Everyone Can Bless

A little Jewish boy in synagogue once peeked when he was told not to look. Years later, the whole world knew what he had seen.

The Mass Priestly Blessing 

Leonard Nimoy, the Jewish actor, was famous for a distinctive hand gesture he used as a greeting—the split-finger salute modeled on the way the priests hold their hands during the Priestly Blessing.

There are certain mitzvot that Jews have always embraced with special joy (Shabbat 130a). One example is circumcision. It is not exactly painless, and yet we mark it with a festive gathering, with family and friends, food and singing. In that sense, Birkat Kohanim—the Priestly Blessing—may be one of the mitzvot most deeply loved by the Jewish people.

In 1970, a Jerusalem resident was sitting on a bench near the Western Wall. These were the years of the War of Attrition, and like many others, he was weighed down by dark thoughts about the difficult situation facing the Jewish people in Israel. A well-known rabbinic saying came to mind: “From the day the Temple was destroyed, not a single day passes without some curse” (Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 7).

But then he remembered the continuation of that same passage: “Rabbi Acha said: If so, by what merit do we endure? By the merit of the Priestly Blessing” (Midrash Tehillim, Psalm 7). That line suddenly gave him hope. If Birkat Kohanim has such power, he thought, why not make use of it?

After all, the Bible itself describes a moment in the days of King Hezekiah, about 2,600 years ago, when the priests blessed the people in Jerusalem and their blessing was received in heaven: “The priests, the Levites, arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came to His holy dwelling place, to heaven” (II Chronicles 30:27).

The man thought to himself: if this “formula” worked in the time of Hezekiah, why should it not work again now? He believed that a large public Priestly Blessing might stir something above on behalf of the Jewish people.

He began sharing the idea, and his enthusiasm caught on. In the process, he found an old precedent in Sefer Chasidim, which records that more than a thousand years ago, in the times of the Geonim, Rav Hai Gaon instituted a procession of priests around the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem as part of an effort to bring Moshiach. And in Sefer HaRokeach it says that “if three hundred priests were standing on the Mount of Olives, Moshiach would come.”

That was enough for him. He decided to organize a mass Birkat Kohanim at the Western Wall, within sight of the Mount of Olives, and to bring together three hundred kohanim. If Mashiach did not come, then at the very least, perhaps something positive would be set in motion for the Jewish people.

The date was set for Tuesday, the 3rd of Kislev, 5731. He himself worried that three hundred priests might be too ambitious a goal. In the end, though, hundreds of kohanim came, and crowds poured in to receive the blessing. The public excitement was tremendous.

From that beginning, a tradition was born. Twice a year, on Chol HaMoed Pesach and Chol HaMoed Sukkot, a mass Priestly Blessing is held at the Western Wall, and thousands come—kohanim and non-kohanim alike—to bless and be blessed in that remarkable gathering.

When the Divine Presence Looks Toward Us

The mitzvah of Birkat Kohanim, the Priestly Blessing, appears in the Torah in the book of Numbers, in Parshat Naso, and it is also recited every morning as part of the daily prayers. G-d tells Moses to speak to Aaron and say: “This is how you shall bless the children of Israel,” and He gives him the words of the blessing in three short verses: “May the L-rd bless you,” “May the L-rd shine His face toward you,” and “May the L-rd lift His face toward you” (Numbers 6:22–27).

But how exactly is that blessing meant to be given? What does it look like in practice?

For that, we turn to another passage, in Parshat Shemini, which describes the dedication of the Tabernacle. There the Torah says: “Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them” (Leviticus 9:22). Rashi immediately comments that this blessing was Birkat Kohanim, and from here we learn that the priests bless the people through what is called nesiat kapayim, the raising of the hands.

That is a striking detail. Normally, the prayer leader stands facing the ark, because he is addressing G-d on behalf of the congregation. But Birkat Kohanim works in the opposite direction. The kohanim are not speaking to G-d on behalf of the people; they are conveying G-d’s blessing to the people. And that has to be done face to face. The priests stand facing the congregation, stretch out their hands toward them, and bless them.

The outstretched hands themselves are explicit in the Torah. What the Torah does not spell out is the distinctive way the priests separate their fingers while giving the blessing. That hand formation does not appear explicitly in either the Torah or the Talmud. It was preserved instead as a living tradition, passed down among kohanim from father to son.

The first major authority to describe it in writing is the Rosh, who lived in Spain about 750 years ago, and he also explains its meaning. He writes that the priests separate their fingers based on the Midrashic phrase “peering through the lattice.” The Divine Presence rests above their heads, as it were, and shines through the spaces between their fingers. That is why they arrange their hands to create openings, to evoke the image of G-d “looking through the cracks” (Rosh on Megillah, ch. 3, siman 21; cf. Song of Songs 2:9).

According to this idea, when the kohanim bless the people, something far greater is taking place than a symbolic ritual or a beautiful custom. The priests’ hands become, in a sense, a frame. The parted fingers are like the openings in a lattice, and through them the Shechinah, the Divine Presence, is imagined as looking out toward the Jewish people.

Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy was once interviewed and asked why he chose that hand gesture and where it came from. He explained that he grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and used to go to synagogue with his father, grandfather, and brother.

One day, he saw five or six men go up to the front. They stood facing the congregation, with their tallitot draped over their heads so that their faces were completely covered, and they began chanting a melody. His father warned him not to look at them. Around him, the worshippers covered their faces as well, and he heard this strange, uneven chant—almost as if each person were singing to himself.

Then suddenly the cantor called out: “Yevarechecha!” And the group of priests repeated it after him. “Hashem!” Again they echoed the word. “Veyishmerecha!” “Veyishmerecha.”

As a child, he found the whole ceremony deeply unsettling. He understood that something serious was happening, and his curiosity got the better of him. He could not resist. He shifted aside the edge of his father’s tallit, which was covering his face too, and looked toward the kohanim.

That was when he saw their hands stretched out toward the congregation, with their fingers spread in that unusual formation. The image stayed with him for the rest of his life.

In the interview, Nimoy went on to explain the meaning of the gesture. It resembles the Hebrew letter shin, the first letter of the divine name Sha-ddai, which appears on the back of a mezuzah. It is also the first letter of the word Shechinah, the Divine Presence that, in rabbinic imagery, peers through the openings between the priests’ fingers. And it is the first letter of shalom, peace—the closing word and culminating theme of the Priestly Blessing.

Everyone Can Bless

Many years later, Nimoy came to understand why his father had warned him not to look at the priests during the blessing. The idea, as he learned it, is that the Divine Presence rests upon the kohanim at that moment, and so one does not stare at them. We find a similar idea in the story of Moses and the burning bush. When G-d appeared to Moses there, the Torah says: “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at G-d” (Exodus 3:6).

Rashi makes the same point in his commentary to the Talmud: “One who looks at the priests while they are raising their hands in blessing—his eyes grow dim, because the Divine Presence rests upon their hands” (Rashi to Megillah 24b).

But the Rebbe added an important point: you do not have to be a kohen to bless another Jew. Every Jew can—and should—bless another person. And if someone wants to bless a friend, he does not need to wait until he has mastered the priests’ hand formation. He can simply say the same words the kohanim say when they stand before the congregation. And in that merit, G-d will bless him as well: “And I will bless them” (Hitva’aduyot 5744, vol. 1, p. 317; cf. Numbers 6:27).

And in a way, that is what Leonard Nimoy ended up teaching the world. With that gesture, he turned the ancient image of blessing into something universal. Whenever he raised his fingers in that familiar shape, he was wishing people:

“Live long and prosper.”