This is the draft of my D’var Torah for May 30, 2026, Parashat Naso. We are celebrating the arrival of a newborn so that’s both a good occasion for talking about this particular text, and referenced in my words.
I want to start with a story that is in the top five of stories I am not embarrassed to say I’ve told you before, though each time I get ready to retell I find more to share. It’s the origin story of a particular blessing from the Torah, and it starts on July 30, 1979, on a hill facing the Old City of Jerusalem, across a valley to the south.
Dr. Gavriel Barkay was an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University and he had decided he wanted to do some work outside the walls. He thought about things that would have had to have taken place on the outside of ancient Jerusalem but not too far — quarrying stones, growing vegetables, gathering soldiers, traveling by road to and from the Bethlehem area and farther south. He put himself in the shoes of his ancient ancestors and surmised that a likely place was on this particular hill, where the Scottish Church of St. Andrews had been built in 1927.
After an initial probe unearthed some things, Dr. Barkay got a small grant. So small that the only way he could afford to do more work on the site was to include a group of 12- to 13-year-old volunteers from a youth archaeology club. From the later reports of Dr. Barkay and his assistants, “volunteers” might need to be in air quotes. They were certainly squirmy pre-teens; his graduate student Gordon Franz said that despite clear instructions not to disturb the site, the kids would keep picking things up and holding them in the air saying, “Tir’eh mah matzati! Look what I found!”
One particular kid named Natan was so annoying that Dr. Barkay assigned him to clean out a cave they had found under a collapsed roof. Dr. Barkay recalled, “I told Natan the repository had to be as clean as his mother’s kitchen, even if he had to lick it…. Not too long afterward, I felt him tugging at my shirt again. Natan had in his hand almost complete pottery vessels. This time, I pulled at his shirt and asked where he found them. Bored, Natan had banged on the floor with a hammer. Under the rocks he found the pottery.”
At this point, Dr. Barkay sent the students home and brought in a bunch more actual archeaological students from a few institutions. They worked around the clock, in the dusty crypts, with electricity strung in from the church where the pastor was one of Dr. Barkay’s students. They found more than a thousand things, including silver and gold and glass.
The most famous find from the dig was shown to Dr. Barkay by Judy Hadley, then a student from Ohio who became a Bible professor at Villanova. It was purple-ish and looked like a cigarette butt, and seemed to be some kind of rolled up metallic foil.
It took three years at the Israel Museum to carefully unfurl it without destroying it. It contained an inscription with the following words:
May the Divine bless you and protect youMay the Divine face shine on you and give you peace.
יברכך ה’ וישמרך
יאר ה’ פניו אליך וישם לך שלום
Y’varech’cha Adonai v’yishm’rechaYa-ayr Adonai panav aylecha v’yasaym l’cha shalom.
These ten words are almost the same as the fifteen-word blessing that is in our Torah reading today, in chapter 6 of Numbers. That metal foil dates to the 600s B.C.E., late in the era of the First Temple. Discovered with the help of squirmy and bored boy whose name means gift, it is the oldest version of a biblical text that humans have found.
It is known to us as Birkat Hakohanim, the blessing of the priests. In our version (Numbers 6:24-26):
יְבָרֶכְךָ ה’ וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ:
יָאֵר ה’ פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ:
יִשָּׂא ה’ פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם:
May the Divine bless you and protect You.
May the Divine face shine on you and be gracious to You.
May the Divine face be lifted toward you and give you shalom.
Part of my own goosebumps about the discovery in Jerusalem is the specific place, which is known as Ketef Hinnom, the shoulder of the Hinnom Valley. From the Church of St. Andrew, if you look straight across the valley you will see first the hill known today at Mt. Zion and then a bit farther the original Mt. Zion, the hill known today as the Temple Mount, Har Habayit. The Hinnom or Ben-Hinnom Valley in between was known in the Bible as the place where the worshippers of the god Molech would sacrifice children. Its Hebrew name, Gei Ben-Hinnom or Gei Hinnom, became the colloquial Hebrew and Yiddish term for hell — Gehenna.
Which makes the blessing discovered in the hill above even more meaningful. It is not just a blessing but a blessing made for the protection of children, their enlightenment, their peace. How fitting we find this in our Torah portion on the day we have shared ______’s name in a blessing with his parents in the presence of our community.
Our ancestors didn’t know any of this archeology but somehow intuited that this priestly blessing was a blessing for children too. It has become a custom for parents to say these words to their children at the beginning of Shabbat. The earliest mention of that comes from a treatise on moral education called ‘The Brautspiegel”, published in Basel in 1602: “Before the children can walk they should be carried on Shabbat and holy days to the father and mother to be blessed; after they are able to walk they shall go of their own accord with bowed body and shall incline their heads and receive the blessing.” Or, as Laurie and I have learned the custom from my brother-in-law Daniel, it’s acceptable to call your parents on the telephone for a blessing!
There is so much in our tradition exploring the text of the blessing, so here are just a few things.
The Torah introduces the blessing this way: Speak to Aharon and his children, saying: Thus shall you bless the children of Yisrael, saying to them (Numbers 6:23). דַּבֵּ֤ר אֶֽל־אַהֲרֹן֙ וְאֶל־בָּנָ֣יו לֵאמֹ֔ר כֹּ֥ה תְבָרְכ֖וּ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אָמ֖וֹר לָהֶֽם: There is an extra emphasis here on the word “saying”, and also on the manner of saying — koh t’var’chu, thus shall you bless.
Rabbi Josh Feigelson quotes Rabbi Avraham of Gur who taught that the default state for the Kohanim is chesed, is loving commitment, as they the children of Aharon who was known as loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them close to each other and to Torah. So the Kohanim did not need to be commanded to bless the people, which was already their nature — only how to bless them, how to make sure their blessing would be received.
I mentioned that there were ten words in the blessing on the 2600-plus-year-old amulet, and fifteen in the version in the Torah. Ten is represented by the Hebrew letter yod, which is the first letter of the Divine name, and five is the letter hay, which is the last letter of the name. Thus after the words of the blessings the Torah says: They will place My name on the children of Yisrael. V’samu et shmi al B’nai Yisrael. The blessing is like a midrash on the Divine name itself, and in particular the Middat Harachamim, the aspect of divine compassion which is the model for human love.
And since humans can only fleetingly imitate the love that flows from Divine easily all the time, the Torah instructed the Kohanim to bless the people with these specific words, not to improvise. So that at the moment of blessing the name, the love, the protection, the light, the face, the peace would all be woven into one, all the frequencies of divine energy into one beam.
In the Torah’s blessing, there are 3 words, then 5 words, then 7 words. According to Abravanel, each line represents a difference place within us for a blessing to land, for the beam to separate out as though our hearts were a spiritual prism turned toward the rest of our bodies.
The first line is about prosperity, so it is directed to our hands and the works of our hands. The second line is about enlightenment, so it is a blessing for our mind. The third line is peace, and it is directed to our soul — both for inner peace, and as the part of us that brings our hands and minds together powerfully out into the world, that we go out in a way that increases peace and not conflict.
The Netziv of Volozhin offers the following interpretation of the second line. May the Divine face shine on you and treat you with grace, viy’chuneka. Grace is love that comes without being earned, not in response to anything except your being. The blessing says the Netziv is not only to receive such love, and to know that you receive such love from the Divine, but that you yourself become a source of chen to others, that you treat everyone else with love not simply on account of, not in response to, but simply because they are. Walk in the world in a way that lets people know that they are beloved in this way.
Finally I’ll quote Rav Josh again, who brings the tradition of the Modzhizher Chasidim, who say that “thus shall you bless the children of Israel” means bless them as they are, however they are. I have more than once given my interpretation of how the blessing is given to children, with parental hands on their heads. It’s to bring down toward them the blessing you want for them, to place it on their head where we hope it will be absorbed by spiritual osmosis, which is the best we can do. Or if there is a blessing you have perceived in your child’s life of the past week, to give it a spiritual vaccum seal, so it will stay for them and as their blessing as they move in the world in the week to come.
I hope Talia and Bobby that today brings you a bond to this special blessing and that you will share it with ____ again and again. And for you and for all of us, the Torah is teaching us at a time where words of degrading and condemning have multiplied. There is a subtle bit of biblical grammar in the Torah, which says of this blessing not emor lahem but amor lahem. It’s not in the imperative language but in the infinitive absolute; not “say” but a kind of “saying”, a verb not of command domination but open-ended-ness, a verb available at all once to past and present and future. We need this kind of blessing all the time, to hear and receive it and to say and to give it. To be the people and to be children, to be parents or like parents and to be like the Kohanim. In our world of today dig deep, bridge the valley — be blessers.
Shabbat Shalom!
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