Becoming a Vessel: Rebuke and the Kohanim's Blessing

1“He blessed Yosef and said: The God before Whom my fathers walked … The angel who redeems me from all evil, may he bless the lads.”¹ The holy Zohar and the holy Ohr HaChaim both ask: we do not find that Yaakov blessed Yosef, only his sons!² A second point needs explaining. Since Yaakov began, “The God before Whom my fathers walked …,” he should then have gone on to say that God Himself would bless Yosef and his sons. Why, then, did he end with “The angel who redeems … may he bless”?

2Later, at the blessing of the tribes, the verse says: “And this is what their father spoke to them, and he blessed them; each man according to his blessing he blessed them.”³ This is difficult, for there are several tribes whom we do not find Yaakov blessing; on the contrary, he rebuked them. Yet the words “each man according to his blessing he blessed them” imply that he blessed every one of them. The word “spoke” (dibber) also needs a closer look. Dibbur, speech, is a harsh expression,⁴ and for blessings it would be more fitting to use amirah, saying, which is soft.

3Consider also the Priestly Blessing, of which the verse says: “They shall place My Name upon Bnei Yisrael, and I will bless them.”⁵ But what is the Priestly Blessing for? The words “and I will bless them” mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, will Himself bless His people Israel. If so, why are the Kohanim commanded to bless the people, when the blessing comes from Hashem?

4aWe can explain it this way. We need to know what the Kohanim's blessing really accomplishes, for whichever way we look at it, there is a difficulty. If Bnei Yisrael walk in the way of the Torah, they are worthy of Hashem's blessings even without the Priestly Blessing. And if, Heaven forbid, they fall short in keeping the Torah and the mitzvos, they are not fit for blessing, so how does the Priestly Blessing help them? Rather, we can explain it through the verse “For the lips of the Kohen guard knowledge, and they seek Torah from his mouth.”⁶ It is the Kohanim's task to guide Hashem's people Israel and teach it Torah and mitzvos. So we may say that this is the heart of the mitzvah of the Priestly Blessing: the Kohanim prepare the people of Israel and make them fit to be a vessel ready to receive the blessing. This is the meaning of “They shall place My Name upon Bnei Yisrael.” The Kohanim are commanded to place the Name of Heaven upon Bnei Yisrael, that is, to arouse them to walk in the way of Hashem. Through this Israel becomes fit for blessing, and then, naturally, “I will bless them”: the blessing comes to them from the Holy One, blessed be He.

4bThis also explains a ruling of the halachic authorities. Rav Saadia Gaon in his Sefer HaMitzvos and the sefer Chareidim of R' Elazar Azikri, cited by the later authorities, write that the mitzvah of the Priestly Blessing applies to the rest of Bnei Yisrael as well as to the Kohanim. The people have a mitzvah of their own: to be blessed.⁷ At first glance this is astonishing. Is a person really commanded to receive a blessing? But the Priestly Blessing exists to arouse people to walk in the way of Hashem. So every Jew is obligated to be aroused and to improve his ways, so that he will be ready to receive the blessings.

5Yaakov Avinu's blessing to Yosef and his sons now becomes clear. He said, “May my name be called upon them, and the name of my fathers.”⁸ We may say that this is like “They shall place My Name,” said of the Priestly Blessing. At heart, his blessing to Yosef's sons was that the Name of Heaven should rest upon them and that they be aroused to walk in the way of Hashem. Through this they would be a vessel ready to receive the blessing, and this itself was the blessing he gave them. That is the meaning of “He blessed Yosef”: Yaakov made him into a vessel that holds blessing. This answers our first question.

6In the same way we can understand Yaakov Avinu's blessing to his sons, the tribes. The words of rebuke he spoke to several of them were themselves the substance of the blessing. By rebuking them so that they would improve their ways, he prepared them and made them fit to receive the blessing from Hashem. That is why the verse uses a harsh word, “And this is what their father spoke to them”: Yaakov Avinu rebuked them so that they would be a vessel fit to receive the blessing. Now the verse reads smoothly: “and he blessed them; each man according to his blessing he blessed them.” All the tribes were indeed included in the blessing, for the rebuke itself was a blessing.

7The whole Mishnah, too, ends on this note: “R' Shimon ben Chalafta said: The Holy One, blessed be He, found no vessel that holds blessing for Israel except peace, as it says, ‘Hashem will give strength to His people; Hashem will bless His people with peace.’”⁹ As is well known, “strength” here has been explained to mean the Torah, the stronghold of Israel, as Chazal said in the Midrash.¹⁰ For when we walk in the way of the Torah, in the spirit of “Hashem will give strength to His people,” we become a vessel to receive the blessing.

8May Hashem grant that we be privileged to cleave to the Torah and the mitzvos. Amen, may it be His will.