Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

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mesirut nefesh of the avot or through the holiness of the nation as a whole, that
human beings can bless each other.
בלה תובשחמ
How do these berachot work? On the one hand, the pasuk states, “Thus shall you
bless B’nei Yisrael” (6:23) implying that it is indeed the kohanim who bless the
people. On the other hand, the pasuk states, “and I [God] will bless them” (6:27),
implying that it is God who blesses!
We shall explore this matter through a different discussion – that of birkat
kohanim in chutz la-aretz. The Shulchan Aruch (OC 128) discusses the halachot
of birkat kohanim together with all the other halachot that apply on a daily basis,
rather than in Hilchot Yom Tov. In fact, most communities in Eretz Yisrael do
birkat kohanim every day, and this is understood to be a mitzva d’oraita. However,
the Rama (128:44) writes that the minhag in chutz la-aretz is to do birkat kohanim
only during mussaf on yom tov, when people are in an especially good frame of
mind. The rest of the year, even on Shabbat, people are preoccupied with the
pressures of making a living and daily life, and cannot perform birkat kohanim.
How do we understand such a minhag? Can a minhag cancel a mitzva d’oraita?
Would it be possible to say that the minhag developed not to say keri’at shema or
not to put on tefillin?
Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook explains in the name of his father that birkat kohanim is
not simply a mitzva of saying a particular formula. The mitvza is not “amira” but
rather “beracha,” which indicates that man becomes a pipeline, a conduit through
which God bestows His blessings to the world. In order to serve as a proper
conduit, a pipe must be sufficiently wide and free from obstructions. When man
is pressured rather than being happy, he is simply not able to serve as a conduit
for Divine blessing. It is not that the minhag has overridden a mitzva; under the
unhealthy conditions of life in chutz la-aretz, it is simply not possible to perform
birkat kohanim on a regular basis.
At Matan Torah, we obtained the ability to serve as conduits for God’s blessing in
the world. We aim to bring that blessing to the world with sheleimut – and this is
possible only in Eretz Yisrael, in Yerushalayim, the place of joy and yirah. May we
merit to see the pressures of life disappear, paving the way for us to joyfully serve
as conduits of God’s blessing to the world.