Understanding Ashrei Tehilim 145 (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Tehillim - Psalms)

if you um graduate to the point where you say all of the prayers every day you will say Psalm 145 three times a day and there are sources that give that some precedence if you say it you say it with intention you earn certain types of Merit and you can expect certain types of reward and I must confess for many years it was just a jumble one thing after another no obvious plan no development no Direction no theme and uh it bothered me because to say it three times a day and feel that you're just putting together a jumble of uh of ideas with no particular order or sequence or significance it was disturbing to me I mentioned it to my oldest son and he said take a look at R her is commentary n of HS one of the great great commentators and he was very big on structure analysis categorization I went through his his um translation and and commentary and I would say it gave me about 75% which made me very happy then there were a few other things that I learned in addition so maybe I'm at a position now of 80% but I don't feel lost anymore I don't feel like I'm just wandering through a maze so I'd like to try to share with you um what her says now we call it ashre but the truth is that the first two verses of ashr do not come from the 145th Psalm and the last verse also does not come from the 145th Psalm they are taken from other Psalms elsewhere so I'm going to skip them I'm going to focus on the 145th s which as you probably know is alphabetical except for one letter that's left out now the first thing that points out is that you can divide the verses into two categories those that describe speaking and those that don't those that describe things other than speaking so let's start with that and go through the verses I think you'll see that there's even a kind of numerical structure based on that the first verse says I will exalt you bless your name that's done in words every day I'll bless you I will Lord your name that's done in words so these two verses talk about talking Hashem is great and exalted and exceedingly lorded his greatness is beyond investigation that talks about Hashem and hashem's qualities so I have two verses that talk about talking and one verse that talks about Hashem okay generation to generation will praise your acts and will tell of your Mighty Deeds that's talking the splendous glory of your power and your wondrous Deeds shall I discuss that talks about talking and of your awesome power they will speak your greatness I shall relate speak relate it's talking they will Express remembrance of your abundant goodness and sing joyously of your uh righteousness again it's about talking so now I have four in a row whose subject is talking now gracious and mercy ful is HEM slow to anger and great and kindness that's talking about Hashem not talking about talk about talking is good to all it's Mercy all this works that also is describing Hashem it's not talking about talking now if you've been keeping track there were it was two and one and now it's four- two that's probably not an accident then you have all your Works shall thank you devout one shall Bless you that's back to talking again all the glory of your kingdom they will speak your power they will tell it's talking about talking again to inform human beings of his mighty Deeds the Glorious splitter of his kingdom it's about talking so now you got three so you had two in one four and two and now three now you have a string of verses all of which are relating qualities of seven of them actually then if you go down to three lines from the bottom on this page page 69 I didn't tell you what they page on sorry on page 69 now the very last verse in this one Psalm 145 is May my mouth declare the praise of Hashem and may all flesh bless His holy name forever and ever so we're back to talking so the psalm ends with talking it's pretty obvious that there is a structure here that's Point number one are we together so far okay now the second thing that R suggests we do is look at who is talking and see how that goes okay back to the beginning I so there's an I here that since King David is the author of this Psalm it's not a bad idea to to identify with King David King David says I will exalt you my God the king I will bless your name Forever and Ever every day I will bless you and I will Lord so the first two verses talk about King David talking the third is about Hashem now watch what happens with four five six and seven for Generation to generation will praise your acts and of your Mighty deed and tell and tell of your Mighty Deeds these are the this is the public and generation to generation then the splendid splendous Glory of your power and your wondrous Deeds I shall discuss that's back to King David of your awesome power they will relate that's back to the public and your greatness I shall relate back and forth back and forth and now they will Express the remembrance of your abundant goodness and sing joyously of your righteousness this is all them talking so what you have here is four verses the first verse which is doid the last line on the previous page is um the the public speaking mentioned twice the whole verse is about the public speaking then comes the next verse which is the whole verse speak uh describing King David speaking the next verse trades they speak and King David speaks and then the the the final one is a double on the public again so there some kind of back and forth going on here some kind of uh conversation going on here and then um if you look at yud sorry look at yud which is the next three verses of of speaking uh all your Works shall thank you all your devout on shall bless you they will speak they will tell to inform human beings all three of these are the public speaking so at this point the public has taken over then you have seven verses that describe a and the very last one is again a back and forth may my mouth I say may should I think my mouth shall declare the praise of Hashem that's that's King David speaking All Flesh will bless and that's the People speaking so it's back and forth that's the second point the third point that of H suggests is look at the subjects that are that are discussed now that you know that there's a con conversation or at least a contrast back and forth of two of different speakers let's see what the subjects that they discuss are so back to the beginning again and the first one the first two verses I'll exalt you bless you bless you your name will be and Lord you it's speaking about praise speaking about King David praising Hashem and then the third verse is Hashem is great and great and greatly praised his greatness is beyond investigation now here it is crucial to do a little philosophical analysis what is great in the Hebrew it's Gad Gad means big I hope you appreciate the saying that the creator of the universe is Big needs some help right now we use and by the way a lot of English phraseology is based on the Bible English was spoken and people people were conversing with the Bible many of were Believers in the Bible great which even today means big uh also means outstanding outstandingly valuable accomplished um talk about a great baseball pitcher a great mathematician we're not talking about how much how tall he is or how much he weighs or you know shirt size the greatness is in the qualities that that he possesses in Hebrew in the Biblical Hebrew the word Gad refers specifically to loving kindness It's that quality that is described by the physical word g in fact when Moses pleads with God not to destroy the Jewish people after the uh says let God's strength be okay so what wanted to move galaxies what do you want to do no God means means loving kindness and that's what he's asking for he's asking for forgiveness now why would Gad mean loving kindness where would that come from so I have a speculation big is a comparative term it's comparative and it's relative a big mouse is much smaller than a small elephant so big big first of all is big four items in a particular category and then of course of course big means larger than the small ones if they're all the same size you don't call one big and one small so it's relative and it's comparative could you have something which was big in an absolute standard even though the word is really relative and it's really comparative would it be possible to have something that's big in some absolute standard well let me give you a possible example let's imagine something that's growing growing a certain amount per unit time and let's imagine that time goes on forever so every unit of time will become a unit larger eventually pick any limit you like pick any finite size you like eventually this thing will outgrow it because it's going to grow forever that would be big in the absolute sense that no matter what limit you set this will exceed it this big with the capital B now God's loving kindness is going to express itself in the world to come which is eternal so if you sum up the loving kindness that God delivers it gets bigger as time goes on and there's more and more Without End which means any limit you would pick any any size you would pick his loving kindness is going to pass that limit that is a way in which you could use used the word g in an absolute sense even though it's a comparative term something that's growing will outgrow any any possible liit so I think that's an intellectual way to connect the word GD with loving kindness at any rate in in biblical literature the word g canotes loving kindness so the first two verses describe King David as praising God and the praise that he says is God is loving kindness God's Focus focal qualiity loving kindness the principle which he deals with the world is loving kindness okay now let's see the next four verses which go back and forth generation to generation will praise your acts what will they do they'll praise your actions not what you are but what you do that's much more external uh in in in giml when King David is praising Hashem doesn't speak about his actions at all speaks about his his his his nature they start with actions and what do they see in the actions they will tell of your Mighty Deeds power they see in your actions power now this is genuine God's actions are powerful whether it's the sea or the 10 to the 22 Stars which he created for the moment's will there's certainly a great deal of power there but you might understand that power is a very low unsophisticated um insensitive level on which to take in what God does so that's where they start the next verse describes King David's response to them they're praising God's Mighty actions what does King David say to them the splendorous glory of your power and your wondrous Deeds I shall discuss you're looking at Power look at the glory look at the Splendor look at The Wonder of the Deeds not just power look at the complexity look at the beauty look at the subtlety look at the if you like the engineering the programming look at the organization of the universe the fine tuning of the universe look at the ecosystem look at the conditions of life that are provided don't just look at power so did they get it well the next thing is of your awesome power they will speak okay they're stuck on power but they see a in the power that's another rrea that's a new level don't just look at the fact that there's a lot of kilowatts of electricity a lot of URS of energy or whatever no they look at the at the content they look at its nature look at its structure and they're over AED by that okay so then what does King David do he climbs up another level now he says he talks about greatness which is he's bringing them up to his perception to the perception of of loving kindness do they get it well look what they say they will Express remembrance of abundance of goodness and see joyously of your righteousness they get it goodness and loving kindness are almost synonymous righteousness is an expression so they've gotten to a spiritual level King David Has Lifted them up from the Primitive perception of mere power to the level of awesome power to the level of goodness and righteousness and having lifted them to that level what did they say look at the words gracious merciful slow to anger great in kindness good to all mercies on all his works that's it that's the song that David is singing That's the theme that he wants to be have expressed and he succeeds in elevating them to that position okay then as I told you um there's another introduction your Works will thank you devout ones shall bless you glory of the Kingdom will speak power inform human beings of his mighty deeds and here um and the and the Glorious Splendor of his kingdom this is now an introduction to seven verses which describe what God does we're going to look at in detail and then you come at the bottom of the page the last verse which is back to speech and I think that this last verse answers a question which this whole sequence raises this I don't remember that I saw in Reverse but but I think from where I'm coming from this is this is an important ending to it so King David started on the level of loving kindness they start on the level of power through a double interaction with them he raised them to his perception they share his perception and they go on to describe God in that way is this elevation that he created for them permanent or does it depend upon his continuous input when he passes from the scene and there's no one to take his place will they remain on this level or do they need someone's continuous inspiration well look at the last verse I and here I disagree with the the translation here my mouth shall declare the praise of Hashem and All Flesh shall bless His holy name forever and ever as long as I'm doing it they can be elevated by my example if I exit the scene and nobody takes my place they'll fall back down to the lower level there's a continuous dependence dependency on the inspiration of the person who has that higher spiritual grasp and this is a a message of the Torah many places uh especially the movement so that's the overall structure of Ash we together so far okay now let's look at the seven verses sorry like how do we understand the splendor like what's theend let me um okay the word Hebrew is cavod cavod literally means honor I guess I guess you could describe it like this you go through life and you beet people and you see things that people do and you also see nature some things call forth in a person a response of Praise because they possess some kind of greatness English we say we honor them we honor them if this thing were permanent and somebody set out to destroy it we would feel it was a crime because he attacked something of Great Value and we respond to things of Great Value With Honor so I think honor but of course you'd have to explain it in a paragraph I'm not complaining about the translation Splendor I just don't think it car canotes this so well the word cavod means something that's worthy of honor and it could be a sunset it could be a painting it could be a human action it could be a law it could be a a moral principle of course belongs to a in Prim in the primary sense but um that's what's that's what should is roughly the concept yeah and this goes together with something I told you recently talking about praising things that are worthy of Praise that praise is objective not subjective so I'm not going to do that again tonight but I think that's that's built in now I'm not just expressing my feelings my my words Express a judgment that this is worthy of honor and somebody disagrees we could we should we could discuss it and we could settle who's right and who's wrong because this is not just arbitrary it's not just subjective okay so now um so this is Hashem supports shall supports all the Fallen ones and straightens all the bent the eyes of all look to you with hope and you give them their food in their proper time in its proper time you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing righteous AEM in all his ways and magnanimous which means generous in all his deeds Shem is close to all those who call upon him to all who call upon Him sincerely he will do the will of those who fear Him He will hear their cry and save them sh protects all who love him let's stop there all of this is kindness all of this is love all of this is generosity all of this is support this was King David's theme the King David's theme was with loving kindness here you have six and a half verses of straight loving kindness then the second half of this verse verse is all the wicked he will he will he will destroy so it's 6 and2 to one um as the ratio six and a half and a half of what you might call a reality Factory that it's not it's not unrestricted without without standards it's not willy-nilly not blind there are standards by which it can be cut short but the overwhelming overwhelming majority is support care love giving and that's the theme of the of the of the psalm is way rever H describes it now I think there's something else here which makes this point in a very dramatic way this again I don't think R say but if you look at the letters the the the first letter of each verse is a um is is in the order of of the alphabet except for one you have the me your kingdom is a kingdom spaning all eternities Reign is the reign of every generations and then it skips to S no is left out so the gar says why is n left out because n is the first letter of the word no fail no fail means to fall so that's why it's left out to which you could ask two questions number one why should no fail be left out I mean what's wrong with putting no fail in and number two isn't the word the letter N the first letter of other words also how about no which means to give you know what what would be wrong with putting in noain right so this explanation needs an explanation now I saw something really I would say astonishing in a safer called K which is a commentary on Psalms written by the Mas of the I'm not such a scholar I was waiting for in the B and I had three minutes before and there was saer on the table so I picked it up to look for something said wow this is a commentary in Psalms I wonder what he says about this and he said something absolutely astonishing so let's take a look again let's take a look again um uh this is 2 4 6 8 10 uh 11 lines down on on page 69 of the glory of your kingdom they will speak and of your power they will tell okay that's Kingdom power to inform you beings of his mighty Deeds that's power and the Glorious Splender Splender of his kingdom so that's power Kingdom so we've got Kingdom power power Kingdom okay now your kingdom is a kingdom spending all gener et all eternities and your Reign which means your being King is over every generation that's Kingdom Kingdom so let's sum it up what we have so far we have um Kingdom power power kingdom kingdom kingdom what comes next power Kingdom no again you have Kingdom power and power Kingdom power power yeah now you have Kingdom King what next comes is power power right it's power power and in Hebrew the power is gura and gura stands for strict judgment strict accountability and it includes punishment for things that go wrong so at this point if you're going to follow the pattern and you're going to put in a n the N will be no fail it'll be fall it'll be fall because it's going to be power power power power power in the sense of of judgment and Punishment so what does King David do he sets it up and then he skips it if you're paying attention you think here we go Kingdom power power kingdom kingdom Kingdom power power no fail no no don't put in no fail skip it don't have no fail I don't want it there no we're not doing that he's emphasizing the the theme of loving kindness by skipping the prepared entry of gura which would be punishment and that's what the gorah means gor says the N be no fail of course n is the first letter of no say but not in this context it would have to be no fail and by skipping it what he's saying is that's not my theme Here I that's a brilliant 20th century interpretation of a of a Psalm that's 3,000 years old approximately 2,800 years old I didn't see any other nobody else said it before him and I didn't see any explanation which to me explain why the N would have to be for no and why it has to be skipped so I'm sharing that with you okay now having said that this Psalm is special and that if you say it some say once a day three times a day you get certain special Merit of this there's one verse that stands out that's prominent that's the pay you see in the indecipherably small letters in between the two horizontal lines concentrate while the verse you open it is uh customary to touch the armed fing say but concentrate because this is the key verse of the whole of the whole recital of the Psalms this is it this verse is the is the center of the of the whole thing so it's worthy of some consideration what this verse means now the way they translated it here is an acceptable translation if you look at Theos this is one of the ways in which it is translated however as I heard from my re once if you look at the Hebrew it doesn't say this translation in the most direct possible way you open up your hand R literally you satisfy to all living will if you had wanted to write in Hebrew satisfy the will of all all life of all living it could have written he satisfies the r of all living doesn't say that says so now it's poetry and it would be acceptable to translate it this way and just say it's poetical you could do that but there's another way to understand it and that is imagine that instead of saying had said you would translate it he satisfies all Life by giving them food Le by the way means food sometimes means bread but often means food the animal sacrifices are called Le so if I put at the end of the verse instead of Ron it would mean you satisfy all Life by giving it them food so now if I translate that here it would mean you satisfy all life by giving them will will okay what's that supposed to mean how's that supposed to work and the general idea is that when you act on God's will in you that creates satisfaction all other creatures have only God's will in them that's the only will they have the only way they can act human being has many Wills many directions many thought thoughts he has free will he can make his choices what he's being told here is that God planted a will in you and when you act on that will you'll achieve satisfaction this thought needs some background to be appreciated when we ask for physical benefits from every time we do that we do it with the word Sabu SAU means satisfy us not a lot not enough not more than the next guy not more than last year satisfy us this is an important key there is a verse in in h Proverbs Ed by he who loves KF will never be satisfied with the KF that he has now the word KF in that verse has two different possible translations some translate KF literally mean silver some translate KES as money person who loves money will never have enough money he'll never be satisfied with the money that he has Rashi translates KES as mitzvos someone who loves mitzvos will never be satisfied with the m that he has let's analyze those two ideas tell me someone who loves money will ever be satisfied with money is that a blessing is that a blessing or a curse a curse that's a curse he never has enough money he always pining away for more money K put it this way put it this way if he has 100 he wants 200 if he has 200 he wants 400 right as my R put it that means the more you have the more you lack which isn't the contradiction it isn't a contradiction so it means the more you get the more unhappy you are because of the more that you lack I used to wonder why Bill Gates gets out of bed in the morning that's when he had 20 billion what do you need more dollars for it was 30 billion was 40 billion he still gets out of bed you know he still goes to the office he still makes deals 50 billion holy cow what's driving this man is he crazy $60 billion do and then guess what he discovered something he started giving money away because it's not a life just to make more money money is a means to some end or other what more are you going to do with it he started he created the world's biggest foundation for for charity War Buffett joined him they give away billions of dollars every year so someone who loves money per se will never be satisfied with the money that's a curse someone who loves mitzvos will not be satisfied with the Mitzvah that he has is that a blessing or a curse that's a blessing not to be satisfied with the spirituality that you have always to be looking for more how to grow spirit some want to say that's a definition of life you're not looking to grow spiritually just just you're you're not spiritually alive okay having said that it's time for a trick question this verse that we're talking about says God satisfies satisfies living living creatures right this verse is talking about physical or spiritual what did we just say we just said if you're satisfied with your spirituality that's a curse that's a curse the verse is not describing God cursing us the verse is not describing God cursing us that he should open up his hand and satisfy us with spirituality no it's talking about the physical this verse is talking about the physical know it's the Psalms and it's King David and it's all holy so how could you talk about the physical it's got to be the spiritual but that's wrong here and what it teaches you is that the key to a blessing of physical is satisfaction satisfy us with your good that's the real blessing so now that real blessing to be satisfied with the physical that you have that blessing comes from acting on God's will in you that's that's the message of let me just give you a little hint as to what that could mean one of God's names is spelled shin and the message in it one of the many messages that spell out is he's the one who said to his world enough and the picture that's given is the in the creation process the world was getting bigger and bigger expanding and expanding no it's not the big bang no it's not the expansion of the universe because the Big Bang is the expansion of space just space not more energy not more mass just space here we're talking about more and more stuff number one and then the second proof that it's not the big bang is that God called a Hal to it he said stop until he said stop now the word he used for stop is die enough ask yourself someone's watching a process measuring it at a certain point he says enough where's he standing what's his standpoint what's his what's his Outlook well obviously this process that's growing and growing is a means to an end he's measuring it against the end and he's thinking is it enough for this purpose or not uhhuh well let's have a little more okay we have enough that means it isn't intrinsically valuable it doesn't stand on its own if it were intrinsically valuable the more you have the better the more good you have no it's a means to an end and that's the way in which you achieve satisfaction because you know you have enough of the physical to the end which is spiritual and that's what it means to act on God's will within you God's will within you is what orients you towards spirituality and that's how you can draw a line and say enough to the physical my down home example of this is uh in the summertime people live in Bungalow colonies in the in the mountains they some they some work in in Manhattan on Friday afternoon they drive up spend shabas and suddenly in the in the mountains okay but it's late and he's driving his car and he's running out of gas and he figures I've got to get there as fast as possible I need seven gallons to get there it's a 30-gallon tank pulls up to the to the to the pump he says to the guy seven gallons guy says 30 gallon P you want to come back twice three times what's the matter with you take the No 7 gallons stop go I'm going why because I want to get there on time thank you and seven gallons is enough I don't need more than that that's the idea of being able to say to the physical enough because my focus is extraphysical it's outside the physical world of in of itself it sees the physical world as a as a means that's the blessing that this verse promises so in the midst of the care that God takes for for all of us the U this verse is is essential now it also says Hashem is close to those who call upon him to all those who call upon Him sincerely here I don't think it's an insertion of the M the idea of justice and punishment over the if you're not calling sincerely what are you doing mouthing the words you don't mean the words you're not thinking the words you're not connected to the words that's not a prayer it's just it's just playing so I don't think that's like it's just simply saying God answers prayer the next one is uh is taken by some commentators in a certain ironical sense he will do the will of those who fear Him He will hear their cry and save them hm is that the same thing twice which it could be it could be there's a lot of repetition for the sake of of emphasis or nuances but one explanation is no he will do the wills of those who fear those who fear Him have will they want certain things to happen they've decided that this is important this is necessary but not always do they get it right not always when the best of spirits not always do you get right you ask for something you don't realize that what you're asking for be destructive to you you think it'll be constructive but you don't realize so first of all he does what they want and then when they get themselves into trouble then he saves them he hears them cry out no I didn't mean this this isn't what I wanted okay you asked for it I gave it to you now you're asking for help I'll give it to you also his commment to them is even when they make mistakes even when they when they you know do something self self-injurious he's there for them as for that as well um protects all those who love him the wicked he will destroy now there are two things going on here one is that the wicked have an effect on those around them and then this is brought out in a couple of places and then when when he destroys the wicked because of the injury that they're they're causing to other people it's a double kindness number one it's a kindness to the victims who will be victimized but it's also a kindness to the wicked that they shouldn't become even worse they shouldn't even have more liabilities more demerits more failures it's a double kindness to destroy the wicked those so it's not inconsistent with kindness but in our terminology it's the kind of kindness that expresses itself as strictness you've probably heard of tough love it's not a New Concept it's thousands of years old sometimes that's the only way to to um to communicate the love is through a certain toughness and here um if by destroying them he saves them from from even greater guilt that's a kindness them so it can be understood as kindness in that way but it's kindness expressed through strict accountability and through strict Justice it's not just pure not just kindness on its own yeah so what do he meaning by destroy them D in what sense so that's that's a very good question let me see what the uh yeah yes let me check something check a comparison here here we go yeah ymid really does mean destroyed you see that we have a blessing which is called against Heretics here and it it describes the downfall of those who would inform on Jews to the Roman authorities to get them killed by the Romans you know little things like that uh or try to seduce Jews against away from serving um but it doesn't say and it's clear from the ending of the blessing that they're still alive what has taken away is their power their influence their self-confidence um but they but they're not but they're still alive yes can mean to end their lives so there certain type of wicked person whose contribution to the world is a net liability and can't can't continue to be tolerated now um having said that I want to say one thing which will sort of balance it when God split the Red Sea so that the Jews could cross and then afterwards caused the sea to come back together and drown the Egyptians which by the way was not necessary could have saved the Jews without that split the sea let the Jews go across in the morning close the sea and leave the Egyptians on the other side now part of the part of the exercise was to destroy the Egyptians so the famous midash the Angels wanted to sing God's praises and God says to them the work of my hands are drowning in the sea and you're singing my Praises who is the work of God's hands that are drowning in the sea it's the Egyptian Ian who's drowning them he is but it's not a joyous occasion it's not a joyous occasion contrary God looks at it the work of my hands which according to the circumstances according to what they do they did have to be drowned in the sea and it's a tragedy so that's where you see that it's not an act of Vengeance it's not God being angry the way the foolish try to sell it um but it's a a recognition of the fact that the world has to go on in a certain way and they're standing in the way and and the world can't develop in the way that needs to develop like the flood same thing so is he saving them are saving the people that they would eventually harm they continue to exist or both so it can be both it depends about what stage they're up to benur for those who know what it is is an example of executing some because if not he'll be worse and you're saving him we we are told that he's engaged in certain activities which will end up in Murder so it's better that he should be executed before he commits the murder save the victim and save him from committing murder so there is definitely that idea so it will vary from case to case I don't think there's a general rule that that that works that way always but I'm very from case to case anyway I hope that this helps give Psalm 145 some structure some meaning some development some direction I know since then I I went through that I inspired when I say Ash I'm not I don't feel lost and jumbled and it's also a symptom of the fact that our texts have structure they have meaning they have Direction but sometimes you don't have the right categories left to my own devices I never would have thought speaking versus not speaking and who's doing the speaking and what are the subjects and how do they go back and forth and with the dialogue I never would have gotten to that it was just just overwhelmed by the multiplicity of ideas and the fact that I couldn't pull it apart the appropriate way I first did that