[Avodah] Birchat Cohanim

[Joseph Kaplan]

Since we’ve been discussing duchaning, simcha, and attempting to reinstitute duchaning every day in chutz la-aretz, I thought that as a kohen I’d add my two bits. First, I never understood the connection between duchaning and simcha as the reason why we don’t duchan in chutz la-aretz on yom tov. My problem was Eretz Yisrael and aveilim. AIUI, kohaning in Israel duchan every day even if they are aveilim and there is certainly a dearth of simcha during yud bet chodesh. Certainly on an ordinary Tuesday. So making simcha the reason why kohanim don’t duchan in chutz la-aretz even on yom tov during yud bet chodesh never really made much sense to me. 

Second, I’ll add a story. I was in my year of aveilut for my second parent and someone showed me that Rav Schechter wrote in Nefesh HaRav that the Rav said kohanim should duchan in chutz la-aretz on yom tov even during yud bet chodesh. My rabbi was a major talmid of the Rav so I asked him if I could duchan the next yom tov. He hemmed and hawed a bit (even after I showed him the page in Nefesh HaRav which says this explicitly – he wanted to see it inside 😊), but he finally said no. I asked him why he said no since he was such a devotee of the Rav. His answer: “The Rav had many minhagim of tefillah, some quite unique, and while we follow some in our shul (e.g., my rabbi reinstituted saying all the selichot on YK because that was the Rav’s minhag) we don’t follow many. So, since it is a minhag Yisrael not to duchan during aveilut in chutz la-aretz, I think you shouldn’t." And I didn’t.

Joseph