Birkat Kohanim

Why is it here?

You just said the blessings over learning Torah, so the siddur gives you Torah to learn right away. Tosafot (commentaries on the Gemara by rabbis in France and Germany in the 1100s and 1200s) say the Jews of France did this because the Talmud Yerushalmi (the Gemara of the Land of Israel) speaks of learning on the spot. Tosafot themselves hold it is not strictly required. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) says the right thing is not to pause in between, and gives that as the reason for these verses.

Why these verses?

Any Torah would have worked. The Rambam (Maimonides, who died in 1204) writes that the custom was to read Birkat Kohanim, though some places read the passage about the daily offering. The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, written around 1900) says these verses were picked because they have blessing in them. Nusach Ashkenaz has only the three lines of blessing. Nusach Sefard says all six verses.

Three, five, seven

Count the words in the three lines of blessing: three, then five, then seven. Now the letters, with God's Name in its full four letters, as in a Torah scroll: 15, then 20, then 25. Each line is longer than the one before. The Baal HaTurim (Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, who lived about 700 years ago and paid close attention to counts like these) lists the numbers line by line. An older source, the Midrash on Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs), adds up the letters: sixty, like the sixty warriors around King Shlomo's bed.

A gift needs a guard

The first line asks for two things: bless you and protect you. Why both? Rashi (the best-known commentator on the Torah, who died in 1105) explains: a master can give his servant a gift, but cannot protect him from everyone. If robbers take the gift, what was it worth? God gives and also guards. The Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, head of the Volozhin yeshiva, who died in 1893) adds that every blessing needs guarding so it does not turn harmful. Learning can lead to arrogance. Wealth can hurt its owner.

You already know these words

These three lines come up again and again. When no kohanim go up to bless, the chazan says them in his repetition of the Amidah and calls them "the threefold blessing in the Torah." The siddur records the custom of blessing children with them on Friday night. And the Gemara says they are the reason the Amidah ends with Sim Shalom, the blessing for peace: this passage closes with God saying "and I will bless them," and God's blessing is peace.

Said in the Temple every morning

When Aharon first served in the Mishkan (the desert sanctuary), the Torah says he lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them. Rashi says these were the words. Later, the Mishnah says the kohanim on duty in the Temple each morning read the Ten Commandments and the Shema and said three blessings, one called Birkat Kohanim. Tosafot explain: not the ceremony with raised hands, just the verses. The Rambam reads it differently: it means Sim Shalom, and these verses were said later, on the Temple steps.

A blessing has to come with love

The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah) tells of a kohen who stood up to bless the people and, before he finished, became a heap of bones. Why? "Because he did not bless with affection." So it teaches: a kohen who does not love the people, or whom the people do not love, should not raise his hands to bless them. It reads a verse in Mishlei, "One with a good eye will be blessed," as "will bless." Later books of Jewish law say this is why the kohanim's own blessing, said before they begin, ends with the words "with love."

כָּל כֹּהֵן דְּהוּא לָא רָחִים לְעַמָּא, אוֹ עַמָּא לָא רַחֲמִין לֵיהּ, לָא יִפְרוֹס יְדוֹי לְבָרְכָא לְעַמָּא

God is your shadow

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, an early Chassidic master, quotes the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of the Chassidic movement), who used to challenge people with a verse in Tehillim. Its plain sense is "Hashem is your shade." He read it as "your shadow." A shadow does whatever you do. In the same way, so to speak, God does what a person does: give and show mercy, and God does good to you. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak finds this in the word "koh" in "This is how you shall bless." It means "like this." The way you act is the way God acts.

כמו שהצל עושה מה שאדם עושה כך הבורא ברוך הוא כביכול עושה מה שאדם עושה

Why peace is the last word

The Maharal of Prague (a major Jewish thinker, who died in 1609) asks why peace always comes last. His answer: a thing is called shalom, at peace, when it is shalem, whole. Nothing is whole when it starts. Wholeness comes at the end. Then he looks at the word order here. Every other phrase in the blessing ends with "you," so this one should read "and give peace to you." The Torah turns it around, "and give you peace," so that peace is the final word.

כי על ידי השלום הדבר הוא בשלימות, והשלימות הוא בסוף, כי בהתחלה אין הדבר בשלימות

The higher you climb, the more is asked

Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) writes that God's blessing lifts a person up, and that brings more obligations. The more you grow, the more is asked of you. No one could stand up to that if God did not know how heavy human nature is. So first: "May Hashem lift His face toward you," may He go beyond the strict law with you. But the storm inside does not stop, because you still feel you are falling short. So the blessing goes on: "and give you peace." Peace of soul, set back in its place.

וישם לך שלום שהשלום הנפשי יושם על מכונו

Not only in heaven

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, a Chassidic rebbe, wrote this in Warsaw in 1940, under Nazi rule, months after his only son was fatally wounded. He asks how a person can study Torah when, in the prophet Yeshayahu's words, the whole head is sick, or feel any fire when the whole heart is faint. So he reads the last verse closely: "They shall put My name on the children of Israel." On them, for real. The good must not stay above them, in heaven only. They are human beings, he says, and they need to be saved in their bodies too.

ושמו את שמי על בני ישראל עליהם ממש ולא תשאר ממעל להם מה שטוב בשמים לבד, כיון שהם בני אדם וצריכים ישועה גם גופנית

I'm not a kohen. Why am I saying the kohanim's blessing?

Because here you are learning Torah, not blessing anyone. You have just said the blessings over the Torah, and the Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) says the right thing is not to break between that blessing and learning. So the custom is to say the passage of Birkat Kohanim next. The Aruch HaShulchan (a code of law by Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, from around 1900) puts it this way: a person says it "not as the kohanim's blessing but as Torah study."

Can I just read it in my head?

Say the words. The Shulchan Aruch rules that Torah in thought alone needs no blessing. The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, from about 1900) explains: thought is not speech. So someone who learns silently should say some Torah aloud after the blessing, unless they say these verses, "as is the custom." The Vilna Gaon (Lithuania, 1700s) disagreed: thought needs the blessing too. Peninei Halakhah (Rabbi Eliezer Melamed's guide to Jewish law): say a few verses aloud. That covers every view.

Do I have to say these exact verses?

The sources call it a custom. The Rambam (Maimonides, whose code of law dates to the 1100s) writes that after the blessings a person "reads a little Torah." The custom, he reports, is to read Birkat Kohanim. Some places read the passage of the daily offering, and some read both. The Maharshal (Rabbi Shlomo Luria, Poland, 1500s) said other verses, among them "Love your neighbor as yourself." Peninei Halakhah: there is no duty to say these verses in particular. The aim is to learn after the blessing.

Why does my friend's siddur have only three verses here?

The siddurim differ. The Shulchan Aruch speaks of "the passage of Birkat Kohanim," and Nusach Sefard prints the whole passage, Bamidbar 6:22-27. So do the Chabad siddur and Siddur Edot HaMizrach, a Sephardic siddur. Siddur Ashkenaz prints only the three verses of the blessing itself. The Mishnah Berurah explains that custom: three verses, "the way of someone reading from the Torah," chosen because they have blessing in them. (The Mishnah rules that someone reading from the Torah reads at least three verses.)

It's still dark out. Can I say this?

Yes. Kohanim do not give their blessing at night, and the Magen Avraham (a major 1600s commentary on the Shulchan Aruch) reports that the Maharshal wrote to say other verses before dawn for that reason. It disagrees: these verses are said as learning, so they may be said even before morning light. The Mishnah Berurah, the Shulchan Aruch HaRav (the code of law by the first Chabad Rebbe) and the Aruch HaShulchan agree. The passages about the offerings are different: the Shulchan Aruch says to say them only by day.

Can I say it by heart?

Yes. The Gemara teaches that words of the Written Torah are not to be recited from memory. But the Shulchan Aruch permits anything "that everyone knows fluently," and gives three examples: Shema, Birkat Kohanim and the passage of the daily offering. The Mishnah Berurah adds a limit: verses that you know by heart but most people do not are not included. It also cites authorities who hold that the rule applies only when you are reciting on behalf of other people.

My parents are not kohanim. How can they bless me with these words?

Peninei Halakhah asks this, because the Torah gave this blessing to the kohanim. It brings two views. One: a non-kohen goes against the Torah only by blessing with raised hands the way the kohanim do, so some parents put just one hand on the child's head. The other is from the Mishnah Berurah and its longer notes, the Biur Halacha: the problem is only when a person means to do the kohanim's mitzvah. Outside its set place in the prayer service it is clear that this is not the intent, so even two hands are fine.