PESUKEI DEZIMRA – VERSES OF PRAISE This section of the prayers is based on the Talmudic teaching (Berakhot 32b) that “The pious men of old used to wait for an hour [before they prayed], then they prayed for an hour, and then they would wait again for an hour.” Prayer requires mental preparation beforehand, as well as a gradual leave-taking afterward. It is impossible to move directly from worldly concerns to the intense concentration required for genuine prayer, and vice versa. The verse cited as proof of this practice is Psalms 84:5 – “Happy are they that dwell in Your House” – and this verse occupies a prominent place at the heart of the “Verses of Praise.” In addition to the six psalms said on weekdays (145–150), nine extra psalms are added on Shabbat and Yom Tov. The basic theme of the Verses of Praise is God as architect and creator of a universe of splendor and diversity, whose orderliness testifies to the single creative will which underlies all that is. The psalms tell this story not in scientific prose but majestic poetry, not proving but proclaiming the One at the heart of all. Its mood is captured in a phrase from Isaiah (40:26): “Lift your eyes on high, and see who has created these things.”

בָּרוּךְ שֶׁאָמַר Blessed is He who spoke (see previous page). An introductory blessing to the Verses of Praise, in two parts. The first is a ten-part litany of praise to God as Creator, each phrase introduced with the word “Blessed” (the second phrase, “בָּרוּךְ הוּא, Blessed is He,” is not a separate verse but originally a congregational response). The first line summarizes with utmost brevity – “Blessed is He who spoke and the world came into being” – the essential point of Genesis 1, that creation took place without a struggle between contending elements. It was the result of a single creative will. The blessing also emphasizes that within the universe there are moral as well as scientific laws. The tenfold blessing reflects the rabbinic saying that “With ten utterances the world was created.” בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ Blessed are You, LORD our God. The second half of the blessing is a prelude to the biblical verses that follow, mainly from Psalms (“With the songs [psalms] of your servant David we will praise You”) but also from the books of Chronicles and Nehemiah (“extolled by the mouth of His people”). To emphasize the significance of this declaration, it is our custom to recite it standing and, at the end, kiss the two front fringes of the tallit.

הוֹדוּ לַיהוה Thank theLORD*.* The Bible gives us a vivid account of the moment when this passage was first recited: when King David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, newly established as the capital of the Jewish state. The Ark, which had been captured by the Philistines, was brought back by David to a temporary resting-place. Later it was carried into Jerusalem to scenes of great jubilation. As on other momentous occasions in the life of biblical Israel, the leader (here David) reminds the people of the history of the nation, and its dependence on divine providence. He recalls all that had happened to the Israelites in the long years of wandering and insecurity, culminating in this moment when they had become a nation in their own land, with Jerusalem as their capital, and the Divine Presence, symbolized by the Ark, come to rest in their midst. The passage ends with the response of the people: “And all the people said ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the LORD.’” According to Seder Olam, this passage was recited daily (in two halves, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon) as an accompaniment to the sacrifices, from that day until the inauguration of the Temple in the time of Solomon.

רוֹמְמוּ יהוה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ Exalt theLORDour God. A selection of verses from the book of Psalms, expressing hope and trust in God. As so often in Psalms, the voice in these verses modulates from people to person, from nation to individual. On the one hand, “It is the God of Israel who gives power and strength to His people”; on the other, “As for me [as an individual], I will trust in Your loving-kindness.” This frequent shift from public to private and back again is one of the most distinctive features of Jewish sensibility. We speak to God from the innermost depths of our being, yet we are also members of an extended family, a people, a nation, whose fate and destiny we share, and on whose behalf we pray.

EXTRA PSALMS FOR SHABBAT AND FESTIVALS In the earliest siddurim, those of Rav Amram Gaon and Sa’adia Gaon in the ninth and tenth centuries, we already find well established the custom of saying extra psalms on Shabbat and festivals. This is because, work being forbidden, we have more time to pray, and also because on Shabbat we reflect on God’s creation, and the psalms we say are meditations on this theme. Different customs existed in different places, but the Ashkenazi custom is to say nine. Together with the six weekday Psalms, they make fifteen, the number associated with the fifteen “Songs of Ascent” (Psalms 120–134), and the fifteen steps leading up to the Court of the Israelites in the Temple on which the Levites stood and sang their songs. There is a striking feature of the beginning and end of this sequence. According to one interpretation (Meiri), the phrase “a song of ascents” means a song begun softly and continued with ever-increasing volume. The extra psalms begin, in Psalm 19, with the universe singing a silent song (“their voice is not heard”) and end, in Psalm 93, in a magnificent crescendo (“mightier than the noise of many waters”). לַמְנַצֵּֽחַ Psalm 19. A hymn of glory to the universe as God’s work and the Torah as God’s word. In the first half of the poem, the Psalmist speaks metaphorically of creation singing a song of praise to its Creator, a silent song yet one that can be heard by those whose ears are attuned to wonder. But God’s word not only gives life to the natural universe: it instructs the human universe, the world we make by our actions and reactions. The Psalmist celebrates God’s creation of the world-that-is, and His revelation of the world-that-ought-to-be. Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. (Immanuel Kant)

לְדָוִד Psalm 34. During the period that David was fleeing from King Saul, he took refuge in the Philistine city of Gath. There, however, he was recognized and his life was again in danger. Feigning insanity in order to appear harmless, he was dismissed by the king and was able to escape (I Samuel 21:11–16). The psalm of thanksgiving that follows is constructed as an alphabetical acrostic. An extra verse has been added at the end to avoid closing on a negative note. Magnify theLordwith me: This verse is taken by the sages as the source of the institution of summoning to prayer, as in the Grace after Meals. It is also said on taking the Torah scroll out of the Ark. Taste and see: Religious experience precedes religious understanding. God’s goodness has to be felt before it can be thought. Guard your tongue from evil: The sages said about lashon hara, evil speech, that it harms the one who says it, the one it is said about, and the one who gives credence to it. Seek peace and pursue it: “Seek peace where you are, and pursue it elsewhere” (Avot deRabbi Natan).

תְּפִלָּה לְמֹשֶׁה Psalm 90.A moving meditation on the eternity of God and the shortness of our lives. You sweep men away: A succession of poetic images conveying the brevity of human life: it flows as fast as a swollen river; as quickly as a sleep or a dream; it is like grass in a parched land that withers by the end of the day; it is like a sigh, a mere breath, like a bird that briefly lands then flies away. The speed with which these metaphors succeed one another mirrors the rapidity with which the days and years pass. Teach us rightly to number our days: The moral at the heart of this psalm, especially relevant on Rosh HaShana as we ask to be written in the book of life, is: teach us to remember how short life is, that we may spend our time on the things that endure. May the pleasantness of theLordour God be upon us: According to the sages, this is the blessing Moses gave the Israelites when they finished constructing the Tabernacle, adding, “May the Divine Presence rest in the work of your hands” (Rashi to Ex. 39:43).

יֹשֵׁב בְּסֵֽתֶר Psalm 91. A prayer for protection from danger and harm. The psalm uses many images for God’s protection. To those who trust in Him, He is shelter, shadow, refuge and stronghold. He protects us beneath His wings, and encircles us like a shield. When we are in distress, He is with us. When we are in danger, we are not alone. Trust defeats terror, and faith conquers fear. The first speaker in the psalm is human; the second, God Himself (Sanhedrin 103a).

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalms 135–136. Two psalms forming a single composite unit, similar in tone, vocabulary and literary structure to the group of Psalms 113–118, known as Hallel. Some sages called these two psalms “The Great Hallel” to distinguish them from Psalms 113–118 which they called “The Egyptian Hallel” since it contains a reference to the exodus from Egypt (others confined the description to Psalm 136 alone). It is likely that both were written for public worship in the Temple, and both are litanies: a series of invocations said by a leader of prayer, together with congregational responses. Psalm 136, with its refrain “His loving-kindness is for ever,” is the only psalm in which the congregational responses are set out in full, line by line. In Psalm 135 the responses are likely to have been, for the first section, “Halleluya” (“Praise the LORD”), and for the last, “Blessed be the LORD.” Psalm 135 is structured in three parts: the first and last speak about the truth of God and the falsity of idols; the second about God’s power over nature and history. The first part is five verses long; the second, seven; the third, nine. He struck down the firstborn of Egypt: These lines are paralleled in the next psalm. The idols of the nations are silver and gold… You who fear the*LORD, bless theLORD:* almost exactly paralleled in Hallel (Psalm 115:4–13).

הוֹדוּ*Psalm 136.*Originally in the Temple, the leader of prayer said the first half of each verse, to which the congregation responded with the second half. As in several other psalms, the poem opens with cosmology and ends with history; it begins with God as Creator, and continues with God as Redeemer. The sages related the twenty-six verses of the psalm to the twenty-six generations between Adam and the Giving of the Torah – from creation to revelation. Because of its summary of the events of the exodus, it forms part of the Haggada on Pesaḥ.

רַנְּנוּ Psalm 33. This hymn, celebrating God the Creator and Redeemer, opens with seven expressions of praise – sing joyfully, praise, give thanks, make music, sing, play, shout – and ends with seven collective identifications with God: He is our soul, our help, our shield, our hearts, our trust, our love, our hope. And all His deeds are done in faith. “God had faith in the world and created it” (Sifrei to Deut. 32:4). More than we have faith in God, God has faith in us. No king is saved by the size of his army (see next page): A constant theme of Tanakh. It is moral strength, not military strength, that wins battles in the long run.

מִזְמוֹר שִׁיר Psalm 92. The sages said about this psalm that it was “a song for the time to come, for the day which will be entirely Sabbath and rest for life everlasting.” There are three forms of Shabbat. The first was the Sabbath of creation when the world was still in a state of harmony. The last is the Sabbath of redemption in the time to come, when humanity will have learned to live in harmony. Between them is the Sabbath of the present, a mere temporary respite from a world still riven by strife. The poet places his trust in God’s “faithfulness at night” – the night of history where the wicked seem to flourish and the righteous to suffer. That, he says, is only in the short term. Ultimately, evil is self-destructive; righteousness will win the final battle. There will be a Sabbath of redemption when the world regains the harmony it first had, when humans learn to live at peace with the world and with one another.

יהוה מָלָךְ Psalm 93. A declaration of God’s majesty, with many verbal allusions to the Song at the Sea (Ex. 15). In many ancient cultures the sea was a metaphor for the powers of chaos. The psalm dismisses this entire mindset. God’s power is supreme. “The sea is His, for He made it” (Ps. 95:5). The surging movement of the phrases in the middle verses with their cumulative three-phrase rhythm evokes the power of ocean waves as they rise, yet high above them is the grandeur and glory of God.

יְהִי כְבוֹד יהוה May theLORD*’s glory.* An anthology of verses, mainly from Psalms, but also from Chronicles and Proverbs. One verse, “The LORD is King, the LORD was King, the LORD will be King for ever and all time,” does not appear in this form in the Bible – it is a combination of three biblical phrases, two from Psalms, one from Exodus (at the end of the Song at the Sea). It will figure later as the refrain of one of the poems said in the Repetition of the Shaḥarit Amida. The verses take us through the following sequence of thought: God created the universe; therefore God is sovereign over the universe. In the short term it may seem that human beings determine their own fate even against the will of heaven. However, it is not so: “The LORD’S plan prevails.” God has chosen a particular people (Zion, Jacob) to exemplify this truth, for Israel is the only nation whose very existence is dependent on its covenant with God. Because Israel recognizes no ultimate king other than God, it turns to Him in prayer.

אַשְׁרֵי Happy are those. Psalm 145 is the single most important passage in the Verses of Praise. The sages saw it as the paradigm of praise, firstly because it is constructed as an alphabetic acrostic (with the exception of the letter nun), thus praising God with all the letters of the alphabet; second, because it contains the verse “You open Your hand, and satisfy every living thing,” encapsulating the idea that God not merely created the universe in the beginning, but also daily sustains it and the life it contains. The sages ruled that it be said three times daily (twice in the morning service, once in the afternoon). There are other reasons for its prominence. It is the only one of the 150 psalms to be called Tehilla LeDavid, “A Song of Praise by David.” It contains the phrase, “Every day I will bless You,” suggesting that it be said daily. Its twenty-one lines are constructed in three groups of seven verses: 1–7 are about God’s praise throughout the generations; 8–14 depict God’s kingship and compassion; 15–21 are about how God heeds prayer. The psalm is built on numerical structures (3, 7, 10) that closely resemble the creation narrative in Genesis 1:1–2:3. Added to Psalm 145 are verses from other psalms: two at the beginning, which include the word Ashrei (“happy”) three times; and one at the end, which ends with Halleluya. It thus epitomizes the book of Psalms as a whole, which begins with the word Ashrei and ends with the word Halleluya.

הַלְלוּיָהּ *Psalm 146.*A song of praise contrasting divine justice with its human counterpart. Humans are mortal. Their rule does not last. God is the only ultimate source of justice, especially to the vulnerable and those at the margins of society: the oppressed, the hungry, the captives, the blind, the stranger, the orphan and the widow. God, the supreme power, cares for the powerless.

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalm 147. A symphonic celebration of universality and particularity: the God of the universe who knows each star by name, who makes the wind blow and scatters snow like fleece, is the God who cares for Zion and Jerusalem and who has given Israel what He has given no other nation: His laws. TheLordrebuilds Jerusalem: Note the moving and unexpected juxtaposition in these three verses: between God as the Lord of history (“gathers the scattered exiles”) and God as Master of the cosmos (“counts the number of the stars”) comes God the Healer of shattered souls (“heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”). Bringing comfort to the distressed is as important to God as the great events of history or the vastness of space.

הַלְלוּיָהּ*Psalm 148.*A jubilant call to the universe and all it contains – described here in its vast panoply – to praise God. The verb “praise” appears ten times within the body of the psalm, corresponding to the ten creative utterances with which God created the world, (the ten times the phrase “And God said” appears in Genesis 1). The psalm is divided into two parts. The first is about the heavens and all they contain, the second is about the earth – and they are different in style. The first contains seven phrases, each beginning with the word “praise.” The second opens with a single call to praise, and then enumerates twenty-four earthly bodies, beginning with those found in water, wind and fire, then moving to the earth, plants and animals, and culminating in humans. Each half ends with an invocation beginning, “Let them praise the name of the LORD.” The psalm begins and ends, as do all the last five, with “Halleluya.”

הַלְלוּיָהּ *Psalm 149.*For the most part Psalms 145–150 are about God in creation. This psalm speaks about God in history. It is a song celebrating a military victory. The people describe themselves not as soldiers but as ḥasidim, God’s “devoted” ones (the word appears three times in the psalm), and the song is the corollary of the verse in Psalm 147, which says that God “does not take delight in the strength of horses nor pleasure in the fleetness of man.” This, the second-from-last psalm, also mirrors the second psalm, which speaks about the hubris of kings who believe they can defeat God. This psalm testifies to the opposite: it is “the humble” who are “adorned with salvation.”

הַלְלוּיָהּ *Psalm 150.*A sustained shout for joy that brings the book of Psalms to a close on a musical crescendo. In ancient times this psalm was said by pilgrims bringing first fruits to Jerusalem, when they reached the Temple Mount (Maimonides, Laws of First Fruits [Bikkurim] 4:17). In it we hear the word “praise” thirteen times – fifteen if we count the repeated final verse. Eight musical instruments are mentioned, four of which – strings, flute, and the two kinds of cymbals – are not mentioned elsewhere in Psalms. The book of Psalms, which contains some of the most moving of all religious expressions of anguish and grief, dejection and loneliness, nonetheless begins with happiness and ends in joy. It begins with the individual living by the word and will of God and ends with all creation singing the praises of its Creator. Such religious poetry has never been surpassed.

וַיְבָֽרֶךְ דָּוִיד David blessed. The first of three passages marking historic transitions in the history of Israel: (1) King David’s prayer for the building of the Temple, (2) the prayer said at the gathering convened by Ezra after the return from the Babylonian exile (Neh. 9), and (3) the song Moses and the Israelites sang at the Sea of Reeds, after the waters had miraculously divided, allowing them to cross to safety. One reason for their presence here is that thus far we have prayed as individuals. Communal prayer is about to begin. The three historic passages are about the constitution of a community of prayer. In the first, David had made Jerusalem the capital of the nation and brought the Ark to it. Now at the end of his life he assembled the people and charged them with the sacred task of building the Temple. In the second, after the Babylonian exile, Ezra and Nehemiah summoned the people to reaffirm their historic covenant with God. The third, after the Israelites had crossed the Sea of Reeds, was the moment when they left the land over which Pharaoh ruled. They were now God’s people, under His sole domain. Common to all three passages is that they were said at historic moments when the people pledged themselves to be defined as a nation bound together by a sacred task. Instead of simply moving from individual to communal worship, the Siddur takes us through three transformative moments in Jewish history when the people constituted themselves as a nation dedicated to the service of God. They were no longer mere individuals (returning exiles, escaping slaves) but a group, a nation, a community of faith.