Shalom. I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg of the Ezra-Habonim, Niles Township Jewish Congregation in Skokie. This is a brief Divrei Torah of Parashat Naso, one of the portions in the Book of Numbers. One of the most famous aspects of Naso is that it has the priestly Benediction. Very simple, the words are (foreign language). May God bless you and keep you. Yahi means light, so, “May you be enlightened,” or “May God lift up God’s countenance to you and be graces unto you, may God lift up God’s countenance to you and grant you shalom, peace.” But how was this used?
First of all, priests, descendants of the Kohanim, that is direct linear descendants of air and the first high priests, they do this everyday in Jerusalem. They put a prayer shawl over their head. They spread their fingers splitting the first two and last two underneath their Talith and then someone calls off the words and they are in front of the synagogue, with their back to the ark and their shoes off after having their hands washed by the Levites offer these words, in prayer to the congregation.
Outside of Jerusalem, it is done in Orthodox synagogues on the Sabbath. In Israel and outside of Israel, when diaspora, it is done by traditional synagogues on the festival days. Besides the Kohanim doing it, it is often done by Rabbis or officiates at baby namings, at marriage ceremonies, blessing the Barba and Mitzvah. In our synagogue, we do it every Friday night and every Saturday morning to have our services. It is recited by parents to their children on Friday evenings as part of the parental blessing. It is a very commonly used blessing, the most famous and common blessing in Judaism.
One famous story was the Vulcan spot and I also mentioned this on my video about Kohanim priests. They use the same fingers split in a very simple word, “Be peaceful and prosper.” In Startrek, the reason once that he was Jew and he has to go to the synagogue with his grandfather or used to watch the Dhokra name of the priest and learned it that way.
Now, what does that mean? “May God bless you and guard you.” It could be interpreted that laws of ways. Our sages have their own explanation. “May God bless you with physical peace and spiritual peace?” And then they got to enlighten you, yaer. That seems to be self-evident. And be gracious to you, hanun. And may God lift up God’s face to you and grant you in full peace, inner peace. It also means fulfillment of fullness.
One bearing of this story was that archaeologists some years ago found near Jerusalem a piece of silver wrapped like tinfoil in an old gravesite. And they took it to the metallurgists at the Jerusalem Hebrew University. It took them a lot to unroll it and they found some ancient writing on there that was not recognized. So they send it to the Hebrew Department. And after a very careful looking, it was a kind of Hebrew and really unfamiliar with age and ancient Hebrew from probably 2700 years ago. They found after they recognized the word, “Yud-Hey-Vav-hey,” one of the names of God, that it probably was an ancient form of the priestly Benediction. It is a little bit different from the one we have today. So, obviously they were very into traditions about what exactly the blessing was even though this blessing is from the Torah which is earlier, but obviously it was not a fixed formula in the year 700 BC probably. And many people speculate that perhaps that was an ancient form of tefillin, the phylacteries we wear in that before that was definitely said much should begin and some people thought that that was should be and maybe. We just do not know because the Mishna prohibits silver tefillin, so maybe that was an ancient form and it was neither prohibited.
Any case, it is one of the most important prayers in the world, and in Judaism and it comes from the Torah portion of Parashat Naso.
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