October 28, 2023

Talmud Class: Do the Two Psalms We Say Every Morning and Every Evening (Psalms 121 and 130) Help?

46 minutes

Elie Wiesel talked about madness descending on Europe in the 1930s. Cultured, urbane, sophisticated Germans who loved opera and philosophy, and who were nice to their dogs and cats, warmed to the Nazis. A similar madness is descending on American college campuses and universities today. It is madness because throngs of students feel that Israel is an apartheid regime; that it is morally always in the wrong; that Hamas was justified in doing what it did; and therefore, these undergrads and graduate students will criticize Israel only and will not criticize Hamas at all.

J.J. Kimche, a graduate student in Jewish history at Harvard, recently published a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Harvard Shrugs at Jew-Hatred.” This is his concluding paragraph:

As a grandson of an Auschwitz survivor and a student of German-Jewish history, I was always incredulous that highly cultured Germans, the people of Goethe and Beethoven, could have displayed sympathy and even enthusiasm for the Nazi slaughter of the Jews. Now I believe it. I have seen it happen here [at Harvard].

All of this creates a darkness and heaviness in our heart and in our soul. Question: Do psalms help?

Twice a day, every morning and every evening, we offer Psalm 121 and Psalm 130. The act of saying psalms, together with other Jewish communities in Israel and throughout the world, feels like an important statement of solidarity.

But do the words of the psalms, if we actually think about what they mean, address the pain in our hearts? Do they give us a helpful insight in how to think, how to feel, how to act, in this fraught moment?

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By Temple Emanuel in Newton