All parents have had moments – sometimes experienced with joy, and sometimes experienced with exasperation – of recognizing that their children are just like them. I have two daughters who are both funny, loving and kind. I like to think that those are qualities that they inherited from my wife and me. They also have moments when they are stubborn, forgetful and easily distracted. I have to admit that those are also part of my genetic legacy to them. (I'll leave my wife out of that one). 

I recently had one of those moments with my ten-year-old. It came as a revelation to me about both my child and about myself.

I was looking over a weekly school report from my daughter's teacher. I saw lots of A's and the word "Excellent" on the report. I told my daughter, "You did really well this week. You must have worked hard." I expected her to respond by saying something like, "Thank you," or, "Yeah, it was a good week for me." That is not what I heard, though.

I heard nothing. My daughter just looked at me without any expression, positive or negative. If anything, she looked a bit scared. It was as if my compliment was a threat to her – a verbal blow that she would have to absorb and hope that the pain would pass quickly.

I felt a bit hurt by her indifference to my words. "Who responds that way to a compliment?" I asked myself. "Who feels pained by praise?" I wondered. 

And then I answered myself: "Oh, yeah. That's me. I do that. She gets it from me."

So now, I feel doubly troubled. My daughter doesn't know how to take a compliment and, I realize, neither do I. I am always looking at my shoes when people say nice things about me. It's not that I don't appreciate the kindness behind a compliment – it's just that I don't really believe it. I have a hard time accepting praise because I would rather listen to my own critical judgments about myself. And now, my daughter does the same thing. Oy.

I want to do better than this – both for my child and for myself. I want to be able to hear words of praise from others, and I want to be able to give my child praise that she will hear. Where am I going to find a way to do that?

Well, there are worse places to look for instruction than in this week's Torah portion (Naso). In the reading, we hear God telling Moses to teach Aaron and his sons the words of "The Priestly Blessing":

May Adonai bless you and keep you.
May the face of Adonai shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the face of Adonai lift up to you and give you peace.
– Numbers 6:24-26

It is a beautiful blessing and it appears prominently in both Jewish and Christian liturgy. However –  most interestingly – Jewish tradition focuses more on the proper way to give the blessing than it does on the actual content of the blessing. 

In the verse that introduces the Priestly Blessing, God instructs Moses: "Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, 'Thus you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them:…'" (Numbers 6:23).

The classical rabbis are always sensitive to extraneous words in the text and they notice a whopper in this verse. They wonder, why do the instructions to Aaron and his sons include the phrase, "Say to them," after it already states, "Thus you shall bless"? Is it really necessary to tell the priests to both "bless" and "say"? Doesn't the first necessarily require the second?

Rashi, the great medieval commentator on the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, says that the word "say" has special significance. First of all, he notices that the word is spelled oddly in the Hebrew. The word, Amor, is spelled with an extra letter vav that Rashi interprets as an intensification that adds special meaning to the way the priests should speak the blessing to the Israelites. 

Rashi says that the priests should know from this that they must not give the blessing hastily. Rather, they must do it in a way that conveys a real sense of intention and purpose. He says that the blessing must be given "with a whole heart" so that the people will truly hear.

I imagine that the ancient priests struggled to understand how to speak words to a large crowd of people "with a whole heart." The words must be spoken with an understanding of the people. There must be a deep compassion for the struggles that the people have been through and an awareness of all their self-doubts and feelings of inadequacy. The blessing must be spoken in such a way that the people hear it, not as a ritual formula, but as an urgent message that contains an undeniable truth: "You are blessed, and you are worthy of being blessed, in all that you have and in all that you do. Know this about yourself and celebrate it."

I only have one small child to whom I have to speak that truth, not a whole nation. How I wish that I could make words convey such depth and urgency when I say to my daughter, "You did a good job this week. You worked hard." Oh, how I wish that I could hear it myself when someone I love tells me, "You're a good dad," or "You helped me today." 

To say that, and to hear it, requires commitment and focussed attention. When we speak and when we hear important words, we have to make sure that we truly are being heard and that we truly hear. We do that almost automatically when we chastise someone ("Are you listening to me?!") or when we hear chastisement. It may be even more important to speak and to listen with a whole heart when we offer praises and blessing.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Naso: Two Ways of Seeking God's Face
Funerals

This week's Torah portion (Naso) contains the rules for a "nazir," an Israelite man or woman who chooses to deny various pleasures and accept some strict restrictions. However, the rabbis of the Talmud criticize the ways of the nazir and effectively eliminate the practice. Instead, the rabbis emphasize the piety inherent in appreciatively enjoying the world's pleasures.

The nazir is described as a person, man or woman, who makes a vow for a specific period of time to abstain from wine or other alcohol, and also from eating anything at all made from grapes. In addition, the nazir is forbidden to have any contact with the dead, a prohibition that prevents attending funerals even for close relatives. The nazir also is  forbidden to cut his or her hair for the entire period of the vow. The hair upon the nazir's head is regarded as sacred.

The Hebrew Bible's most famous nazir is Samson, the hero from the book of Judges whose sacred hair gave him superhuman strength—but not, apparently, much judgment about girlfriends. Samson's story is this week's haftarah portion. More on him later.

At the end of the nazir's term of service, the Torah instructs that he or she must come to the Tent of Meeting with a sacrificial offering: "A yearling ram without blemish as a burnt offering and a yearling ewe without blemish as a sin offering" (Numbers 6:13-14). If the nazir is a person who achieves piety through ascetic practice, why is it, the rabbis ask, that the nazir must atone for a sin upon completing his or her vow? What sin? 

The Talmud responds to this question by saying, "What could it be other than that the nazir has sinned by afflicting his or her own soul by abstaining from wine?… If a person is called a sinner just because he or she afflicts his or herself by abstaining from wine, how much more so does such a person sin by afflicting his or herself by abstaining from all food!’” (B. Ta'anit 11a). The rabbis disdain the ascetic choices of the nazir, and all but eliminate the practice.

In criticizing the choice to serve God through self-denial, the rabbis also wonder whether we have a positive obligation to enjoy the gifts of material world, such as wine and food. Is it permitted to abstain from what God has given us for pleasure?

A statement in the Jerusalem Talmud addresses this directly: "Rabbi Hezekiah the Priest said in the name of Rav, 'In the future, a person will be required to give testimony and accounting for all the good things he saw with his eye but did not eat'" (Y. Kidushin 4:12, daf 48b). God gave us the world so that we would enjoy it, not to withdraw ourselves from it.

The rabbis also seem to wonder about the motivations of would-be ascetics. Do they act to aggrandize God or to aggrandize themselves? Is theirs an expression of piety or of ego?

By calling the nazir a sinner, the rabbis make us wonder if many nazirim are like Samson in more ways than one. After all, they recognize that Samson was not just a zealous fighter for Israel, he also was egotistical and self-obsessed. Samson defied his parents when they warned him against marrying a Philistine woman (Judges 14:3). He became a self-righteous vigilante when the wife he spurned married another (15:4-5). He succumbed to his sexual cravings to betray the sacred hair on his head (16:16–17). Is the Bible telling us something about a "nazir personality"—a person whose determination to serve God is motivated by self-seeking arrogance?

The rabbis seek a balance between joyfully accepting the pleasures of the world, and doing so with humility. It is an act of true piety to take part in the good foods that are permitted to us and to find joy in drinking alcohol in moderation. It is a spiritual act to enjoy the beauty of the world and its resources, if we use them with respect and appreciation for the earth and its Creator. It is an act of religious devotion to enjoy sensuality and sexual fulfillment when it occurs between sanctified loving partners and within ethical boundaries. There is piety in pleasure.

There is also a warning here. People who take religion seriously are challenged to ask themselves difficult questions about their own motivations. What are your deeper motivations when you believe that you are acting for the sake of God? Is it really to serve God or your own ego? What can you do to make sure that the practices you take upon yourself remain for the sake of something beyond yourself, and not just to feed your sense of self-importance?

Judaism asks us to walk a thin line. We are to enjoy the world with exhuberant joy and ecstasy.  We also are to acknowledge with gratitude and humility the One who gave us the world. Walking the path described by that thin line leads us toward a life of fulfillment and appreciation. 


Other Posts on This Topic:
Naso: Two Ways of Seeking God's Face
Kedoshim: Being Holy