*Koh*: The Self-Sacrifice That Brings Blessing

1“Speak to Aharon and to his sons, saying: So shall you bless Bnei Yisrael; say to them.”¹ The Baal HaTurim, in his commentary on the Torah, cites a note of the Masorah, the traditional record of where words recur in Scripture, listing other verses with the word koh:² “I and the lad will go yonder, ad koh”; “Koh, so, shall your offspring be”; and “since until now, ad koh, Hashem has blessed me.”³ We need to understand how these verses are connected, and above all how the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, is connected to the Priestly Blessing.

2aWe may explain this as follows. Hashem conducts His world in two ways: through nature and through miracles. We know that just as we conduct ourselves below, so He deals with us, measure for measure. This is compared to a person's shadow. The Shelah cites the Midrash on the verse “Hashem is your shadow”:⁴ “Just as with your shadow: if you laugh to it, it laughs back to you; if you weep to it, it weeps back at you; if you show it an angry face or a cheerful one, it shows you the same. So too the Holy One, blessed be He, is your shadow: as you are with Him, so He is with you.” So far his words.⁵

2bChazal said the same: “Why were the earlier generations answered when they prayed for rain, while we are not answered? The earlier generations gave up their lives, and so they were answered; we do not give up our lives, and so we are not answered.”⁶ This is as we have explained. When we are privileged to reach mesirus nefesh in avodas Hashem, the readiness to give one's life in the service of Hashem, then the Holy One, blessed be He, is compelled, as it were, to lead us through miracles, in the spirit of “Hashem is your shadow.” That is why the prayers of the earlier generations, who gave up their lives, were favorably accepted, while with the later generations, who have not been privileged to reach the level of mesirus nefesh, Hashem deals only through nature.

3aThis is what the Priestly Blessing is about. At first glance it is puzzling: if a person walks in the way of the Torah, he is blessed in any case, as the verse promises, “I will give your rains in their season.”⁷ So why is the Priestly Blessing needed? And if, Heaven forbid, he is not worthy of blessing, what good will the blessing do? The answer lies in what a blessing is. When we give our lives over to Hashem, we stand on the level of koh, which signifies mesirus nefesh. So we find in the Masorah, “I and the lad will go yonder, ad koh”: through the binding of Yitzchak, Avraham and Yitzchak handed down to us the power of mesirus nefesh. Standing on that level, we bring upon ourselves Hashem's miraculous guidance in abundance.

3bThis is the meaning of “Koh, so, shall your offspring be”: the power of the Avos was handed down to their offspring forever. It is also the koh of “Hashem has blessed me”: in the merit of this koh of mesirus nefesh, we are privileged to receive blessings from Hashem. Even though we do not stand on the level needed to receive the abundance, if we serve Hashem with mesirus nefesh, He deals with us in the spirit of “Hashem is your shadow.” So although we do not deserve it, since we are on a low level, He still bestows abundant blessing upon us. But this holds only when a person has mesirus nefesh, at least at times.

4May Hashem grant that we be privileged to serve Him with at least a trace of the level of mesirus nefesh, and that we always receive an abundance of blessing until the coming of Yinon.⁸ Amen, may it be His will.