Every evening and morning throughout the fall holiday season we recite Psalm 27. It is, as one would rightfully imagine, a prayer meant to “put us in the holiday spirit.” It is filled with pietistic expressions “The Lord is my light and my salvation, before whom shall I fear.” “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I request: That I may sit in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, to gaze upon the Lord’s beauty, to see G-d’s Temple.” [I note the irony of asking to “sit in the Lord’s house all the days of my life” right before Yom Kippur, when it can really feel like you’ve been sitting there your whole life—be careful what you wish for!]
The problem is that the psalm is inconsistent, to say the least. It starts with an expression of thanks that G-d has helped me overcome my enemies; and then immediately goes into a complaint that I [still] have so many enemies. It confuses/conflates two different kinds of enemies—military (“engaged in war”) and social (“false witnesses”). Furthermore, it switches rather clumsily between G-d “Who will hide me in his shelter,” on the one hand; and the fear that G-d “will turn away Your servant in anger…forsake me…abandon me…” There is also the painful expression of mortality and insecurity—“For my father and mother have abandoned me, but the Lord took me in.” almost immediately followed by the admonition/encouragement/challenge/advice “Wait for the Lord. Be strong and steel your heart. Wait for the Lord!”
Why choose such a confused psalm for the penitential period? Why? Because our lives are confused! The psalm reflects the spiritual world in which we do actually live. Our years are filled with triumphs and tragedies, fears and relief, moments of great satisfaction and great yearning.
Yehuda Amichai, the great Israeli poet, expressed it this way:
The pressure of my life brings my date of birth closer
To the date of my death, as in history books
Where the pressure of history has brought
Those two numbers together next to the name of a dead king
With only a hypen between them.
I hold onto that hyphen with all my might
Like a lifeline, I live on it,
And on my lips the vow not to be alone
The voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride,
The sound of children laughing and shouting
In the streets of Jerusalem
And in the cities of Yehuda.
(from Late Marriage)