Psalm
113
I have long marveled at the joy that comes from the exuberant and spirited singing that comes from Hallel. These songs of praise highlight the theme of deliverance. As we know, they are said during Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot, Chanukah and Rosh Chodesh. A Rosh Chodesh on Shabbat, as we had last Shabbat, amounts to added joy. Now we add the Hallel to Yom Hatzmaut and Yom Yerushaliym.
We cannot expect to be reflective about the Psalms when we so joyfully sing. This space created at TI provides a useful effort in the reflective side of our life.
What prompts this particular D’var Tefilah is the combination of thinking about Psalm 113 and last week’s Torah portion, Tazria. In our downstairs service, Madeline Nesse reminded us of what happens to the leper: clothes are rent; hair left bare; identify oneself as Unclean! Unclean! The leper was completely isolated and as some commentaries reference, had to be completely isolated and outside the walls of Jerusalem. Other commentaries say that the quarantine was as much visual as hygienic, social and not principally related to public health. That afternoon, I turned to my own humash and saw that at an earlier time I had put in the margins, “so harsh”.
II
For me, Psalm 113 is an answer to something that I think is harsh and want to argue with in the Torah.
The Psalm is an elaborate call to prayer that praises God for God’s exalted qualities and God’s concerns for human beings. The Psalm says: who is like our God enthroned on high concerned with all below on earth and in the heavens.
Yes, God is transcendent and God is not only transcendent but cares about the people and not in a passive way.
God lifts the poor out of the dust; God raises the needy out of the rubbish heap, sometimes translated as dunghill.
Commentators reference Isaiah alluding to te practice of sitting on the ground in a time of mourning.
Historians inform us that heaps of dung and other debris used to be in front of middle eastern houses. Beggars and lepers would sit on these artificial ills, soliciting by looks and gestures gifts from the residents.
God seats them with the powerful of God’s people.
The reference is to the book of Job where the social status of those who are misfortunate is elevated and as Ibn Ezra writes, the princes of God’s people are more honorable than the prices of the heathen nations.
These same sentences of God lifting the poor out of the dust and seating them with the powerful are found in the first day’s Haftorah of Rosh Hashanah, quoting Samuel. A powerful reminder of our communal responsibilities at the start of the New Year.
III
What’s it like to hear Psalm 113 in the English vernacular:
God is higher than anyone and anything outshining everything that you cans ee in the skies. Who can compare with God, our God, so majestically enthroned.
Surveying God’s majestic heavens and earth, God picks up the poor from out of the dirt, rescues the wretched who have been thrown out with the trash, seats them among the honored guests, a place of honor among the brightest and best.
This is courtesy of Eugene Peterson, a Canadian poet and theologian.
IV
Our efforts to move away from the Old Testament/New Testament distinction have a lot of merit. There is a tension between the literal words and historic contexts of parts of the Torah and the Prophets and the Ketuvim, the writings. The prayers draw on each, as does Psalm 113.
David Cohen
Given at Tifereth
Israel April 24, 1999