The last berachah of Birkas Kohanim is: וישם לך שלום – “And He will give you peace” (Bamidbar 6:26). The more common Hebrew word for the verb “to give” is ויתן. Why does the Torah here use the less common word וישם לך שלום, which literally means “He will place peace in you”?
Furthermore, the last berachah of Shemoneh Esrei also invokes the prayer שים שלום – “place peace”, rather than תן שלום – “give peace”. Likewise, the berachah concluding the evening Shemoneh Esrei begins with the words שלום רב תשים. In all three places, we find the peculiar verb sima, as opposed to nesina. Why?
To address this observation, Rav Dovid Zucker quotes a comment from Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l: There are two ways of making peace when people are having an argument. One way is to “make shalom” – everyone shakes hands, makes up, and resets their relationship such that everything is good again. However, sometimes the only way to “make shalom” is by a lack of contact.
Consider the case of two partners who have a business, and they get into a fight. They unfortunately hate each other and can in no way, shape or form, reestablish a peaceful relationship. What is the best approach? The best approach is to sell or split the business so that they can each take their half and go their separate ways. They can no longer work together. That is one way to achieve shalom, by no longer being together.
This does not only happen in business. In the yeshiva world, this is also sometimes, unfortunately, the case. There can be two roshei yeshiva who don’t see eye to eye regarding how a yeshiva should be run. What do they do? They split the yeshiva, sometimes amicably and sometimes not so amicably. But this too can be called “shalom.”
It happens in marriages as well. Sometimes a marriage counselor can make shalom between a husband and wife who are having marital problems. However, sometimes the only way to make shalom is for them to split. This is exactly what happened between Avram and Lot. Their shepherds had an argument. By mutual agreement, they concurred that the best plan was: “If you go left, I will go right and if you go right, I will go left.” (Bereishis 13:9) That made shalom.
We see this in the pasuk by Terumas HaDeshen (the daily removing of the ashes from the mizbayach) that the connotation of the word sima is ‘all together.’ The pasuk there says: ושמו אצל המזבח – “you shall put the ashes by the mizbayach” (Vayikra 6:3). Chazal provide the connotations of the word v’samo: “You shall place it gently, you shall place all of it, you shall place it in a way that it will not scatter.” (Temurah 34a) For some reason, the connotation of the word sima is to place it all together.
Thus, וישם לך שלום, the last berachah of the Birkas Kohanim – is that there should be shalom, but also that it should be a desirable type of shalom – a shalom where people can make up and be together again and have real shalom once more. So too, by שים שלום and שלום רב תשים, Hashem is giving us a berachah, not merely to have any kind of shalom, but to have shalom that enables us to coexist and be together as before.
