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May the lord bless you and guard you.
May the lord light up his face to you and grant grace
to you.
May the lord lift up his face to you and give you
peace.
(Bemidbar 6:24-26)
R. Shimeon
b. Halafta said: The Holy One, blessed be He, found
no vessel that could contain blessing for
(Mishnah, Uktsin 3,
12)
R. Eleazar said in the name of R. Hanina: The disciples of the wise increase peace in the world, as it says, And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children. Read not banayik [thy children] but bonayik [thy builders]. Great peace have they that love Thy law, and there is no stumbling for them. Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sake I will now say, Peace be within thee. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good. The Lord will give strength unto His people, the Lord will bless His people with peace.
(Berahot 64a)
There are some who think that world peace will be built only through a single hue of opinions and characteristics, and therefore when we see scholars investigating wisdom and the Torah view, and the research leads to multiple views and methods, they think that this causes arguments and is the antithesis of peace. The truth, however, is different. True peace cannot ever be achieved unless it is through the multiplicity of peace. The multiplicity of peace is that all views and methods should be considered, and that it will become evident how each has its place, each according to its value, its place and its subject.
(From: HaRav Avrahm
Yitzchak Hacohen Kook zt"l:
Olat Reiyah, p. 330)
` In
memory of
"Grey
hair is a crown of glory; it is attained by the way of righteousness"
(Proverbs 16:31)
Thus shall you bless the children of
On the priestly benediction and the parental blessing
Chana
Manne
In memory of my
father and teacher,
who
passed away in ripe old age on the 8th of Sivan, 5772,
and
from whom I was privileged to receive the
Priestly Benediction every Shabbat for almost 101 years.
Our parasha contains many mitzvoth related to the
Tabernacle and
Before dealing
with the details of the blessing, attention must be given to its essence. Nehama Leibowitz raises the
question raised by many commentators before her - Why is this mitzvah
assigned to the priests: "So shall you bless"
(6:23) - after all, the source of the blessing is the Holy One, blessed
be He, as is clearly stated in the text: "May the Lord bless you" (Ibid, 24) "And I shall bless them" (Ibid., 27). She quotes, among others, Don
Yitzchak Abarbanel. In answer to the question, he
distinguishes between three categories of blessings: 1. The
blessing with which God blesses Man: "This is the giving and the goodness,
as in 'And the Lord blessed Avraham'" (Bereishit 24:1). 2.
The blessing with which Man blesses the Holy One: "And this is
glorification and praise, as in 'David blessed the Lord'". 3. The
blessing with which one Man blesses another: "This is a prayer and request
for mercy upon the recipient, that the Holy One shower upon him of His
blessing. And this is what is referred to here: 'Speak unto Aharon
and his sons, saying: So shall you bless the Children of
The Priestly Benediction is composed of three parts, and the Sages point out that the blessing increases in importance and in the degree of goodness which will be showered upon the blessed. This is reflected in both content and in form (increasing number of words). Some exegetes claim that the recipient of the blessing also bears a certain responsibility for ensuring the efficacy of the blessing. So may we conclude from the comments of the Netziv, head of the Volozhin yeshiva and author of the "Haemek Davar" commentary, on the first blessing: "May the Lord bless you and guard you" (6:24): " "Bless you": This applies to every man, each receiving his appropriate blessing ... the student of Torah - in his study, to the merchant - in his business. "And guard you": For every blessing requires vigilance lest, forefend, it become a hindrance, the Torah scholar requires safeguarding from pride and desecration of the Name, etc., and its simplest sense - that it not be forgotten. An owner of possessions requires safeguarding lest his wealth become a detriment, as in the cases of Korach and Navoth the Yisraelite, etc. And in its simplest sense, safekeeping from theft and loss". The Netziv cautions us against pride and acquisi-tiveness and sends here a clear moral message - in every blessing there is a hidden danger - that it is liable to led to superciliousness to the point of disbelief in the Almighty and abuse of people, and therefore the recipient of the blessing is in need of special guarding.
The Lord's face is mentioned in the second and third benedictions: "May the Lord light up his face to you" and "May the Lord lift up his face to you". Our Sages explained the terms "Lighting up the face" and "Lifting the face" of the Lord in various ways. King Solomon had long ago noted that man expresses the thoughts of his heart through his facial expressions, and that in every interpersonal relationship there is a great degree of mutuality - a person reacts to the other according to what he absorbs from him: "As face answers to face in water, so does one man's heart to another" (Proverbs 27:19). In other words, the attitude of another to ourselves may be a reflection of our attitude to him. Studies in developmental psychology show that if the mother keeps a straight face and does not smile in reaction to her baby's smile, after a certain period of time the baby will enter a condition of emotional disconnection and apathy. To return to the Priestly Benediction, we can read in the verses the message of mutuality; the recipients also bear responsibility for what is taking place. In order to merit the blessing of the Holy One, blessed be He, "lighting up His face" and "lifting His face", we have to light up our faces in the Torah and lift our faces to peace.
And now to the "Blessing of the Children". R. Yissachar Yaakobson, in his book: 'Netiv Binah' (1978), reviews the origins of the custom, from its beginning in the 17th century until our times. The custom is first mentioned in the volume "Maavar Yabok" by R. Aharon Berchia Modena (d.1639), an Italian mystic. Alongside Kabalistic reasons we detect again the element of mutuality. Both sides 'win' - he who blesses and he who is blessed:
And by laying
the hand on the little head he is blessed, as is written (Bereishit 48:14) "...
In the siddur of R. Yaakov b. Zvi Emden (1698-1776) an additional reason, also Kabalistic, is cited; on the Shabbat eve "the sheafa [emanation of spiritual abundance] comes down" and the conduits of blessings open up, and through the young children in particular, who have not tasted the taste of sin, the sheafa will spread yet more.
In the "Sefer HaHayyim", composed by the brother of the MaHaRaL of Prague, another reason, one belonging to the category of "revealed knowledge", is given: On weekdays, the father, out of anger, is liable to curse his children, therefore he hastens to bless them on the Shabbat, when all are relaxed and happy, so that the blessing will cancel out the curses, as is written "And the Lord changed the curse into a blessing."
It seems that today, in many homes, the parental blessing constitutes a moment of closeness and of tightening the connection between parents and children made possible by the gathering of the family in the home. In the words of Dr. Wehrman in his book "Haggei Yisrael U'Moadim" [Festivals of Israel and Days of Appointment]: "The custom of blessing the children seems to be based upon the idea of 'a rest of peace and tranquility' which is supposed to permeate the Jewish home on Shabbat. Peace and tranquility between husband and wife and between parents and children." A study of the source reveals that from its inception in some communities the custom applied also to mothers and daughters. For example, in R. Emden's siddur it is written: "My teacher used to kiss his mother's hands on Shabbat Eve ...in order to prepare her for the emanation of blessings from her hands." And in our generation, R. Yaakobson notes: "This custom is highly appropriate for renewal, not because of the Kabalistic reasons which are unintelligible to the ordinary Jew, but in order to honor--especially on the beginning of the Shabbat-- the mother, who bears the responsibility of all the Shabbat preparations."
R. Yaakobson concludes with the following: "This beautiful custom has not yet spread to all the Jewish communities, but the Jews of Germany were most meticulous in its observance." As a daughter of Orthodox German extraction, I was privileged to receive blessings on Shabbat Eve and on Motsei Shabbat from both parents, and I have been privileged to pass on this custom to the next generation.
Chana Manne a clinical psychologist, is Head Psychologist in
They shall carry it on their shoulders - Man and State
The relationship between the political and social
organization (the state) and the individual in the state is the greatest and
most encompassing and deep relationship vis-à-vis the significant
elements of human existence; it is as also possible to speak of the
relationship between state and society.
The state, social organization, and everything connected
with them - from the struggle for positions of power to politics in its broader
sense as discussed by political thinkers from ancient times until the present -
the significance of this entire great subject, with all its complications
and complexity is entirely instrumental.
The state is nothing but a tool and means for the
accomplishment of valuable goals involving the fulfillment of basic human needs
such as justice, education, health, culture, worship of God, etc. No instrumental
mechanism can achieve these goals. The state is important only in that it
allows the individual who is obliged to realize values to realize them. The
state itself should never be required or expected to realize values.
Similarly, regarding the holy service of the Tabernacle we
read, They shall carry
it on their shoulders. Man bears his obligations upon his shoulders in
two senses, and he must make great efforts to fulfill them. The vessels and
devices such as the "wagons" and the "cattle" only carry
the strips of cloth, screens, panels, stakes, sockets, bars, columns, and so
forth which are in no way part of the holy service. These merely create the
framework upon which the holy service depends. That service can only take place
when there are human beings who are prepared to trouble themselves to freely
take upon themselves the serious normative proviso of They shall
carry it on their shoulders.
All over the world people misunderstand the relationship
between the instruments and values. Blindness to this relationship is beginning
to take hold upon us as well. It is moving us towards a nationalistic-fascistic
mood in the social, political, and national realms, in which collective
existence becomes an end in itself.
This matter finds symbolic expression in the Tabernacle
service: the Tabernacle's holiness is symbolically represented by the vessels
kept in the Tabernacle, such as the
That is the metaphor - what does it represent? It says that
instruments such as political sovereignty, sovereign power, social mechanisms,
etc. are incapable of realizing the values of human existence. These values can
only be accomplished by man himself; they are not problems relating to the form
of social existence, rather they are the problems of man in society.
(Y. Leibowitz, Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavua pp.
633-634)
Readers React:
In the Shabbat Shalom issue for Parashat Emor, the passage "If your enemy falls, do not exult" (Proverbs 24:17) is presented as deploring joy at the fall of our enemy. [The reader is referring to the selection from Rav Soleveitchik's essay quoted in "Sod HaYachid V'HaYachad"] This interpretation is not viable because the following verse expresses fear lest the Holy One, blessed be He, "avert His wrath from him" - indicating that the enemy is still alive. We are fortunate to have access to the Keter Aram Tsovah. In the Keter, the verse under discussion is part of a quartet of verses with strong thematic connections that clarify the meaning of the verse. "Wicked man! Do not lurk by the home of the righteous man, do no violence to his dwelling," an appeal to the wicked man not to attack the righteous man. "Seven times the righteous man falls and gets up, while the wicked are tripped by one misfortune." - because (an explanation from the wicked man's perspective why he should not attack) the righteous man recovers from repeated missteps, whereas as single misstep of the wicked will end badly. (Therefore, you, the wicked man) "If your enemy (the righteous man) falls, do not exult; if he trips let your heart not rejoice, lest (a negative development from the wicked man's perspective) the Lord see (that the righteous is in trouble) and be displeased, and He will avert his wrath from him (from the righteous)".
In the following unit it says "The
lamp of the wicked goes out", and further on there is an appeal not relate
to the wicked as to the righteous. Shmuel HaKatan lived during the period of the destruction of the
Respectfully, Gideon Ehrlich
Pinchas
Leiser, editor of "Shabbat Shalom"
responds:
Many thanks to Mr. Erlich for his letter. It seems to me difficult, however, to maintain that understanding "If your enemy exults, let your heart not rejoice" as disapproval of exultation over the death of our enemies is untenable. Mr. Erlich's interpretation contradicts all other Bible exegeses, and therefore his argument seems somewhat pretentious. Yet more: were we to accept his interpretation to be possible, it would be yet more difficult to argue that bringing this verse as the central statement of Shmuel HaKatan in Pirke Avot is directed towards the Romans and the heretics in an effort to encourage the people; it does not seems feasible to assume that the Sages composed Tractate Avot as an ethical code for the Romans!
Rabbi Soleveitchik's understanding of the discussion in Berachot seems to me to be a more reasonable one:
1. There were great Torah scholars in the Raban Gamiliel's generation other than Shmuel HaKattan. It would seem, then, that Rabin Gamliel's choice of Shmuel HaKattan was based on his character rather than on his scholarship.
2. The continuation of the story relates that Shmuel HaKattan had a problem with the benediction which he had composed; when he served as cantor "a later year", he forgot the benediction.
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