Naso - Middle Portion in Triennial Cycle 
B’midbar 5:11 to 6:27
Eitz Hayim 796-805; Plaut 1051-64; Hertz 588-596 

What a strange parashah we have this week.  It is easily divided into three topics:
	1)	the trial by ordeal of a woman accused of adultery (the sotah) -- 26 verses
	2)	the laws for a person who vows to devote himself to God (the nazirite) – 21 verses
	3) 	the priestly blessing (Birkhat Hacohanim) – just 6 verses.

What makes it strange is that the first two sections, the longer ones, are irrelevant to us today, and only the third and shortest section has any real meaning.  With reference to the ordeal  of the sotah, the whole idea was discontinued in Mishnaic times.  According  to M Sotah 9.9, citing Hosea verse 4.14:
When adulterers increased in number, the waters of jealousy ceased; and R. Jochanan ben Zakkai abolished them, as it is said, “I will not punish your daughters when they commit harlotry nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for they themselves consort with lewd women, and they sacrifice with harlots; . . . “

I have no idea how Jochanan ben Zakkai was able to abolish an explicit section of Torah on the basis of one verse from a prophet that is, to my reading, just commentary.

As for the portion on a nazirite, it may have been well known in Biblical times, but lost importance very quickly thereafter.  Certainly the Talmud frowns upon asceticism, and by the Middle Ages rabbis all but forbade it – perhaps to make a distinction with Christianity and its holy orders and celibacy for priests.  Apropos, a nazirite in Israel lived with certain restrictions but was never expected to be celibate.

So that gets us to the Birkhat Hacohanim, the priestly blessing, which, ignoring two short verses of introduction and one of conclusion, consists of three verses (6: 24, 25, and 26) that we all know well:
The Lord bless you and protect you.
	The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you.
	The Lord bestow favour and upon you and grant you peace.
Any chumash has comments to indicate the importance of these three short verses, but I think that R. Hertz captures best their significance (594):
It is as if it were the crown and seal of the whole sacred order by which Israel was now fully organized as the people of God, for the march to the Holy Land.

During 1st Temple times, this blessing was only said in the Temple, but during 2d Temple times it was also said by priests in the synagogue attached to the Temple.  Thus, it was an easy step to accommodate it to synagogue services after the Temple was destroyed.  Today it is repeated in most Conservative congregations at times (other than Mincha) when there is an oral repetition of the Amidah.  The same words can also be said at other times – as a benediction that closes the service, or at weddings and b’nai mitzvah services.  It even appears in some Christian services.  However, only in the Amidah does the congregation collectively confirm that it hears the blessing with the words: Ken y’hi ratzon (ןוצר יהי ןכ), words to which I will return.
Structure of the Birkhat Hacohanim
The Birkhat Hacohanim is beautifully poetic and invocative.  Structurally, the three verses Increase from 3 to 5 to 7 words, and from 15 to 20 to 25 letters.  As you can guess, lots of midrashim try to derive lessons from that pattern, but to explore them would take up all our time.  The grammar is also systematic. Each verse begins with a verb in the future tense. The second word is the tetragrammaton, that is yud-hey-vav-hey, as a substitute for God.  And the wording goes on from there:

		24: verb + tetra + verb
		25: verb + tetra + object + pronoun + verb 
		26: verb + tetra + object + pronoun + verb + pronoun + object

Some commentators see the three ascending from physical to moral to spiritual levels, or from physical to spiritual to a combination of the two.  Remarkably, as Eitz Hayim, notes (802; note to Appendix), the wording has not changed since at least the 7th century BCE, a rare example of pre-exilic Judaism surviving into the modern era.

Original Use and Today's Adaptations
Back in Temple days, the birkhat haconhanim was surrounded with a lot of ceremony.  The priests used to take off their sandals and wash their hands (with the aid of other Levites); then to stand on a dias or "duchan" (hence the Yiddish, duchanen, for the ceremony); and to raise arms with fingers separated and thumbs almost touching so as to form Shin (signifying Shaddai) with each hand.  This ceremony still persists in most Orthodox and the more traditional Conservative Congregations, but typically only on Fast Days and Holy Days.  However, I doubt that any congregation has the chutzpah to exclude cohanim who suffer from any of the physical or moral defects that, in Temple days, would have excluded them from the privilege of offering the blessing.

Lots of traditions grew up around the three-fold blessing, with enough regional variations to get noticed in the Mishnah.  For example, in some congregations, the cohanim cover their heads with their taleisim, and congregants avoid looking directly at the priests -- and in few areas congregants turn away from the cohanim or cover their  eyes (presumably to avoid coming directly into contact with God).  Most such practices disappeared with time.  About the only one that remains is the brief congregational affirmation after each verse, itself a remnant of a former responsive blessing.  

Object and Meaning
As indicated above, almost any chumash has a good discussion about the meaning of the words in the blessing, so I will jump to a broader point. It is absolutely essential to understand that, despite their prominent role, the blessings do not! come from the priests.  Priests are just transmitters, middlemen.  The blessings come from God and their object is the Jewish people.  As stated firmly in Hertz (note on 596):
. . . no priest could say I bless the children of Israel.  God is the source of, and He alone can give effect to, the blessing pronounced by the priests.

Unfortunately, this clear distinction between roles creates its own theological problem.  It seems to imply too much of a cause-and-effect relationship: priests recite the threefold benediction, and then God then sends down the blessing. According to the clearly troubled Rabbi Plaut (1066)1:
This appears to suggest that the threefold blessing has special qualities in that it forces the hand of God: a human word, delivered by the right person in the right manner, will call forth a predictable divine response. . . .

R. Plaut does recognize that statements similar to the Birkhat Hacohanim appear in almost all religions, and that they also appear elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as with the blessings that Isaac and Jacob give to their children, and, even more dramatically, the blessings expressed by Moses toward the end of his life  and clearly designed to influence the conduct of the Jewish people. Again, such blessings bother R. Plaut:
Not only is the borderline of religious magic uncomfortably close, but the assumptions of permanent special status in relationship to God are difficult to accept.

As a result of his concerns, R. Plaut argues that we must drop the literal meaning of the prayer.  We should not think of those three verses as statement nor as invocation, but rather as prayer.  They reflect our aspirations, our hopes, but without any assurance that they will be fulfilled. Plaut suggests that we should understand the words in the same way as the common expression, “The Lord be with you.” It really means “May the Lord be with you.”

Even with this change of perspective, the Birkhat Hacohanim is still powerful.  In many ways the words are sanctified by their poetry, and by 2-1/2 millennia of tradition. Of course, because God may or may not respond positively, according to criteria that we have no way of understanding, we must present the indicated in the three blessings in a conditional mood.  Therefore, our response to each of the three blessings is appropriately modest:  Ken y’hi ratzon – May it be your (i.e.,God’s) wish.  As Jews, we do not assume the blessing but rather hope for it.  And that is why they are not generally said in the absence of a minyan and only said in the oral repetition of the Amidah.

Shabbat shalom,