Author: Rabbi David Krishef

Psalm 59

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They come each evening growling like dogs, roaming the city. (59:7)

Recently, while returning to the car after music lessons, my children and I heard a meowing cat – really more of a kitten – near the car. My daughter and one of my sons walked towards the sound and the cat came right out of the bushes and walked up to them. No collar, no identification. I love dogs, but am fairly indifferent to cats. On top of that, it was after 6:00 so the Humane Society was closed, and I know cats, being independent creatures, can take care of themselves fairly well. My daughter wanted to do something, find someone to take care of the cat, but in addition to the already mentioned reasons, I was hungry and I wanted to go home. Had it been a dog, I probably would have done the same thing – I would not have wanted to take it home, 6-7 miles away, in case its owner was looking for it. However, I would have felt badly about leaving a dog. My daughter, being more sensitive than I, felt badly about leaving the cat.

As much as I love dogs, there is something fear inducing about a stray dog. A hissing stray cat will not provoke much of a reaction in me (although I certainly wouldn’t approach it), but a growling dog brings up a primal fight or flight reaction.

This is not a surprising reaction. It is an empirically smart reaction, perfectly normal and expected. But if you think about it, it is the animal that I feel a connection with and have strong positive feelings for that potentially provokes fear, while the animal that I somewhat dislike that prompts feelings of indifference.

Isn’t this also the case with people? It is the people we have a connection with and feel closest to who have the power to evoke the strongest negative emotions in us – anger, fear, hatred, jealously, and disgust. Such emotions are generally undesirable and get in the way of maintaining a healthy relationship with our spouse, parents, siblings, or children. When those emotions come up it is worth keeping this in mind in order not be be over reactive – ‘fight or flight’ is proper when confronting a growling dog; ‘sit and have a cup of coffee and talk’ is a better reaction when dealing with an unhappy spouse!

Psalm 58

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The righteous will rejoice when they see revenge; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked. (58:11)

Really? What a horrible image! I can’t imagine what terrible things this Psalmist experienced that caused him or her to rejoice in revenge.

To most moderns, revenge is an evil word – we prefer justice. Revenge is loaded with passion and anger; revenge is something we do to satisfy an emotional need to get back at someone who wronged us.

The better word is “justice.” Justice is fair, balanced, and unbiased. Justice harbors no anger. In fact, justice can and should be mixed with mercy. Justice is something that should be dealt out only reluctantly.

What is wrong with the speaker in this Psalm? What trauma did he or she endure in life? Apparently, this writer has been badly abused and understandably sees the people who abused him or her as irrevocably evil. The Psalmist wants so badly to believe in a just God, but only by personally witnessing the suffering of the wicked.

This kind of faith in God is doomed. If you only believe in a God who visibly punishes, you are likely to go through life unsatisfied and angry. Rather, I suggest envisioning God as compassionate, giving every person the chance to transform.

Virtually every person who has done wrong as the potential to change. If human beings didn’t have the free will to be evil and then turn away from their evil nature and embrace goodness, they were never good to begin with. The only way to truly be good is to know that one could be evil, and make the choice not to.

God’s compassion understands that the person who bullied you in grade school may very well have been acting out of a behavior learned at home. The person who behaves badly at work, criticizing, condemning, complaining, taking without giving, may very well have been taught a twisted sense of principles from his or her parents. We do well to learn God’s compassion and act with it in our own lives. Don’t embrace the anger of this Psalmist – embrace the compassion of God instead!

Psalm 57

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Awake, O my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will wake the dawn. (57:9)

Would that music had the power to awaken the light! There is deep darkness in our world as the calendar turns around to another anniversary of September 11, the number of murdered by the dictator of Syria dwarfs the number murdered in the attack on the World Trade Center and the two other hijacked planes.

Would that the harp and lyre had the power to open up the human soul to the power of love and acceptance! Instead, what we see is a growing movement of radical Islamic oppression. The world would live in darkness when the freedom to worship God according to one’s own spiritual path is denied, when one is murdered for worshipping Jesus or denying Muhammad.

Music has the power to bring people together, singing in harmony, but the music of much of the Middle East these days is not an inviting melody.

An old proverb of uncertain origin goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn. A version of this first appeared in print in 1640 in a travelogue by the English theologian and historian Thomas Fuller entitled, A Pisgah-Sight Of Palestine And The Confines Thereof.

How sad that he wrote this when traveling through Israel; and that more than 370 years later, the dark clouds still loom over much of the region.

Psalm 56

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You keep count of my wanderings; put my tears into Your flask, into Your record. (56:9)

This verse is reminiscent of the central metaphor of Rosh Hashanah – that God keeps a record of our “wanderings.” The Jewish path of behavior is called halakha. I imagine that wandering might represent our straying off the path of halakha.

The High Holiday amidah, in a section called “unetaneh tokef,” suggests that through teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah – repentance, prayer, and giving, we might lesson the severity of the decree against us. The first two items on the list, repentance and prayer, go hand in hand with tears.

In order to repent properly, one has to virtually break one’s heart. If we have committed some kind of harm against another person, in order to make amends we need to absolutely feel the pain that we caused. An apology should be felt in the kishkas … we have to feel as if we caused a rip in the fabric of another person’s universe, which is precisely what we did when he committed the harm. The tears are the tearing of the fabric of our own universe experiencing the pain of the other.

Prayer is only effective for the purpose of lesson a Divine decree against us when it pours forth from a broken heart. Prayer is meant to be a transformative experience. We ought not to ask for a gift on a silver platter, but rather ask the Divine Blessed One to help us realign ourselves and become the person created in God’s image that we were meant to be. These are the tears that I shed in the process of changing my fate, that I’d like to be entered into the record.

Psalm 55

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It is not an enemy who reviles me — I could bear that; it is not my foe who vaunts himself against me — I could hide from him; but it is you, my equal, my companion, my friend. (55:13-14)

The most stinging criticism comes from those closest to us.

We expect our foes to hate us. No matter what they say, we know that their words are tainted by their inherent bias against us, and therefore we don’t need to listen to them. But is is true that just because we know they they are unreasonable and twist the truth and that we don’t need to pay attention to them, that their words don’t hurt? No, it’s not true. It does hurt. There are people who hate me, and the thought that they hate me sometimes keeps me up at night. But at least I know that the criticism they have leveled against me is unreasonable.

When those who love us reprove us, it is painful, and because the words are coming from someone who cares, there is no way around the truth of the reproach. The criticism hurts precisely because it is reasonable. Criticism which is true is painful because it strikes at the heart of my personal identity. Those who are closest to us and know us the best know our weaknesses and know exactly where our faults lay.

The hardest thing to do is to really listen to our equals, our companions, our friends, as they share a difficult truth with us. But if we refrain from hiding from their words but rather really listen to them, we have the chance to learn and grow.