The oldest known archaeological find bearing a biblical text is a silver amulet necklace with an inscription of the Priestly Blessing, which comes directly from Parashat Nasso (specifically, Numbers 6:23–27): “May the Lord bless and protect you. May the Lord deal kindly and graciously with you. May the Lord bestow favor upon you and grant you peace.”
Discovered in Jerusalem, it dates to the sixth century BCE — a moving greeting from the ancient past, echoing words from this week’s parashah across the generations.
The Priestly Blessing is still recited today and, in many congregations, is considered a high point of the prayer service. Kohanim, descendants of the priestly family, stand facing the congregation, their heads cloaked by their prayer shawls, their fingers outstretched in a traditional gesture meant to evoke the Hebrew letter shin, as they recite the blessing over an assembly whose members traditionally hide their faces and do not look. It is an emotionally charged moment.
For its part, the Zohar is concerned not only with the sublime content of the Priestly Blessing and the idea that the Shekhinah hovers between the outstretched fingers of the kohanim who recite it, but also with the status of the priests who recite it:
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It has been taught: Any priest not beloved by the people should not spread his hands. It once happened that a certain priest rose and spread his hands, and before he finished, he turned into a heap of bones. Why? Because he did not bless lovingly. Then another one rose, spread his hands and blessed, and that day was mended. Any priest who does not love the people, or whom the people do not love, should not spread hands to bless the people. As it is written (Proverbs 22:9): “He that has a good eye will be blessed (yevorach). Do not read yevorach (“will be blessed”) but rather yevarech, “will bless.”
Zohar 3:147b–148a
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The eye represents the entirety of a person’s disposition — and, in particular, the inclination to judge others either favorably or harshly. In classic midrashic style, the Zohar reads the verse from Proverbs as proof that the person who blesses, the priest, should “have a good eye” — be both loving and beloved. This interpretation doesn’t come from nowhere. In fact, the preliminary blessing, which precedes the formal recitation of the Priestly Blessing, expresses a similar need for love: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Who has sanctified us with the sanctity of Aaron, and commanded us to bless His people Israel with love.” The priests are obligated not merely to bless the people of Israel, but to bless them with love.
In this homily, the Zohar next turns from blessing to imprecation and, specifically, to Balaam — the non-Jewish prophet from the Book of Numbers who was hired by the king of Moab to curse the Israelites. In the Torah, Balaam is described as shatum ha’ayin (Numbers 24:3), an obscure phrase with multiple possible meanings, including “whose eye is open” and “whose eye is closed.” For the Zohar, this ambiguous phrase signifies emotional and spiritual blindness — an eye closed to seeing the good in others:
Come and see what is written about Balaam. When he was entrusted with the task to bless Israel, he gazed with an evil eye so that the blessing would not be fulfilled, and he based his words on that evil eye… “Utterance of the man shetum ha’ayin,”whose eye is closed … who closed his good eye, so that they would not be blessed and the blessing would not be fulfilled.
Zohar 3:147b–148a
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This is the reason, according to the Zohar, God’s struggle was specifically with Balaam and not Balak, the king who commissioned him to curse the Israelites in the first place.
It may be that the Zohar, not a complete stranger to magical thinking, here tempers a magical belief in the evil eye, which typically attributes power to demons and external dark forces, and replaces it with an inner human reality: The danger of evil is rooted deep within human intention, just as goodness is rooted in the capacity to love.
The Zohar turns next to what makes for a loving person, looking again to Proverbs for inspiration: “One who is generous is blessed, for giving bread to the poor,” (22:9). Generosity toward the poor reflects the same movement of the soul as love itself. The blessing is not merely an external act; it is bound up with the inner disposition of the one who blesses, who demonstrates emotional capacity for generosity and love.
Here too, most likely, lies the root of the less well-known custom (practiced today in the Diaspora) of hatavat chalom — the amelioration of a troubling dream — during the Priestly Blessing. This practice, talmudic in origin, involves three friends telling the dreamer three times: “You have dreamed a good dream.” The love and good eye of friends can reshape a distressing dream and help transform reality itself from a curse into a blessing.
The Zohar’s homily concludes with the verse about our patriarch Abraham: “And he believed in God, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). The word vayachshevehah (and He reckoned it) expresses, according to the Zohar, the way a person of good eye interprets reality: He “thinks it” (machashava) toward the good. According to the Zohar, Abraham was exposed to the Shekhinah — the aspect from which harsh judgments are aroused — and yet attributed to it righteousness and mercy:
And although Judgments are aroused from Her, although She is Judgment, Abraham reckoned Her as if She were Compassion, as it is written vayachshevehah, “and he reckoned Her.”
Zohar 3:147b–148a
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Mysticism is often understood as an entry into sublime divine realms far removed from the here and now. Yet many passages in the Zohar, like this one, teach that the power of the Kabbalist is rooted not in the world above but in this world: in family, community and society. The Priestly Blessing cannot succeed if the one who blesses neither loves nor is loved. Finding favor in the eyes of other people is not inferior to finding favor in the eyes of God — it is a necessary condition for it.
This piece was originally published as part of A Year of Zohar: Kabbalah for Everyone, an original series produced by My Jewish Learning and Sefaria. Sign up for the entire series here.
