Bircas Kohanim and Classical Music

Recently, I was temporarily deprived of two important elements of my daily life.

One was the Bircas Kohanim, the Priestly Blessing at my daily Jerusalem morning minyan. In the Diaspora, that blessing is recited in Ashkenazi synagogues only on Yom Tov, unlike in Israel, where most synagogues recite it daily. During a recent sojourn outside of Israel, I keenly felt, each passing day, the absence of the Kohein’s “Yevarechecha Hashem v’yishmerecha — May the L-rd bless you and keep you.” When we finally returned to Jerusalem and on that first morning back I received the brachah again, my whole being felt enveloped in a pool of soothing waters, redolent of King Solomon’s “cool water to a fainting soul” and King David’s “He refresheth my soul (Mishlei 25:25; Tehillim 23:2). The rhythm of the blessing’s first three words, followed by the five words, followed by the seven words — so familiar to me from so many years — was fresh and restorative. I felt rejuvenated, my dormant spirits renewed.

The other missing element was classical music. I am not a musician, but my daily routine has always been accompanied by the great composers. During periods of national mourning, though — the Three Weeks before Tishah B’Av (which have just begun), and the post-Pesach period of Sefiras Ha’omer — the accepted halachic practice is not to listen to music. I miss my daily music fix during such periods — which of course is precisely the point: Whenever I do not turn to the music station, I remember that this is a period of historic Jewish sadness.

With the end of the post-Pesach Sefirah period and the advent of the Yom Tov of Shavuos, the music was restored to me. On that first morning, when I heard the familiar opening bars of a Beethoven symphony, I felt a kind of rekindling within me, a surge of renewal, as if a cherished long-lost friend had returned. The classic symphonies of that first day back brought with them freshness and rejuvenation — not entirely dissimilar, l’havdil, from the effect of the resumption of the Bircas Kohanim.