SERMON PARASHAT Nasso

June 14, 2024

Rabbi David Edleson  

Temple Sinai  

South Burlington, Vermont

Arielle and Madeline, I know tomorrow morning you will give your d’vars on your Torah Portion, which is called Nasso.  Because I know what you are going to be talking about, tonight I’m going to look at a section of your portion that I know you aren’t planning to explore:   The threefold Priestly Blessing - 

May Adonai Bless you and keep you.

May Adonai’s face shine upon you and look upon you with favor

May Adonai’s face rise to greet you and give you peace. 

It is one of the best-known passages in the entire Torah, but it appears in your portion out of nowhere, out of context, and seems to be just stuck in there.  The rabbinic commentators also noticed this and came to the conclusion that it actually belongs much further back in the Torah, in the previous book of Leviticus.  In Chapter 9 of Leviticus, in describing the great rituals to dedicate the Mishkan, what we usually call the Tabernacle, we read:

Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he stepped down after offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of well-being.   (Lev 9:22)

But the Torah never tells us what blessing he gave.  The rabbi were pretty sure that the blessing he gave was the Priestly Blessing from your portion. 

And we also know that this blessing was already a hit back during the First Temple period, meaning before 700 BCE.   How do we know?  Well, in 1979, in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem, very near what is now Liberty Bell Park, a series of burial chambers was found and in one, two tiny silver scrolls, that look like amulets, were found by a 13-year-old.  Everyone else had overlooked them.   It took years to figure out how to unroll and read the silver scrolls without destroying them, and when they did, the scrolls both contained a blessing that ended with – you guessed it! – May Adonai Bless you and Keep you. 

Repeated groups of researchers have done extensive tests on them and it turns out that these scrolls are some of the oldest existing Biblical texts that have been found. 

There are so many commentaries and explanations about what the blessing means.   For example, scholars point out that each line builds, with the first containing 3 words, then 5, and then 7 in the last line.  The number of letters rises from 15 to 20 to 25, and the number of syllables from 12 to 14 to 16. The lines before and after are each seven syllables, creating an envelope for this beloved blessing. 

While there are all sorts of ways to understand the meaning of the blessing.  Some are very practical:  May God bless you  means bless you with prosperity and material comfort and May God Keep you means “may God protect you from thieves who would rob you.”  

But other rabbis like Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1816-1893), the head of the famous Volozhin Yeshiva in Vilna, Lithuania, wrote that part of the power of this blessing is that included in "May God bless you." is whatever is appropriate for each person to be blessed with.... For one who deals in Torah, in her study. For one who deals in commerce, in her merchandise. Thus is included in this general blessing "May God bless you" an additional blessing for each person about what she has.  

He goes on to say that “And Protect You” is because every blessing requires protection so that it does not become an obstacle.  A great Torah scholar needs protection from pride and ego. And similarly, that she not forget her learning. A property owner needs protection from theft and loss, but also so that the wealth not become a trap for the person.  And likewise for everything that is in need of blessing, protection from whatever causes trouble is requested.

In other words, sometimes our greatest talent, or the thing we love the most can become an area that takes us away from being our best selves, either because we get stuck up, or unkind, or greedy, or afraid of losing.  The things that bless are can also be great challenges for us.  That is an important way to think of this blessing.

The second line, May God’s face shine upon you, is read by the Hassidic Master the Sfat Emet, to mean may God show you the places inside where your own light shines, and that the light that is in you, in each of us, is a reflection of the Shechina, or that part of God that lives inside all of us, and that we are truly blessed when we can see that our own light comes is but a part of the great divine light that pervades creation. 

But it is the last verse that puzzles the Sfat Emet.   How can God lift up God’s face to us?  Does God have an actual face?  Not in our tradition.  God does not have an image, so what could that mean?   He says it means that when we lift up our faces to God, and when we lift our faces toward one another, to truly see and appreciate one another, we become the image of God to one another.  That is what is meant to be created “b’tzelem Elohim” in the image of God – we can become that image for one another, the image of love and of kindness.   We become the face of God for others that we love and care for.

Which gets me to the last word of the blessing - Peace.  These days, we could all use the blessing of peace, but in our tradition and in Hebrew, it means much more.  Shalom, the word we translate as peace, means something much closer to wholeness or completeness.   Spiritual peace, that deep inner peace we long for, comes from this sense of wholeness, in those rare moments that we are lucky enough to find it.   When we are able to feel whole, evening knowing our flaws, our longings, our failures, our losses – when we are able to find a sense of wholeness in our spirits, a sense of compassion and love for who we are in all our parts, that is perhaps the greatest blessing there can be, and that is what this blessing is offering us.  That we might experience God’s love, and so feel whole. 

So this short little blessing in your portion is not only one of the oldest blessings we have, one that goes back to ancient Jerusalem, but it is also one of the most profound blessings I can imagine for you as you become bat mitzvah, and for all of us. 

May we be blessed with what it is we need most deeply, even if we can’t name it. 

May we be blessed with finding out own gifts in life, and may we be protected from the pitfalls that come with those gifts.

May we be able to see our light and our own worth as a reflection of God’s light, and may we be that light to others.

May we have moments in our lives where we experience a sense of wholeness in who we are, and a sense of peace that life is good and that we are good because we carry the light of God inside of if we dare to open to it.

As one of my favorite Israeli songwriters, Hanan Ben Ari, wrote:

“We are infinite light wrapped in a body.”

 

Who knew that all that was in the blessing you will chant from Torah tomorrow and in the blessing that I’ll give you after you read.   What a thing it is to be part of a tradition that has passed on this blessing unchanged for thousands of years, and what a thing it is that tomorrow, you will become part of that chain.

Shabbat Shalom.