Sermon by Rabbi Julie Roth – Don’t Look, Don’t Look – Bringing Back Duchening

I was sitting in the front row of the women’s balcony in a synagogue in Ramat Gan, Israel, next to my new friend Ayalah. We were both sophomores in high school, and her family was hosting me as part of an international peace conference for teenagers from all over the world.  ‘Don’t look’, she whispered and shouted at me simultaneously, which of course made me want to look even more closely at the spectacle below.  I had no idea what was going on, and I wanted to figure out what exactly it was that I wasn’t supposed to be looking at.  The sound I heard was completely unfamiliar, more like moaning than singing, and the sight of men without their shoes off, faces hidden beneath their tallitot, arms raised, swaying back and forth was something I had never seen in synagogue.  

‘Don’t look’, Ayalah said again, even more urgently this time, pulling on my shoulder, and forcing me to turn my face away.   So I looked around the women’s balcony instead, the best I could, and I saw all the women around me, mothers, children, teenagers, grandmothers, with their heads turned to the side, faces hidden under their arms.  ‘What was that?’, I asked on our short walk home to Ayalah’s apartment for Shabbat lunch.   ‘And why couldn’t we look at it?’  I can’t remember exactly what she said, as she struggled for the words in English.  But I remember that she conveyed with strong conviction that God was directly flowing through the Cohanim into the room in that moment, like a light that would blind us if we looked upon it. That was the first and only time in my life when I felt the true awe and power of duchening, of the priestly blessing recited by descendants of the Cohanim.

* * * 

דַּבֵּ֤ר אֶֽל־אַהֲרֹן֙ וְאֶל־בָּנָ֣יו לֵאמֹ֔ר כֹּ֥ה תְבָרְכ֖וּ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אָמ֖וֹר לָהֶֽם׃ {ס}    

Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. Say to them:

יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ יְהֹוָ֖ה וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ׃ {ס}    

GOD bless you and protect you!

יָאֵ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧ה ׀ פָּנָ֛יו אֵלֶ֖יךָ וִֽיחֻנֶּֽךָּ׃ {ס}    

GOD deal kindly and graciously with you!

יִשָּׂ֨א יְהֹוָ֤ה ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלֽוֹם׃ {ס}    

GOD bestow favor upon you and grant you peace!

וְשָׂמ֥וּ אֶת־שְׁמִ֖י עַל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וַאֲנִ֖י אֲבָרְכֵֽם׃ {ס}    

Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.

The commandment for Aaron and his descendants, the Cohanim, to bless the people of Israel, with the specific three-line blessing of three, five, and seven words, is found in this week’s parshah, Nasso.  The words of the blessing itself are familiar to all of us – from our prayerbook, from moments when parents bless their children on Friday nights, from baby namings, B’nai Mitzvah celebrations, and weddings.   Today I want to take a closer look at the instructions surrounding the blessings and to talk about the practice of duchening, of receiving God’s blessing through the descendants of the Cohanim in our synagogues today.

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We have one family in our synagogue, where both of the parents and three of the grandparents carry the lineage of Cohanim, and are direct descendants of Aaron and the Priests who served God first in the desert wandering and later in the Temple in Jerusalem.   Aylah Winter is our Director of Education and Daniel Winter serves as VP Legal on our board.  Aylah and Daniel were childhood friends, attending the same Jewish Day School together, so when they later married, their parents were already friends with each other.  I asked Daniel’s father, Steve Winter, and Aylah’s father, Howie Cohen, to write reflections on their experience of duchening, enacting the instructions, and reciting the words of the Priestly blessing as written in the Torah that we read today.  The term duchening comes from the raised platform the Cohanim would stand on in ancient times as they stood before the people to recite the Priestly blessing.

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Steve Winter wrote, “In Jerusalem, sitting above the Knesset is the Israel Museum. In it is housed a tiny fragment of parchment containing 15 words. It is believed to be the oldest surviving fragment of Biblical literature, believed to be 2700 years old from the era of the First Temple of Solomon. It is so old that it is not written in the Hebrew alphabet but in ancient Semitic script, the first alphabet known to mankind. It contains the 3 blessings and 15 words of our Priestly Benediction.

The Birkat Kohanim, or Priestly Benediction, is such a foundational prayer in our liturgy that it is actually recited DAILY in Jerusalem and twice (both Shacharit and Musaf) on Shabbat, every Shabbat in the rest of Israel, and of course on Pesach, Shavuot and Succot and Yom Kippur in our Diaspora.  In addition to removing shoes and covering head and hands with a Tallit, the Kohanim raise their hands and spread their fingers in a specific configuration to represent the letter Shin symbolizing the name of God. This exact hand configuration was popularized by Leonard Nimoy, himself a Kohane, in pop culture as the Vulcan salute and prayer for Peace.

It is important to note that it is absolutely NOT the Kohanim who bless the people but God. The Kohanim are intermediaries, channels through which God’s blessings flow. In themselves, the Kohanim have no power. This is why when you wish a Kohen continued strength after the blessing, a knowledgeable Kohen will not say thank you but rather “may you be blessed from Heaven.” 

On a most personal level, my lifelong love for the Birkat Kohanim is strongly tied to family. Because it has been traditionally passed patrilineally from generation to generation, it is the one time I have stood in Synagogue with 5 generations of family (Grandfather, Father, Me, Son, Grandson), shoulder to shoulder to bless Israel with love as an intermediary of God. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

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Howie Cohen begins his reflection by acknowledging that his appreciation for duchening comes from a very different place than Steve’s.  Howie writes,  “I grew up in a home that was very culturally Jewish, but not at all traditional or observant. The Reform synagogue that we went to as a family, and eventually became very active in, certainly didn’t have duchening, I had never known, seen it or heard about it from my father or grandfather.  Once, while in elementary school, I went to the Conservadox synagogue on one of the chagim with a friend and saw this strange occurrence of men on the bima, covered in their talitot, not wearing shoes and swaying back and forth humming a tune.  When I asked my father about it, he said only Jews who strictly observe Shabbat and all the laws of Judaism are allowed to do that.  And that was that.

When we moved back to the States, we first lived in Woodbridge, NJ, the only synagogue in town was a dying Conservative congregation.  The rabbi there was so excited when he found out that I was a Kohen, that he taught me about duchening.  I was solo for the couple of years that we sporadically attended services, and then it closed.  It was when we started attending the East Brunswick Jewish Center, that duchening started to mean something to me.  For me, it was stepping back into a tradition that my great-grandfather proudly participated in, but my grandfather and father had no interest in.  Eventually, our son Yishai began duchening with me, and I felt like a lost family tradition had been rekindled.  It was when Steve Winter introduced his family’s nigun to the duchening at EBJC that I really felt a connection to a tradition that has been going on for thousands of years.  Now I have the joy of duchening with Steve, Daniel & Benjamin who will hopefully carry on the tradition.

For me, Howie writes, it’s about tradition and connection.  I feel that it’s an opportunity for self-reflection.  It’s a time for me to pray for the people of Israel and the land of Israel. I hope that I am projecting Hashem’s spirit of love and gratitude to the congregation, my family, and the Jewish world.”

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Neither Steve Winter nor Howie Cohen included in their description the hand-washing ritual that takes place before the blessing is recited.  I can see how that might not be the highpoint for the cohanim, but as a bat Levi, I would be remiss if I didn’t describe something about the special role that Levites play.  As the Cohanim prepare to ascend the bimah to recite the blessing, they first loosen the shoelaces on their shoes so they will be able to remove their shoes without touching them.  And then descendants of the Levites, the helpers of the Priests, the ones who sang the Psalms in the Temple in Jerusalem, ritually wash the hands of the Cohanim.  I once participated in this ritual during my rabbinic internship at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York.  My mentor, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, was on the law committee at the time and had voted less than 10 years before in favor of the teshuvah allowing for both men and women to participate in the handwashing and the recitation of the birkat cohanim.  I checked right before Shabbat, and Rabbi Annie Tucker, the current rabbi of this synagogue, told me they still have duchening on the holidays, with about 10-15 cohanim, both men and women participating.

The teshuvah was written by Rabbi Mayer Rabinowitz and is entitled ‘Women Raise Your Hands’; it was passed by the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards in 1994 with a vote of 12 in favor, 7 opposed, and 2 abstaining.  Its reasoning closely examines the words in today’s parshah, making the argument that the words, daber el Aharon v’el banav, speak to Aaron and his sons, can be understood not as referring exclusively to Aaron’s male children, but to all of his offspring, just as the term b’nei yisrael, children of Israel, refers to all the children of Israel, regardless of gender.  In addition, the teshuvah argues, we now extend other honors accorded to Cohanim to women, such as the honor of having the first or second aliyah if they are a bat Cohen or a bat Levi.  And since the ritual originated in the desert, the argument concludes, with no direct connection to the Temple, where only men served, the tradition can now be carried forward by both men and women.

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I am lobbying to bring duchening back to Shomrei, at least on Yom Kippur, but I want to acknowledge the potential objections.  First, even if the ritual is extended to women, it is not fully egalitarian because it is a privilege extended only to the descendants of the Priestly class and the Levites, excluding most members of the community who are either descendants of the other tribes of Israel or converts to Judaism.  Others may object because it seems like a strange and foreign thing to do, or because the mystical idea that God’s blessing flows through human beings more powerfully through this ritual than through prayer in general doesn’t resonate.   But I think we should all have the experience of this ancient blessing, enacted through the descendants of Aaron, at least once in our lifetime, or even at least once a year.  After all, in Jerusalem, they experience duchening every single day!  Not every congregation has cohanim still alive who know how to perform this ritual, and we have an entire multi-generational family that wants to teach other Cohanim who have never performed the ritual how to do it.   

In the words of Steve Winter, “unlike any other blessing, with the Birkat Kohanim, love of the people Israel is not a supplementary emotion; it is a fundamental prerequisite through which divine blessing is conveyed. We are commanded to bless the people on behalf of God, BeAhavah, [with love].  Shomrei, let’s see for ourselves, ok maybe not see for ourselves, because maybe we’ll follow the tradition of closing our eyes, or looking away, but let’s experience for ourselves the power of this ancient blessing as it has been recited for thousands of years.

Shabbat Shalom.

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