Some of the most significant elements of the Hebrew Bible are the rules regarding the building of the Holy Temple and the services that were presided there by the priests, kohanim, the sons of Aaron. While the kohanim performed daily animal sacrifices, ritual purifications, and other duties, one of the most esoteric and mystical traditions that they were instructed to enact within this sanctuary was the Priestly Blessing, Birkat Kohanim. This commandment can be found in the sixth chapter of Numbers, in Parashat Naso, and consists of three verses: “[May] the Lord bless you and keep you. [May] the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you. [May] the Lord lift his countenance upon you, and give you peace.[1]” The kohanim were told to perform this blessing in public and in person to the Jewish people. Although it is not elucidated in the text, our oral tradition informs us that the kohanim lift their arms upward while reciting the blessing, and arrange their fingers in a special way such that a triangle was formed between the two hands.
Although today, many of the practices of the Holy Temple are not performed due
to the lack of facility, Birkat Kohanim is a tradition that has
continued to exist and is practiced either each week on Shabbat, every day, or
only on holidays, depending on the regulations of various denominations. During
the amidah, the silent prayer, the kohanim go up to the bima,
alter, and face the congregation with their tallitot, prayer shawls,
covering their faces. They then say the blessing that comes before the Birkat
Kohanim, and proceed to chant the verses after the shaliach tzibur,
the individual who leads the prayers. Although this practice is familiar to
many regular temple-goers, its mystical meaning is often lost on those who have
not explored the depth of the biblical verses.
Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel (Malbim), a nineteenth-century biblical
commentator, explores the meaning of these mystical words and their
implications in his biblical commentary. Malbim, who resided in Eastern Europe
during the Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment, has many dimensions to his
text. He is simultaneously linguist and polemicist, kabbalist and scientist.
In Malbim’s exploration of Birkat Kohanim, his reader sees how
significantly his understanding of kabbalah enhances his view of
biblical literature and how he utilizes his belief in the importance of the
syntactical structure of verses to gain deeper meaning[2]. The
foundation that Malbim provides for his explanation of the actual text is
essential in that it gives us insight in his kabbalistic ideas, but
furthermore, it develops the paradigm for how we view the individual who is the
conduit for blessing. As in evidenced by the Malbim’s portrayal of the kohen
as the individual who recites the blessing using the name of God that is
symbolic of the sefirot (see footnote 2) and lifts his ten fingers to represent the
sefirot, the kohen is nothing more than a funnel for divine
energy - the human who allows the overflow to come down from keter to malchut
(from the heavenly realm to the human realm), so it can be
accessible to the nation. The kohen does not possess the power to bless
the people, rather, he is the man appointed by God to receive and share this
divine energy. The kohen as an intermediary does not mitigate the level
of connectivity that the nation has with God, but rather, allows them to
“ingest” more of the divine overflow for which his words and actions are the
catalyst.
This point is illustrated in biblical
commentator Tim Hegg’s article, “The Priestly Blessing.” Hegg expounds upon the
juxtaposition of the Nazarite laws with the Priestly Blessing, “Indeed, the
Nazarite attains the level of priestly sanctity…as one who draws near to the
very Presence of God. Thus, the Priestly Blessing, which evokes the Name of the
living God upon the people, follows the Nazarites laws naturally, for the
ultimate blessing which God bestows upon His people is to dwell with them as
both the Giver and Sustainer of life.” The Nazarite, by taking additional
commandments upon himself, wishes to come closer to God. Similarly, Birkat
Kohanim and the bestowal of God’s name upon the people - indicating that
His Presence will rest among them - represent a similar desire to become closer
to God. While Malbim differs slightly from Hegg, he ultimately concludes that
the similarity between the Nazarite laws and Birkat Kohanim is the
ability of both to allow an individual to remove himself from the pleasures and
desires of this world, and overcome the evil inclination, thus becoming closer
to God. In Birkat Kohanim, it is the nation who achieves this closeness
to God, not merely the kohen. Malbim explains that connection occurs
through the divine overflow that is conducted by the kohen and
transmitted, as though by electric current, to the nation.
[1] Bamidbar
6:22-26
[2] In
his discussion of why one must have an intermediary between him/herself and God
when receiving blessing, Malbim explains that the kohanim raised their
ten fingers during the blessing as a symbolic representation of the ten
luminous emanations, or asara sefirot: “למעלה אשר
ומקורות צנורות עשרה אל העשרה עצבותיכם ישאו שהם,” “They should lift their
ten fingers for the ten spouts and sources that are above.” These “ten spouts
and sources” are the ten sefirot. Sixteenth century kabbalist, Isaac
Luria, or the Arizal, as he is more commonly known, developed a terminology to
encapsulate the way in which energy, or as the Malbim puts it, “אלוקית שפע,” “divine overflow,” descends from the
realm of God to the human realm of Earth[2].
In order from the first to tenth, the sefirot are as follows: keter
(crown), chochmah (knowledge), binah (wisdom), chesed (kindness),
gevurah (strength), tiferet (harmony), netzach (eternity),
hod (glory), yesod (foundation), and malchut (kingdom).
The upper realm, composed of keter, chochmah, and binah, is the portion
of the sefirot that compromises the divine realm, from where divine
energy flows. Our realm, malchut, is at the bottom of the sefirot,
and is the ultimate receptor of this divine energy.
Interestingly, the sefirot are actually represented in
the tetragrammaton name of God, yud-hey-vav-hey. The “crown” on the top
of the “yud” represents keter, the remainder of the yud
represents chochmah, the following “hey” represents binah,
the “vav,” the letter that resembles a pipe and indicates connectivity
is represented by the six sefirot in the middle (the numerical value of
“vav” is six): chesed, gevurah, tiferet, hod, and yesod,
and the final “hey” is representative of the human world, malchut. Thus,
one can see that by using this name in Birkat Kohanim, the kohen
and the congregation joins in order to bring down the divine overflow of
spiritual energy into our world.
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