thus, no commandment was necessary to bless—they were naturally going to do that. The instruction is simply in what words to say.
These are beautiful commentaries, both of which get at the loving sensibility conveyed in both the words and the action of the blessing. Yet I find a third Hasidic vort (short gloss) particularly moving. It comes from the Modzitz tradition: “‘Koh, thus shall you bless them’—thus, just as they are. Don’t search for the most outstanding or important among them, nor for the greatest or the most righteous. Rather, every individual deserves to receive the blessing.”
While this instruction would seem to be directed at the blessers, I think we can understand it as directed at all of us, whether we are offering blessing or receiving it. In blessing my children, or offering blessing to others, I try to soften my proverbial gaze and perceive the child or person in front of me as no more and no less than a human being, an image of the Divine who is utterly unique, infinitely valuable, and equal to everyone else. Their accomplishments and setbacks, the stories I might tell myself about them—they melt away for a moment, and I can be a channel for a Divine blessing toward them.
After all, that’s what I experienced in receiving the blessing from my father, something I think we all yearn for and need: coming home to a loving embrace in our fundamental humanness, a “safe place,” in the words of Maya Angelou, “where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
For Reflection & Conversation
- Have you ever given or received a blessing? If so, what was the experience like? If not, what do you imagine it might be like?
- Is there someone in your life who has provided unconditional love and acceptance? If so, how did they demonstrate that? Whether yes or no, do you think you can provide that kind of support to someone else? What’s one way you might do so?