The Palestinian Talmud on the Priestly Blessing
May a priest [kohen] defile himself for the lifting of hands? Gedilah, the brother of R. Abba bar Kohen, said before R. Yosi in the name of R. Aḥa: A priest defiles himself for the lifting of hands. R. Aḥa heard it and said: I never told him anything. On second thought, he said: Maybe he heard from me that which R. Judah ben Pazi said in the name of R. Eleazar: Every priest who stays in the synagogue and does not lift his hands transgresses a positive commandment, and he wanted to say that a positive commandment supersedes a negative commandment. I never told him anything. Bring him in, and I will cause him to be flogged!
Credits
Adapted from The Jerusalem Talmud, ed. and trans. Heinrich W. Guggenheimer (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999–2015), https://www.sefaria.org/texts/Talmud/Yerushalmi. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.
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The Mishnah on the Priestly Blessing
m. Megillah 4:3, 7
The Mishnah on Priority in Reading
The Talmud on Priority in Reading
In Numbers 6:22–27, God commands Aaron and his sons to bless the people using a specific blessing that God provides. There is evidence that this blessing text was used during the First Temple period in protective amulets and that in the Second Temple period it was the blessing with which Aaron’s descendants, the priests, blessed the people in the Temple. After the destruction of the Temple, this practice was moved into synagogues. This passage from the Palestinian Talmud reflects the move of the priestly blessing into the sphere of the synagogue, where it was subject to rabbinic regulation. See also The Mishnah on the Priestly Blessing.
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The Mishnah on the Priestly Blessing
m. Megillah 4:3, 7