By David Cohen
I have chosen this psalm today because I had my ears and eyes opened when reading a Holocaust book in Budapest right before Rosh Hashanah this year.
I have always been more focused on Psalm 90, often thinking of those who didn't live to be 70 and the importance of using our time in ways that deepen our lives. Psalm 91 passed me over.
Yes, I know that Moses says that we achieve fulfillment only through closeness to God. There is even a midrash that says that Moses composed the psalm as the work on the Mishkan was completed. And drawing from Shemot in ending our slavery, by serving "God on this mountain," that the Mishkan was dedicated as a way of serving God. By not relying on the conventional forms of protection we should not "fear the terror of the night" once we connected to God.
This suggests a heavier dose of passivity than satisfies my activist bent. Kol Nishama, the Reconstructionist Siddur, suggests that we need no messengers when we call on God. It gets me closer, but I'm not really convinced.
Willa Cather in "Death Comes for the Archbishop" has given me a helpful insight. Father Latour asks the Indian guide, why do the Indians run up to the rock. It is a place of refuge.. Father Latour says to his guide, "And the Hebrews always captive into foreign lands, their Rock was their idea of God, the only thing the conquerors could not take from them."
While reading David Gushee's "Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust" --- Gushee is a Protestant theologian --- he showed that in finding why people rescued Jews that Psalm 91 came up more than occasionally. He got my attention. People were moved by this psalm to act because that was the calling they had from serving God --- not to be an idle spectator but to be an active intervenor and a risk taker.
Later, I read a Christian translation of the Psalms which used lots of vernacular language. Friends more learned than I, in Israel, and the West Coast, consulted those more learned than they: the upshot was that it is appropriate to translate the Psalms in accessible language to be understood by the non-scholars.
The Christian rescuers were for the most part ordinary people. That is true for those who were influenced by Psalm 91 and those who had other influences. The rescuers were not distinguished by politics, gender, age, or education. They were distinguishable, as were the people who were rescued, by their level of relationships with other communities outside of their own, including other religious communities.
Our liturgy appropriately recognizes the importance of Zion, and we are reminded in many prayers of the threats from our enemies. Psalm 91 has its own important teaching. It reminds us of the importance of not isolating ourselves, of knowing what we are about, so that our identity and peoplehood remains secure. And that peoples of different religions will serve as rescuers to ward off terror and evil.
Given at Tifereth Israel June 6, 1998