[Avodah] Birchas Kohanim [WAS] An-im Zemiros

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:47:20 -0400
Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:

> Micha Berger wrote:
> 
> > But to answer your question... Blind people tend not to look at too
> > many things. What second time?
> 
> It's a joke.  The way I heard it was that the first time you look
> you go blind in one eye; the second time you go blind in the other
> eye.  And the third time you look, you die.
> 
> AFAIK the only genuine source for anything like that only says that
> looking at the Cohanim's hands causes general weakness and ill health,
> not anything specifically ophthalmological.

The Gemara [0] does make an opthalmological claim:

Anyone who looks at three things will have his eyes dim: at a rainbow,
at a Nasi, and at the Kohanim ... At the Kohanim - when the BHMK stood,
when they stood on their platform and blessed Yisrael with the Shem
Ha'meforush.

> Al pi nigleh the reason not to look at the Cohanim, or at anything
> else, is so as not to be distracted from hearing the bracha.  It has

Tosfos give that reason for a prohibition even when not in the
BHMK; they aren't claiming that that is the Gemara's intention [1].

> long seemed to me that going under a talles with several people,
> including screaming kids, is *less* conducive to focusing on the bracha
> than forgoing the talles and just closing ones eyes.   Also, a talles
> with several people under it gets hot and stuffy, especially if the
> Cohanim sing at great length between words, and by the end one is
> waiting impatiently for it to be over, which is not what it's about.

I have always felt the same way.

[0] Hagigah (16a)
[1] ibid s.v. Ba'kohanim

> Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's

Yitzhak
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