A Father’s Blessing

With my mother and father in town for my son’s graduation from high school this week, of all my childhood memories to share this morning, the one that strikes me as most on point is one of the Cosgrove Shabbat table as I was growing up. The sound of the front door to our home opening and closing on a Friday evening signaled not only the arrival of my father, but Shabbat itself, as well as the wordless notice that our presence, without delay, was expected in the dining room – shoes and collared shirts required. My mother would light the Shabbat candles, we would sing Shalom Aleichem (yours truly always a bit off-key), and my father would recite Eshet Hayil, A Woman of Valor – the first few verses in Hebrew and the rest in English, in a British translation that, to this day, I can still recite by heart.

            At that point my father would give his four sons a nod, the nonverbal cue that beckoned us to step forward, two to his right, two to his left, so he could bless us: 

Y’simkha Elohim k’efrayim v’khi-m’nasheh.
Y'varekh’kha Adonai v’yishm’rekha.
Ya·er Adonai panav eilekha vihuneka.
Yisa Adonai panav eilekha v’yasem l’kha shalom.

May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe. 
May God bless you and keep you.
May God’s light shine light upon you and be gracious unto you.
May God’s countenance be turned towards you and grant you peace.

We were then each given a kiss, at which point my father would recite Kiddush. In the first eighteen years of my life, there were rituals that came and went. When we were young, my mother sang sh’ma to us every night as she put us to bed, but we eventually grew out of that. For a few years, I recall, we would recite Havdalah on Saturday night as Shabbat concluded. We almost always sang birkat hamazon, the grace after meals, at the Shabbat table, but sometimes we didn’t. But the blessing, the priestly blessing given by my father to his boys, was the constant, continuing to this very day when I am home and when, like this weekend, my father is in my home.

There was something mystical about the ritual. Physical contact was necessary – the jostling between me and my brothers in his expansive wingspan as we positioned ourselves relative to his height even as our respective heights changed. No matter the frenetic pace of our week, during that moment of blessing nothing else mattered. We were physically, filially, and spiritually present. A hard-working physician, a week could go by when I didn’t see my father; for all the love my dad had (and continues to have) toward his boys, I think it is accurate to say that day-to-day it was our mother who raised us. This was before cell phones; there were no midday texts or check-ins on the commute home. Some weeks his words of Friday night blessing were the first words he had spoken to us in days. And let’s face it – I was a fairly typical teenager – there were times, given the walls against intimacy that exist between fathers and teenage sons, that I wasn’t really interested in sitting at that Shabbat table, never mind listening to what he had to say to me. But in that moment, neither my mood nor anything else mattered. Even when there was nothing to say there was something to say. Connection was made; blessings were given, and blessings were received. In those moments, time stood still; in those moments, we were taught to appreciate the power of a moment.

Daber el Aharon v’el banav leimor. Koh t’varakhu et bnei Yisrael. Amor lahem.
Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. Say to them:

May God bless you and keep you.
May God’s light shine light upon you and be gracious unto you.
May God’s countenance be turned towards you and grant you peace.

V’samu et sh’mi al bnei yisrael va-ani avarakhem.
Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.
(Numbers 6:22-27)

The priestly blessing – Birkat Kohanim – as recited at my childhood Shabbat table and so many others, as found in our Torah reading, is the most ancient, most ubiquitous, and most sacred blessing in our people’s repertoire of prayer. Most ancient: Archeological excavations in Israel have turned up two seventh-century BCE amulets containing these very words – the earliest occurrence of a Biblical text in a non-Biblical document, dating to even earlier than the completion of the Bible itself. Most ubiquitous: While the Bible limits the recitation of the blessing to the Kohanim, the priests, these days the words are said by priest and non-priest, Jew and non-Jew, man and woman – even by Bob Dylan – spoken and sung at dinner tables, brises, baby namings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and beneath the wedding canopy.

And they are the most sacred. Throughout the ages, our commentators have sought to unpack the spiritual import of the blessing. Three Hebrew words, followed by five, followed by seven – an intensifying cadence of words, letters, and consonants. The first line, some say, referring to material blessings, the second line to God’s blessings, and the third to the most elusive blessing of all – being satisfied with one’s blessings – what today we might call an attitude of gratitude. Other interpretations speak of intellectual, emotional and spiritual blessings, while still others understand these blessings to teach that just as we hope that the divine light will be directed towards each of us, so too we should work to see the divine light in the countenance of others. 

And while the interpretations of the text are as numerous as there are rabbis to interpret it, for me – and here I return to the Shabbat table of my youth – the power of the blessing is not in its meaning but in its delivery. In fact, the focus of the Talmudic discussion (Babylonian Talmud Sotah 38a) on the blessing is not on the words of the blessing but the mechanics of its giving. The words must, for instance, be recited in lashon ha-kodesh, in Hebrew. The words must be recited by way of n’siat kapayim, the lifting of hands, as a parent places a hand on their child. Most of all, the words must be spoken panim-el-panim, face-to-face. In other words, there must be a physical proximity and, by extension, an emotional intimacy for the words to have effect. The meaning of the blessing is important, but even more important is the lesson taught by the way in which it is given: To be present in the fullness our being, to be spiritually attuned, to be attentive to the moment at hand, to be intentional with our lives, to stand face-to-face with the humanity of another person even when, and perhaps especially when, words themselves fall short. 

“The higher goal of spiritual living,” taught Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.” Far too often, far too many of us live our lives with senses dulled to the spiritual possibilities that exist before our very eyes – if only we would be open to them. Like a train speeding through a countryside, life passes us by, its pace, its incessant demands – a moving walkway from which we do not step off to pause, to breathe, to behold, to appreciate and to allow ourselves to feel the awe, wonder and intimacy of this world. It is not the only reason to observe Jewish ritual, it is not necessarily even the primary reason, but it is, at least to the contemporary sensibility, perhaps the most compelling one. A blessing to be said when we wake up in the morning and when we go to sleep at night. The mezuzah we kiss when we enter and exit a room. The candles we light at the beginning and the end of Shabbat. Being intentional about the foods we eat and do not eat. The blessings we recite over even our most basic physiological functions. A life of mitzvot is not meant to be rote. Just the opposite: A life of mitzvot is meant to save us from the rote, to cultivate a spiritual posture whereby even the most mundane, most habitual, and most familiar aspects of our lives inspire awe in their beauty, possibility, and sanctity. Yes, our rituals are the sacred vessels by which we connect to tradition, to community, and to God. They are all these things, but most of all they are the prompts calling us to attention and to live with intention. As Jews we need no ashrams or spiritual retreats to recognize the blessings of our lives. We have a spiritual practice, a life of mitzvot, a regimen of spiritual attunement whose goal is to communicate that moments are not to be missed, that, in the words of Heschel, “wonder is the root of all knowledge,” and that –contrary to Ecclesiastes – there is always something new under the sun.

And more than the moments not to be missed are the people in our midst. The power of the priestly blessing is no different than any other mitzvah in that it calls on us to pay attention; the difference being that in this case it is the experience of another person, not of a moment, that we are called to recognize. Our tradition is very clear: Equal as we all are in the eyes of God, each one of us is singular in nature; our character, our gifts, our foibles are unique to each one of us. It is a thought, which, if you pause to let it really sink in, is so sublime that it can overwhelm. No two moments alike, no two souls alike. Every person in this world unlike any other, each one a universe worthy of exploration, appreciation, and awe. And while we know intuitively that this is true, nevertheless – whether for lack of time, energy, or inclination – we fail to pay attention to the most obvious evidence of the divine in our world: our shared humanity. All of which is why, among other reasons, we have the blessing of the children. To make sure that at least once a week, a least within the domain of our own homes, we pause to recognize the rare and inimitable souls of those individuals we call family, the people with whom, hopefully, we journey through life.

Like every Friday night, last night I blessed my children at my Shabbat table. It was a special Friday night – the once or twice a year that all my children are home. This time next week they will have already begun to scatter to the wind. But more than the blessing of having the full complement of Cosgrove kids, more than the blessing of having my own parents at the Shabbat table, is the knowledge that last night was the last Friday night before my youngest child, my only son, Jed, graduates from high school. Over the last few days, not surprisingly, I have been reflecting, some may say panicking, on the significance of this turning point, this once-in-a-lifetime inflection point, in my life, his life, and the life of our family. 

It is not, I know, the prospect of empty nesting that weighs on me. All those pithy aphorisms about childhood years passing in the blink of an eye, how the days are long, but the years are short – I don’t relate. I quite love my wife; unlike my kids, I chose her. I can’t wait to pick up our relationship from where it left off nine months after we got married, and I will sing love songs to her when we’re eighty. Besides, eighteen years is plenty. I love my kids dearly, I will never have an achievement of which I am prouder than each of them, all of them, and the love shared between them. But . . . it’s time to go, if for no other reason than because the measure of successful parenting is a child’s ability to create a self-sufficient life of their own. 

No, it is not empty nesting that weighs on me. What weighs on me, always, but especially this weekend as my son graduates from high school, is the question of whether I myself, as our tradition asks, have been consistently and sufficiently present for the unique and incomparable soul that is his. Have I paid attention? In the frenetic pace of life, in the unending demands placed on my schedule; in the walls to intimacy that exist between father and teenage son; in the untold number of parenting missteps that I have inflicted – those I am aware of and far more I am sure I am not – in all of it, and so much more, have I been present? Is he aware, does he know that I know that there is nobody in this universe like him? How proud I am of him? How awed I am by him? How in this boy wonder I find constant wonder and awe? How lucky this world is to have you in it and how the greatest honor I have in this world is to be known as your father? Most of all, how much I love you? Do you know that I actually feel all these things all the time, but the limits of language, time, and temperament somehow prevent them from being spoken as often as they should. Do you know that these are the words I am saying to you every time I bless you and your sisters at the Shabbat table?

The day is coming, soon enough, that Debbie and I will be sitting at our Shabbat table – candles lit, no kids to bless – and we will skip straight to Kiddush. My hands will not be on our children’s shoulders, and the words will not be spoken face-to-face. I pray, nevertheless, that our children will still feel the blessings upon them, no different than I still feel my father’s blessings. That God bless you and keep you. That God’s light shine upon you and be gracious unto you. That God’s countenance be turned towards you and grant you the greatest blessing of all – shalom, peace. 

V’samu et sh’mi al bnei yisrael va-ani avarakhem.

Thus shall they link My name with the people of Israel – and I will bless them.