After drinking, eating, talking, and singing our way through the Haggadah, we still have six more days of Passover/Pesach. What do we do besides continuing our matzah diet, unleavened by any bread?
One of the 14 steps in the seder follows us all week: the Halleil (הַלֵּל = praise), consisting of Psalms 113-118. The Levites sang these psalms in the second temple1 during the three pilgrimage festivals to Jerusalem: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. 2 All three festivals originated as harvest celebrations: Pesach for the first barley harvest, Shavuot for the first wheat and first fruits, and Sukkot at the end of the growing season, for all the other crops. A harvest is a good reason to celebrate and praise God.
In my years of organizing Pesach seders and Shavuot and Sukkot services, I have been grateful that the Halleil includes Psalm 118. Why? Because the good lines in that psalm have inspired song and chant writers to come up with melodies. Now, for the rest of the week of Pesach, I have the perfect excuse to keep on singing them!
Singing a verse again and again makes me ponder its meaning—which may be one reason we sing the psalms. Here are my thoughts about some of the verses in Psalm 118:
118:1-4
Hodu l’Adonai ki tov, Thank God, because it is good,
Ki le-olam chasdo! Because its kindness is everlasting!
Yomar na Yisrael, Let Israel please say:
Ki le-olam chasdo! Because its kindness is everlasting!
Yomru na beit Aharon, Let the house of Aaron please say:
Ki le-olam chasdo! Because its kindness is everlasting!
Yomru na yirey Adonai, Let yirey God please say:
Ki le-olam chasdo! Because its kindness is everlasting!
yirey (יִרְאֵי) = those who are afraid of, those who are in awe of.
(Note: In Hebrew, nouns and verbs have grammatical gender; in English they do not. Therefore a masculine noun suffix or verb affix in Hebrew can be either masculine or neuter in English. In this essay, I am translating references to God using “it” or “its”.)
The first verses of Psalm 118 are scripted for call and response singing. The choir, or choir leader, of the Levites invites three groups to respond. The first group, Israel, covers everyone present who is not a Levites or a priest. The second group is the priests, whose hereditary office is traced back to Aaron in the Torah. The third group is yirey God.3
It is tempting to consider the “yirey God” as the “God-fearers” of the Hellenistic period (the first through third century C.E.). This was the name for people who had converted to worshipping the God of Israel, but did not go so far as to follow all the rules (such as circumcision). One argument for this interpretation is that 118:4 calls for a class of people who are not “Israel”. An argument against this interpretation is that Psalm 118 was probably written well before the first century C.E.
I can identify with the “yirey God”, despite my conversion to Judaism over 30 years ago, because I am not an ethnic Jew. When the psalms were written, there were few apostates and few full converts; most of the people called “Israel” belonged by both birth and religion. Today, when many people with Jewish ancestry live with no ties to the Jewish religion, and many converts are passionately engaged in that religion, I would appreciate a separate call for Jews by religion.4 We, too, can use a reminder that God’s “kindness is everlasting”.
118:14
Ozi vezimrat Yah, My strength vezimrat God,
vayehi li liyshuah. and it became my rescue.
vezimrat (וְזִמְרָת) = and/or/but the zimrah of (a construct form of the noun zimrah). Zimrah (זִמְרָה) = praising-song, melody, music.5
This line also appears in Exodus 15:2 in a song attributed to Moses, and is quoted in Isaiah 12:3.
English inserts the word “the” and forms of “to be” in places where Biblical Hebrew has no such connecting words. Thus it is not always obvious, when translating from Hebrew to English, where to throw in the extra “the”, “is”, or “are”. These grammatical differences mean there are at least two equally valid translations of Psalm 118:14:
“My own strength and song are of God! And it [God] became my rescue!” (Both the speaker’s strength and his song are attributed to God. God rescues him by giving him superhuman strength and a song.)
“My own strength, and the song of God! And it [the song of God] became my rescue!” (The speaker has his own strength, but it is not enough to save him. It is the song about God that rescues him—by calling in divine strength.)
When I sing verse 118:14, I imagine that singing in praise of God is giving me enough extra psychological strength to rescue me from my troubles.
118:19-20
Pitchu li shaarey tzedek Open to me the gates of righteousness
Avo vam odeh Yah! I will enter and praise God!
Zeh hashaar l’Adonai; This is the gateway to God;
Tzadikim yavo-u vo. The righteous enter through it.
tzedek (צֶדֶק) = righteousness, what is right, what is just.
tzadikim (צַדִּיקִים) = (plural) the righteous, those who are innocent and in the right, those who act according to morality and justice.
When the Levites sang Psalm 118 in Jerusalem, the “gates of righteousness” probably referred to gates in the second temple complex.6 The pilgrimage festival may have included a ritual in which the double doors of a gate opened and the Levite choir sang while Judeans filed through.
The second temple had gates from the city into the outer courtyard (the “Court of Gentiles”); three gates from the outer courtyard into the eastern inner courtyard (the “Court of Women”) which only women and men of Israelite descent or full converts could enter; one gate from that court into the “Court of Israel” (for men only) with its view of the altar; and a curtained gate into the vestibule of the temple proper, which only priests were allowed to enter.
Was coming to the temple and worshiping the God of Israel enough to make someone righteous? Or did stepping through the designated gate express a desire and commitment to become righteous?
The first time I sang this part of Psalm 118, I felt as if I were pretending I was already righteous and commanding the gates to open for me. Then I realized that the request in 118:19 could also be a plea. Now when I sing, I beg for the gates of righteous to open to me, so that I can receive whatever I need to become righteous.
Rashi7 wrote that the “gates of righteousness” were the entrances to synagogues and study halls. I would agree that these are places where one can become more enlightened about righteousness—through an emotional channel in a synagogue service, and through an intellectual channel in a study hall. But personal gates of righteousness may also open to us, if we ask.
*
As I sing Psalm 118, using different melodies for different sections, I think of God in terms of infinite kindness; I feel the strength of a divine source entering me as I sing to God; and I humble myself to pray for the ability to become righteous.
And all that comes before Psalm 118 reminds me to look again when I reject or feel rejected, since:
The stone the builders rejected
Has become the cornerstone! (118:22)
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- Scholarly consensus is that Psalm 118 was written during the time of the “second temple” in Jerusalem. The Babylonians razed the first temple dedicated to the God of Israel in 586 B.C.E. After the Persians conquered the Babylonians, King Cyrus decreed that exiles could return to their original lands and rebuild sites of worship. Under Ezra and Nehemiah, returning exiles from Judah laid the foundations of a second temple on the site of the old one in Jerusalem. The temple was completed in 516 B.C.E.
- The Talmud determined that only the “Half Halleil”, which abbreviates Psalms 116 and 117, should be recited during the last six days of Pesach (Arachin 10a-b).
- Psalm 115, earlier in the Halleil, appeals to the same three groups: Israel, the house of Aaron, and “yirey God”. In this case, the leader asks each group to trust in God, and the group responds: “Their help and their shield is he!”
- Converts are currently called “Jews by choice”, but I do not want to exclude people of Jewish ancestry who also choose to practice Judaism.
- In this verse only, zimrat is often translated as “the might of” or “the strength of” . Yet the root verb zamar, זָמַר, means “pruned” in the kal form, and “sang praises” or “made music” in the pi’el There is only one verse in the Hebrew Bible in which zimrah or zimrat is not translated in terms of music: Genesis 43:11. There Jacob lists six products he considers zimrat the land: four kinds of aromatic resin, fruit syrup, and almonds. All these luxuries come from trees, and therefore could be considered “prunings”.
- Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th century), The Hirsch Tehillim, Feldheim Publishers, Nanuet, NY, 2014, p. 968; Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms, W. Norton & Co., New York, 2007, p. 417; The Koren Siddur (Nusach Sepharad), commentary by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, 2012, p. 771.
- 11th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki.
Questioning Torah 