The three part Birkat Kohanim, the “Blessing of the Priests (Numbers 6:24-26), was and remains one of the most sacred passages in the Torah. Its structural unity and unusual composition makes it a stand out as a unique theological statement, charged with great spiritual power and meaning.
The Blessing is comprised of three short verses of three, five, and seven words respectively. Note the numerical progression culminating in the number seven, a special number in the Bible. Each verse begins with a verb denoting an action by God, and God’s four-letter personal name, representing the subject of each verse, is the second word in each phrase. And, the second person singular objective ending, kha, “you,” recurs twice in each phrase making the blessing very personal and adding a rhyming element to it.
The result of this structure is a blessing of Am Yisrael as a single, collective entity and simultaneously, of each individual person within the ____________. The repeated use of the singular “you” and the constant repetition of God’s most Holy Name draw the source of the blessing and the recipient into an intimate bond which gives the blessing its power. The redundancy highlights the connectedness.
Perhaps because of these structural suggestions of intimacy, an interpretive tradition defining yihud, or ahdut, “unity”, as an essential element of the Blessing, has developed over time. A Hassidic master, cited in the Itturei Torah, noting the singular “you” comments that the Birkat Kohanim is recited in the singular because the most important blessing that Israel needs is unity. When Israel is united the people become like a single individual, with one heart. In a similar vein, the Yeshuat Yaacov suggests that God will “lift up” the Divine “Face” toward Israel when Jews lift up their faces toward each other’s ideas and points of view with tolerance. This implies that before God makes His blessing of peace a reality, Jews first have to be on the road to peace by creating mutual tolerance among themselves.
But we need help. According to the Degal Mahaneh Ephraim, that help comes when God is “gracious to you.” The author quotes the Or Ha-Hayyim, who teaches that when the Torah states that God made Joseph find favor (grace) in the eyes of the jailer, it means that God enabled the latter to appreciate the special “grace,” the unique personal quality, with which God gifted Joseph. When the Kohenim say the word vihuneka, “be gracious to you,” they are asking that God grant each of us the ability to appreciate the uniquely wonderful qualities that God has granted others. These bonds of appreciation of one another bring us together and enable us to share God’s blessings.
The theme of unity within the people that is associated with recitation of the Birkat Kohanim is extended to include the relationship between the blessers and the blessed. A number of sources ask why the brakha the Kohanim recite before actually saying the Birkat Kohanim concludes with the word, b’ahava, “with love.” One author quotes the Zohar, where we read: “Any priest who does not love the people or whom the people do not love, may not lift his hands [to bless people].” There must be mutual affection between the priests and the people for the Kohanim to function as the vehicles for bringing down God’s blessings. Unity with Am Yisrael is a precondition for the efficacy of Birkat Kohanim.
So it seems that the structural unity and the integrity of the “Blessings of the Priests” symbolizes the condition in which the Jewish people must be for the Blessing to take effect. We, the people, have to work with God, as partners, to achieve this unity. It seems that, as a people, we have been “unificationally challenged” for a long time. Perhaps we have to listen closely to the Birkat Kohanim as it is recited and all it magnificently unified message to resonate within our souls. Perhaps then we will overcome our challenge and experience the state of peace and blessing we have sought for so long.