So much is packed into a blessing with 15 words

The Torah is full of thought-jewels. This week’s reading, Naso, is especially significant because it contains the precious jewel of the priestly blessing.

The Hebrew text of the blessing has 15 words, reminiscent of the 15 steps that led up to the main court of the sanctuary in Temple times and of the 15 Songs of Ascents (the Shirei HaMa’alot) which constitute one of the great sections of the Book of Psalms.

Since 15 is the numerical value of one of the Divine Names, G-d is heard behind and through each of the words of the Birkat Kohanim.

Beginning with security and prosperity, the blessing moves to spiritual quality in the light of G-d’s countenance and concludes with shalom, peace, symbolizing completeness.

When the blessing is pronounced, this last word tells us that the greatest boon is when everything is right and complete and in place.

When the Tabernacle altar was dedicated, every tribal prince brought a distinctive offering.

Though the offerings were separate and independent, they metaphorically came together to form one overall manifestation of sanctity. Though every component needed the others, each one had its own quality.

In his introduction to Zera’im, the Rambam spoke of a man who built a large mansion which provided overall shade on a hot day but at the same time everyone had his own favorite wall or nook whose shade gave him protection from the sun.

In its own way, this idea tells us something crucial about human beings: it assures us that everyone has his or her own blessing to bring to the community, but the community is strong because it has an overall identity and ethos.

The sidra this week is exceedingly long and it is hard on the Ba’al K’ri’ah, though the words are not nearly as difficult to read as Tazri’a/M’tzora in the middle of the Book of Vayikra.

The sidrot vary in length. Some are much shorter and are completed more quickly. Others take longer and if there happen to be two or three readings on a Shabbat morning it makes the reader’s task very onerous. The advantage of being a ba’al k’ri’ah, however, is that one gets to know the text well.

I had a teacher who wanted to illustrate a Hebrew grammatical phenomenon and chanted a whole sidra to the class until he got to the word he wanted. That teacher told us that each year he studied the weekly sidra through the eyes of a different commentator.

Sometimes he had a Rashi year, sometimes an Ibn Ezra year, sometimes a Sforno year. When he prepared the leining, he looked not only at the words but at the ideas.