Part II
[Part One discussed how Varda discovered that the Psalms are
Jewish and not "High English." In the Gulf War, she becomes
personally acquainted with them, and by using a side- by-side
translation, gets to the stage where she is comfortable with
the Hebrew text. No, comfortable is only partly true, because
familiarity can never quench that uplifted, sublime feeling of
reciting Tehillim for all occasions, situations, and feeling
how right these universal words sit with you, each
time.]
Essentially, we are always saying Tehillim. We say Tehillim
when we pray for the return of health, for the easy birthing of
our babies, for their wholeness and health. We say Tehillim
when we hit the inevitable snags in raising our children, and
then again, when we feel they are ready to begin life with
their own soulmates. Tehillim on the Sabbath and on holidays,
at the start of each new month. We say Tehillim as we voyage on
the bus, as we sit in a waiting room for our appointment, as we
anxiously wait at the lawyers to sign the contract on the new
apartment.
*
When our taxi took a short cut through an Arab settlement and
the traffic pinned us in a narrow street, there was absolutely
nothing I could do during those tense few minutes. I looked
over to my nine-year-old daughter, and she was whispering the
words of Tehillim.
We don't need an excuse to say Tehillim. Each person has plenty
of their own reasons for opening the Tehillim. The children say
Tehillim in school at the beginning of their lessons. When the
country is threatened by drought and everyone anxiously awaits
the winter rains, the school children say more Tehillim.
One of our e-mail messages from Baltimore alerts us to say
Tehillim for a newborn whose life is in danger. We are not
acquainted with the family and have never heard of the baby's
rare genetic disease, but we make a point to memorize his
Hebrew name and that of his mother.
We relay the name to friends in Jerusalem and abroad. An ever-
widening network of Tehillim goes up, with people who are not
relatives and not even distant acquaintances wondering daily
abut this baby's progress and cheered by the news of his weight
gain and gradual improvement.
Tehillim and the Western Wall are a natural combination. This
Wall is the last standing remnant of the Holy Temple. We have
been in Exile so long that we can hardly comprehend what it
will feel like to experience the open revelation of Hashem's
presence when the Beis Hamikdosh is rebuilt. At the Wall, we
can feel the palpable nearness of the Shechina, and can believe
in a time when He will dwell and rule openly in the world. The
Wall of Prayer receives the pressure of our hands, the imprint
of our lips, and hears the voice of our Tehillim.
Every day, hundreds of women gather at the Wall saying
Tehillim, and on the afternoon before Shabbos and the first day
of the new month, the plaza in front of it is packed. Shavuos
is the yahrzeit of King David, and thousands of Jews
stream to the Kosel from all corners of Jerusalem. Not everyone
can even glimpse the Wall because of the sea of people, but
they feel its proximity. Throughout the night- watch, the
silent thunder is Tehillim.
Over the years, our books of Tehillim begin to take on the
shape of our cupped hands. They are much more than books we
loved to read, that opened new horizons to us. These words we
never leave behind, because they never finally serve their
purpose. The Tehillim are infinitely timely, timeless and
inscrutable. The words grow as we grow. They can even bridge
this world to the next world.
*
In the last three months of my mother's life, I say more
Tehillim than I have said in the last 15 years. She is semi-
conscious, and I sit beside her bed as the Tehillim pour out of
me. The doctors suspect that she can't hear or see, but I sing
to her the old Yiddish songs that my grandmother sang; I speak
to her directly to settle old accounts, ask her forgiveness,
tell how much I love her, ask her to pray for us.
When I open up the Tehillim, I sense my soul speaking to her
soul in a time and place that is beyond the reality of the
hospital bed. I am shaking inside, but my voice is steady.
The words of Tehillim are absorbed through her permeable skin.
They are the last words I speak to my mother before she leaves
this World.
*
Tehillim is a continuous thread that runs through our lives,
our good fortune and our losses. It is our response to all the
twists and turns in our journey. If we can hold on to this
weaving thread, then the whole emerges as scenes in our
tapestry.
The thread of Tehillim does not stop its weaving motion in this
world. When we say Tehillim here, then it is also weaving
there. Our Sages tell us that if we could know what the saying
of Tehillim accomplishes both in this World and in the worlds
beyond, then we would be saying Tehillim at every possible
opportunity.
At a certain point in time, The Book of Tehillim was divided
into seven parts for each day of the week, as well as thirty
divisions according to the days of the month. In this way, a
person can say a portion of Tehillim daily and expect to
complete the whole book periodically. There are a number of
individuals in Jerusalem who manage to say the whole Book each
day by rising in the middle of the night and finishing before
the time for morning prayers.
Tehillim groups is a spreading phenomenon on just about every
street. Women gather, sometimes daily, to complete the whole
Book, which is divided into 28 pamphlets, in one sitting of ten
to twenty minutes. Women who could never dream of having the
time to say the entire Book in a week, let alone a day, now
have a precious share in the group effort.
Remarkable how Tehillim can regenerate the spirit from the
disabling effects of regret, loneliness and angry
recriminations. The words are like landfill that enable whole
cities to rise up on seacoasts. The Tehillim slowly fill in the
missing parts. You say, but how can these words, which are not
even mine born out of my own experience and pain - how can they
comfort me and set me on my feet? How can words more than 2,800
years old give me the strength to face the challenges of my
life?
These words have no ownership. They belong to all of us; they
have been taken out of the particular and into the general. It
doesn't matter who we are, how old we are, married or single,
abandoned or surrounded by our generations. Whoever we are and
whatever is happening to us, the words are there to express our
grief and our happiness, and especially our longing for
wholeness.
The words are owned by all of us, adjust to every tongue, and
miraculously fill in for each one of us what is missing. They
rein in our emotions, they give them slack when necessary.
Tehillim holds us up so that our souls continue to cry out even
when the anguish is like a stone over our mouths.
Even before we begin to say them, the act of taking the Book
down from the shelf returns us to the calm storm center. By
saying these words, we are climbing into a lifeboat that
carries us beyind this moment, beyond the peril, beyond our
finite lives.
"Were I take up wings of dawn, were I to dwell in the
distant west - there, too, Your hand would guide me, and Your
right hand would grasp me."
