Years ago, I was the gabbai for a small, informal minyan. Each Shabbat, we would begin to pray, and when we got to the end of the Amidah, we would stop and organize the Torah service. “Who wants to open the ark?” I would ask. “Who wants an aliyah?”

Occasionally, I would get volunteers. But mostly, people would volunteer each other. They would point to each other and say, “I know what’s going on in your life. You really deserve an aliyah.” In the midst of the chaos, life would come tumbling out. We would hear the pain, the joys, the hopes of the entire community.

We’d begin the Torah service, and I’d call each person up for their aliyah. And while the Torah was being read, I’d think about them. What did they need? What did they care about most? And finally, when they finished the aliyah, I’d give them a Misheberach, a personal blessing.

I don’t know if my prayers ever changed anything. But I would look at the person I was blessing, and I would see the tears coming down their cheeks.

For a moment, they knew that someone understood them – that there was someone who wanted what was good for them as much as they wanted it themselves. And that sense of being understood brought them closer to God.

We wonder how blessings work. Do our prayers and our hopes for another person really make a difference? And, perhaps, this week’s Torah portion gives the answer.

God tells the priests how to recite the Priestly Benediction, “May Adonai bless you and keep you…” But the wording in the Torah is confusing. Before the blessing, God says, “This is how the priests should bless the people.” And afterwards, God says, “Thus I will bless them.”

At first, it seems like a contradiction. Who is giving the blessing, the priests or God?

But the meaning is powerful. We only say the words. We listen to each other, and we care for each other, and we can try to say the right things. But in the end, all we can do is invoke God’s blessing.

In the words of Rabbi Jan Katzew, “The priestly benediction reminds us that God is the source of all blessings. Rabbis and cantors do not bless babies, or Bar/Bat Mitzvah, or marry couples. It only appears to be so. We are only the sacred vehicles, the means to a divine end, the instruments to call upon a power that resides not within us but beyond us.”

All those years that I was acting as gabbai, I was not blessing anyone. I was merely a vehicle to a divine end. By listening, by caring for the people I was “blessing”, I was helping them open up to a far greater presence.

And none of this is about being a gabbai. It’s about being human. Everywhere we go, we can be listen to people. We can care for them. And in the moment when we care for them, God will bless them.

May all of you live lives of blessing, and may you bring God’s blessings to each other.