“Hashem is my light and my
salvation, whom shall I fear? Hashem is the stronghold of my life, of whom
shall I be afraid?” So begins Psalm 27, which is traditionally recited every
day of the month of Elul, through Simchat Torah (or Yom Kippur, depending on the custom of one's community).
It’s a beautiful psalm, well worth
going back to on a regular basis. There’s a lot of yearning in Psalm 27: the
psalmist expressing his love for God, and his yearning to be close to God.
Which, on the face of things, might seem a little strange: after all, the month
of Elul is the long build-up to the High Holidays, which are the time of year
we tend to associate with aspects of God like judge, arbiter of life and death,
reckoner of our merits and misdeeds-- not really the warm, fuzzy aspects of the
divine. And yet here we have this tradition of reciting Psalm 27, and
references to it in traditional texts often cite medieval midrashim that the
name of the month of Elul is actually an acronym for a famous quote from Song
of Songs: ani l’dodi v’dodi li (“I am
my beloved’s and my beloved is for me.”).
What brings these disparate things
together is the midrash which tells us that Moshe Rabeinu (our teacher Moses)
ascended Mount Sinai to get the Torah on 1 Elul. He remained up there for forty
days and forty nights, coming down with the commandments on Yom Kippur. So,
amid all of the judgment and the reckoning of the High Holidays, there’s
actually this undercurrent of the love of God and Israel-- after all, we
routinely compare the giving of the Torah to the wedding of God and Israel. And
we traditionally wear white on Yom Kippur, just like bride and groom
traditionally wear white under the chuppah.
The love and the judgment might
still seem like a strange mix, but think about it: your spouse is the person you
trust to see you best, and to call you on your behavior when you’re off base.
And your spouse is also the person you trust to always forgive you, so long as
you are willing to talk it out, make amends, and take responsibility. Your
spouse is the person whose judgment you trust, and whom you can permit to judge
you without fearing that their judgment means a loss of love and respect for
you (judging without being judge-y, if you will): that’s part of the intimacy
of a mature, thoughtful relationship.
Psalm 27 is kind of a reminder to
us to contextualize the High Holidays: on the High Holiday, God will take an
accounting of how you have held up your part of the obligations of the
relationship. But that relationship isn’t limited to the High Holidays: and the
rest of the year, we can also call to account God, for how He’s held up His
part of the obligations of the relationship. Maybe the reason that the
relationship has held up for so very long is that we’re both endlessly willing
to forgive one another.
The last line of Psalm 27 says,
“Put your hope in Hashem: be strong, make your heart strong, and put your hope
in Hashem.” Maybe as a well-placed and well-timed reminder that both we and God
have a lot to forgive each other for, and working at such a relationship is difficult,
and requires both patience and considerable time and inner strength.
-Ami
