Sermon for Shabbat Naso 14 &15 June

Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 20 June 2024

In 1977 not long after I started as rabbi at Southgate and District Reform Synagogue, I was due to be away one Shabbat and asked a member of the community to conduct the service. We sat down together to ‘walk through’ the service. “After the Adon Olam,” I said “you do the Priestly Blessing.” I still remember how vehemently he said, “Oh no! only rabbis can do that!”

I’ve spent much of my rabbinic career trying to escape from being seen as some sort of priest who alone can do certain things. And that Priestly Blessing was part of Samuel’s Barmitzvah portion this morning.

In ancient Israel, the priests in the Temple blessed the people each day. Priests alone could perform the  sacrifices, conduct the Temple service. I have to say that I find it really difficult to get my head around just what the service in the Temple must have been like.

It feels a bit like a telephone call in the old days. Today we just dial the number and are are instantly connected to somebody on the other side of the world. Not so long ago, it was a ‘long-distance call’ which you had to book with the telephone operator. They made the connection. The priests in the Temple feel like those telephone operators, making the connection between the ordinary Jew and God.

Given that a priestly elite, the cohanim, would develop, it might be strange to read that Moses is told, shortly after the Exodus, that we are to become a “mamlechet cohanim, a kingdom of priests and a holy people.” (Exodus 19:6) – not a people with an elite priestly class, but a kingdom of priests.

When the Temple was destroyed and the sacrificial system no longer existed, the idea of a separate priestly group, with special functions and powers, passed from Judaism into, paradoxically, the Church. Catholic Priests still function as those telephone operators, connecting worshippers and God: via communion, confession, the last rites and so on.

In Judaism, the end of the Priesthood meant that a different style of religious leader emerged – the rabbi. Unlike the Temple Priest, however, rabbinic authority does not depend on birth or special status but on Jewish learning and knowledge, which anybody can acquire.

So that member of mine saying “oh no only rabbis can do that!” was really off the mark; But that said, at that time most Reform rabbis did do the Priestly Blessing at the end of the service.

As you know, any of you can do what I do – marry, bury, conduct services and so on. The end of the Priesthood led to what Professor Jakob Petuchowski called the “Ever-Widening Holiness Franchise.” (Moment, Vol 10, No 5 May 1985)

It was a quantum leap in Jewish life which was now in the hands of ordinary Jews, like you and me. Holiness had been spread outwards to become the ‘property,’ as it were, of all adult Jews. The practical effect was to extend the orbit of Jewish life so that more, rather than fewer, people were directly involved.

Where can we see this?

Many Jews wash their hands before eating, and say the blessing – al netilat yadayim – which speaks of God having given the command to do so. But we would search the Bible in vain for the actual commandment. All we know is that the Talmudic sages said that washing hands before a meal is a divine command – and it is so because the priests in the Temple washed before they ate sanctified food. In other words, something that only the priests had done in the Temple was now incumbent on all Jews; and henceforth, it was to be said when eating ordinary, everyday food.

All this might seem small fry to us. But in its time, it was radical, revolutionary, another step on the path to becoming that “kingdom of priests.”

In traditional synagogues the Priestly Blessing is done only by those who claim to be descended from the priests. It is only done on festivals in a ceremony called the duchan.

With the destruction of the Temple, this blessing, only recited by the Cohanim in the Temple, was taken into the Jewish home, to be said by parents over their children on Erev Shabbat. What once only the Priests could do, now became something any Jew could do.

Indeed, one of the Hebrew names for the Jewish home is rnikdash m‘at, the ‘small sanctuary,’ the ‘small Temple.’ Every Jewish home potentially becomes that on Erev Shabbat, with whoever says the blessing as the Priest. So the Friday night table is made to look like the altar – with wine, bread and, interestingly, salt. Why sprinkle salt on the bread for motsi? – because the priests sprinkled salt on the sacrifices.

In other words, yet another Temple act reserved for the priests in ancient Israel which is now the right and responsibility of any and every Jew

Last week, at a meeting to do with Leo Baeck College library, I chatted with one of our members. “Did you ever see Rabbi Leo Baeck?” he asked. I hadn’t. He remembered Leo Baeck doing the Priestly Blessing here, from this bimah, holding up the ends of his tallit like this —– to intone the blessing. Many rabbis did just that, in deep, sonorous, almost mysterious tones.

Few do so now. In Southgate, if we said it at all, we would say it together and to each other – a sort of farewell blessing of peace on each other. I encouraged parents to do it – for their Bar- or Batmitzvah child on the bimah; and when they stood under the chuppah with their children. For me to do it felt like perpetuating that false belief: “oh no! Only rabbis can do that!”

With the destruction of the Temple and the end of a serious priesthood, the Priestly Blessing could simply have fallen out of usage. A quantum leap took it into the home, and instantly made it accessible to every Jew.

It is only in widening that holiness franchise that more and more Jews will feel there’s something here which can involve them, can speak to them, can respond to their religious needs.

In three weeks’ time we’ll read about the rebellion of Korach against Moses: “Didn’t God say we are a kingdom of priests,” he argues, “so why should you hold on to religious authority?!” He claims that he wants to extend the holiness franchise – what he actually wants is to trawl authority back for himself. His ‘sin,’ if that’s the right word, is in saying that the people is a mamlechet cohanim, a kingdom of priests. He uses the present tense – we are a kingdom of priests. For God and Moses, it is something to become.

Extending that holiness franchise is how we will eventually become that kingdom of priests, when all of us will have taken on the responsibility of priesthood and discharge that function in our lives – me, and you and you and you!

Then – but not yet!