Jews and Christians have always loved the Psalms. The (above) paintings by Tzvi HaLevi Berger (b.1924, Transylvania) and J. Smit (b.1978, South Africa) depict Psalm One's "tree planted by streams of water". Here is Psalm One...
Happy is the man who has not walked in the wicked's council,
nor in the way of offenders has stood,
nor in the session of scoffers has sat.
But the Lord's teaching is his desire,
and His teaching he murmurs day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water,
that bears its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither ---
and in all that he does he prospers.
Not so the wicked,
but like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand up in judgment,
nor offenders in the band of the righteous.
For the Lord embraces the way of the righteous,
and the way of the wicked is lost.
The following jukebox will play "Ashrei Ha'Ish," with the same Hebrew words which open the psalm. The band is Alma (Aramaic for "World"). Their 2007 album is called "Me'al Ma She'anachnu - Beyond What We Are".
This recording is for non-commercial use only, and may not be copied or reproduced.
Stepping back into the Middle Ages for a bit...
Here's a snippet of Rashi (1040-1105, Troyes); peering beneath the surface layer of line 5 of Alter's translation.
The Hebrew (Torato - his Torah) is ambiguous. Does the writer refer to God's Torah or the Torah of the righteous man? (The capitalized 'His' indicates Alter's opinion that Torato refers to God's Torah.) Rashi makes things more interesting: For the beginning student, it's God's Torah. There's some distance, some diffidence. For the student who has been deeply immersed in Torah, he has embraced it, called the teaching a prized possession. It is his.
S'forno (1475-1550, Italy) adds his 2 cents with regard to line 8.
Regarding the tree whose leaf does not wither, S'forno teaches us that for the person who attains the spiritual wholeness described in the first section of this psalm, his intellectual powers (unlike his other faculties) will not weaken with age. On the contrary, the righteous man's intellect will gain strength as he gets older! Reb Sforno, as we race along on our modern hamster-wheels, we're lucky to remember where we put our keys or spectacles. Tell us your secret!
Archaeology Moment
How long does our love affair with Psalms go back? Check this out. This scroll is a collection of psalms and hymns, comprising parts of forty-one psalms (mainly from chapters 101-50). The sequence differs from our traditional order, and there are some variations in detail. It also presents previously unknown hymns, as well as a prose passage about the psalms composed by King David.
This is one of the longer texts to be found at Qumran. The manuscript, which dates back (approximately) to the year 50, was found in 1956 in Cave 11 and unrolled in 1961. The script is on the grain side of the skin. The scroll contains twenty-eight incomplete columns of text, six of which are displayed here (cols. 14-19). Each of the preserved columns contains fourteen to seventeen lines; it is clear that six to seven lines are lacking at the bottom of each column. The scroll's letters are carefully drawn in the Jewish book-hand style of the Herodian period. The four-letter divine name (yod, hei, vav, hei, pronounced "Adonai"), however, is written in an older Hebrew script, no longer in use.
Finally, let's consider a bit of modern poetry.
What does the psalm evoke? I believe a rough equation could be: poem + 2nd or 3rd person address to God (or the cosmos) = psalm
While the two modern poems are different, they share some tension between that which is temporary and that which endures. For Szymborska, Nature trumps the political artifice of Nationalism. For Amichai, human yearning (prayer) outlasts Gods/gods who turn out to be temporary!
Psalm by Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923, Poland, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1996)
Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop
bobbing!
Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant between the border guard's left and right boots blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and "Where to?" Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos prevailing on every continent! Isn't that a privet on the far bank smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river? And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms, would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign. The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
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Gods Come And Go, Prayers Remain Forever by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)
I saw in the street on a summer evening I saw a woman writing words On a paper spread on a locked wooden door, She folded it and slipped it between the door and the doorpost And went off.
I didn't see her face or the face of man Who will read the writing and not the words.
On my desk lies a rock with the inscription "Amen," Piece of a tombstone, remnant of a Jewish graveyard Ruined a thousand years ago in the city of my birth.
One word, "Amen" carved deep in the stone, Hard and final, Amen to all that was and will not return, Soft Amen: chanting like a prayer, Amen, Amen, may it be his will.
Tombstones crumble, words come and go, words are forgotten, The lips that uttered them turned to dust, Tongues die like people,other tongues come to life, Gods in the sky change, gods come and go, Prayers remain forever.
