Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha or an upcoming holiday … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself. 

This week’s episode is a double whammy. We’ve got the parsha and something to help you get you ready for the High Holiday season, which is just around the corner. As scary as it sounds, we’re just over a month away from Rosh Hashana, and for many of us, starting this week, we’ll be adding a daily reminder of that fact to our prayers. That is, we begin reciting לְדָוִד  יְקוָה  אוֹרִי(L’David Hashem Ori), Psalm 27. For those of you familiar with this Psalm, you know it’s a beautiful expression of our longing for God’s protection and closeness, but could it also be King David’s commentary on Parshat Shoftim? How does this Psalm shed light on this week’s parsha? And how can the ideas of Parshat Shoftim maybe give us deeper insights into this Psalm and help us relate more meaningfully to saying each day? 

This week Adina Blaustein and Beth Lesch jump into these possibilities. Here they are. 

Adina Blaustein: I’m Adina Blaustein, and I’m joined today by my colleague Beth Lesch. 

Beth Lesch: Yeah, I'm really happy to be here.

Adina: Beth, around this time of year, it's really interesting. It's summer, so that's a whole lovely energy, but it's also Chodesh Elul (the month of Elul). It's also the season of teshuva (repentance) and there's a custom to recite daily Psalm 27. This is לְדָוִד יְקוָה  אוֹרִי, and this practice continues all the way through Sukkot.

Beth: This is an exciting time of year. Slowly, these customs are preparing us for the High Holy Days. This is one of those early changes.

Adina: So last year actually, when I was trying to recite this psalm at home, I actually found some fascinating connections between this psalm and, wouldn't you know it, this week's parsha, Parshat Shoftim. I'd like to share with you these connections because I think they're going to help us understand both the psalm and the parsha even more. So let me take you through what I noticed. 

Beth: Great.

Psalm 27’s Parallels to the Parsha

What I discovered is that this psalm — like, a lot, when you take a closer look at it — isn't just generic, “Oh God, I trust in You.” There actually is a sort of story going on. David describes himself basically as surrounded by enemies on all sides. And to escape all of these enemies, he manages to find a convenient hideaway. Do you spot what his hideaway, his place of refuge is?

Beth: Okay. Let me take a look at this. So I see “God is my Light and my Salvation. Whom should I fear?” You've got, like you said, the part about the evildoers who are surrounding him. They are consuming him, but “I'm not worried because I trust in God,” and…ah, okay, alright. Verse 4, verse 5: “There's really one place that I want to stay, where I want to seek sanctuary, and that is the Temple.”

Adina: Yeah. אַחַת  שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְקוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְקוָה כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי— Only one thing I ask of the Lord, to live in the House of the Lord all the days of my life. So in this psalm, he's not just saying, “Oh, I would love to worship in the Temple.” He's basically saying, “Enemies surround me on all sides. I'm on the run. The whole world is out to get me, and I wish I was under God's protection in the Temple.” And he describes, you know, since he's in God's Temple, he'll worship God there. He'll sing God's praises. And the psalm basically concludes with a powerful expression of his vulnerability where he basically pleads with God not to kick him out to the dangers surrounding him.

Beth: You know, Adina, just hearing the way you're laying out that story, as you called it, that image of David seeking sanctuary in the Temple, it's making me ask a question which had never occurred to me before. Which is, why does Dovid think that he'd be safe in the Temple? If he is surrounded by all of these enemies, then can't they just come into the Temple?

And you might say, oh, well, like, the Temple is God's place, so when you're there, God is protecting you. But God could protect you outside of the Temple, too. God could protect you in New York. So is this a metaphor, or is there actually something about being in the physical proximity of the Temple that nothing bad can happen to you there? Like, what is he saying? What's going on there?

Adina: Yeah, so that's something that had triggered me. When you start reciting it every day, then hopefully you start reading it more closely and you start noticing it's a bit strange.

Beth: Like you said, when you're reading it every single day, so maybe, like, Day One I can pay attention to verse one, and Day Two I can pay attention to verse two, and Day Three I can come back to verse two. There was something about that that was weird, and I can start to ponder it. So you can start to develop your dissertation over the course of the month.

Adina: Hopefully not a dissertation. I'll let you go hopefully after a neat 45 minutes. 

Beth: Okay, so tell me: You were feeling itchy. I see what it was that made you feel itchy. And where do you want to take me next? What did you do with that feeling of itchiness?

A Conspicuous Type of Enemy

Adina: What I noticed is, when you start looking at the different enemies that David labels, there are so many — you know the old expression, right? Eskimos have all these words for snow?

Beth: Jews have lots of words for enemies.

Adina: Yes, that's exactly it. There are so many different words for “enemies,” right? So that's what initially struck me — the number of different ways that David creatively articulates his enemies. So, verse 2: מְרֵעִים — Evil men. Are you familiar with the term, it's actually used a lot in Parshat Shoftim, רֵעֵהוּ (Deuteronomy 19:4, 5, et al.)? So מְרֵעִים is like a clever word that means “friends turned enemies.” It's someone who wishes you rah (evil), but it's also רֵעֵהוּ (his friend).

מְרֵעִים is not just a generic evil term. אֹיְבַי, צָרַי; there are all these words throughout the psalm that David uses to paint a picture of people who are up and out to get him. But there were a few that struck me as just interesting and out of place. What seems out of place to you?

Beth: You're saying, specifically, which terms, which words or phrases that are used to describe his enemies, catch my eye? That's what you're asking?

Adina: Yeah. 

Beth: Okay. So I'm looking at one here in verse 12 that just seems conspicuously specific, which is the עֵדֵי־שֶׁקֶר, the witnesses of falsehood.

Adina: That is exactly the phrase that, as I was reading this, I'm thinking I should try to make this meaningful for me. And I'm like, this is not a generic enemy or a generic statement of, you know, trust in God because enemies are out to get me. This is quite oddly specific. 

Let's read verse 12 a little bit more closely: אַל־תִּתְּנֵנִי בְּנֶפֶשׁ צָרָי — Don't subject me to the will of my foes. So that seems to be a statement that's synonymous with statements that we've seen before.

Beth: Yes. That could have come out of, like, the ChatGPT Tehillim (Psalms) generator.

Adina: Yeah, you know, there's already 150 psalms. We can easily generate 150 more, one for every day of the year.

The second half of the phrase is where, as you said, it's oddly specific: כִּי קָמוּ־בִי עֵדֵי־שֶׁקֶר — Because false witnesses have risen up against me, וִיפֵחַ חָמָס — and unjust accusers. The narrator David seems to be emphasizing, “God, I am innocent. I deserve to stay in the Temple. Do not cast me out to the evils and the dangers of the world around me. I deserve to stay in the Temple.”

So here's what I noticed about this phrase. I started by looking at the word חָמָס (chamas). So the language of חָמָס appears many places throughout Tanach to describe a general sense of lawlessness – a society imploding from within, a society without values. That, by itself, didn't strike me as particularly curious.

עֵדֵ שֶׁקֶר, really tragic, but the idea of someone swearing falsely as a halachic concept, as a signal of a society eroding, also appears many places throughout Tanach. But the language of an עֵדֵ שֶׁקֶר, a false witness who is described also with the language of חָמָס appears in only one other place. And that is in this week's parsha, Parshat Shoftim.

Beth: Ah, I am intrigued. I am officially intrigued. Take me to that place. I don't know what place it is, don't ask me to guess it, but just take me there.

Adina: Okay. So why don't we take a look at Deuteronomy, chapter 19, verse 15. The verses here describe a sad situation where we have conspiring witnesses, what Chazal (our Sages) call eidim zomemim. Just to summarize and admittedly oversimplify, the Torah has a rule that two witnesses are needed to convict in most cases, and the situation described here is, what if you have these two individuals who conspire together to falsify testimony? Each would appear on the stand and each agrees to lie. And so, from the court's perspective, it seems incredibly compelling, right? 

Beth: Gosh, it's so evil.

Adina: So evil on so many levels. Obviously, judges are warned to investigate witnesses very, very carefully. Should it be discovered that the witnesses are in fact lying, the punishment that these verses articulate is that whatever punishment the defendant was going to get instead, these eidim zomemim, these conspiring witnesses, that will be their punishment.

Beth: In other words, if you and Ari Levisohn get on the stand — God forbid, you would never do this — and you falsely testified that I stole the cookie from the cookie jar, and the punishment for that would be… 

Adina: No cookies for the rest of your life.

Beth: Then I get to walk away free, and you guys get no cookies for the rest of your life.

Adina: A tragic future, but one that I think we would all agree, Ari and I deserve.

Beth: Okay, I'm caught up on the laws of eidim zomemim.

Adina: Okay, so with that context in mind, Beth, I invite you: Why don't we take a look at verse 16?

Beth: Okay, verse 16: כִּי־יָקוּם עֵד־חָמָס בְּאִישׁ לַעֲנוֹת בּוֹ סָרָה — So if a witness of חָמָס, illicit evil, gets up against a person and gives his testimony against him… 

Adina: And let's continue reading verses 17 and 18 as well.

Beth: Great. וְעָמְדוּ שְׁנֵי־הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר־לָהֶם הָרִיב לִפְנֵי יְקוָה — So the two parties who were having some kind of conflict, they should be before God, לִפְנֵי הַכֹּהֲנִים וְהַשֹּׁפְטִים — they should be before the priests or the shoftim, the judges, אֲשֶׁר יִהְיוּ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם — that are going to be practicing in that time. וְדָרְשׁוּ הַשֹּׁפְטִים הֵיטֵב — And the judges have to investigate it really, really thoroughly. וְהִנֵּה עֵד־שֶׁקֶר הָעֵד שֶׁקֶר עָנָה בְאָחִיו — And if, in fact, it turns out that one of them is an eid sheker, that he falsely testified against his fellow… 

Adina: Yeah, and the verses continue describing: וַעֲשִׂיתֶם לוֹ כַּאֲשֶׁר זָמַם לַעֲשׂוֹת — You shall do to the one as he schemed to do to the other. So that's emphasizing that the punishment that these false witnesses had conspired to bring out against somebody else, that punishment instead goes to them, and it's warning against this situation. So do you notice those parallels to Tehillim (Psalms) 27?

Beth: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot here. There's עֵד, there's שֶׁקֶר, there's חָמָס, and then there's also la’kum (to rise up), right? All of those four words showed up in Psalm 27. 

Adina: Yes, it seems like the narrator in Tehillim, in utilizing these phrasings, is purposefully turning to the reader, the audience, and saying, “Have in mind that halachic scenario of conspiring witnesses.”

Beth: Yeah, I don't know where you're going with this, but my mind is going in a lot of places. I'm sort of wondering, is this filling out for us the David story? Like, was there a time in David's life, was there a story for David, where he felt that he was being falsely testified against?

The other thing I'm noticing is this language of לִפְנֵי. Like, what does it mean exactly that, if there is this sort of situation, you should go before God, and that going before God and going before the כֹּהֲנִים seems like it's somehow echoing the idea in Psalm 27 that you were drawing my attention to, which is that Dovid is going to the Temple and seeking sanctuary in the Temple — question mark?

Adina: Question mark. Okay, so the temptation to pinpoint exactly where in David's life he was falsely accused is hard to satisfy, because there is no specific episode in David's life where witnesses come up against him and falsely accuse him. We can go through Sefer Shmuel (The Book of Samuel), but we won't find an exact story that will perfectly match up to the halachic scenario of false witnesses.

Seeking Refuge in the Temple

But what's also really curious is, as you noted, the Temple as the place of refuge for David. That's also something that really struck me, and that's something that I hear you kind of expressing curiosity about. I want to invite you to broaden your lens in Parshat Shoftim. And I want you to glance at the halachot that are taught just a few verses earlier. So I invited you to take a look at the halachot of eidim zomemim in Deuteronomy 19, around verse 16. Why don't you go up a few verses earlier on the page and take a look at what happens in the beginning of the chapter. What are the halachot taught there?

Beth: Interesting. Okay, some bells are starting to ring for me because when I opened up chapter 19 and I had scrolled down to verse 15, which was our original destination, I noted that I passed by the laws that have to do with the arei miklat, the cities of refuge, these places that are set aside where a person who accidentally commits murder can flee to and can seek refuge there and can be protected from any family member of the victim who might want to come and do harm to them.

Adina: Exactly. 

Beth: I'm excited to see how you're going to tie it all together because there are definitely some differences between the cases. Like in Psalm 27, by David, it doesn't seem like he is a murderer, accidental or not. And that is the case with the Devarim (Deuteronomy) laws, also, by David, he is seeking his refuge in the Temple, whereas that's not what's happening with the cities of refuge. 

Adina: So let's pause here because that's what I want to analyze. It seems like, in Psalm 27, the narrator isn't running to an ir miklat per se, but what is functioning as this quote unquote “ir miklat,” the place where he can find safety, in the psalm?

Beth: Yeah, I mean, the Temple is serving that role for him. 

Adina: Yeah, and I'll just say, it's really interesting because there are examples in Navi. Think of Yoav, think of Adoniyahu, of folks who try to find refuge within the Temple, grabbing onto the horns of the Altar. The Temple functions as a quasi-city of refuge, as a quasi-ir miklat, in a way.

In this psalm, it's certainly functioning that way. And I want to just note that in the examples where, in the psalm, the narrator imagines himself in the Temple and the Temple providing a place of refuge, it's accompanied by an emphasis of, “And this is what's going to protect me for my life.” And you see this most clearly in verse four: אַחַת  שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְקוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ — One thing I ask of the Lord, that's the thing I seek. שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְקוָה כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי — I need to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Beth: I'm only protected for as long as I stay here. I can't step outside the boundary; otherwise, no more refuge.

Adina: Exactly. It takes on a much more dire connotation when you're thinking about these verses as: David is this individual who's on the run from false witnesses, seeking protection in an ir miklat, that is, the Temple. Otherwise, he's a dead man, right?

A Deeper Understanding of King David’s Prayer

Both of these halachot, of the false witnesses and the city of refuge, both seem to speak to, I think, a general tone in Devarim and certainly in Parshat Shoftim of the need to set up a functioning society, a realistic society, and these might be things that are needed for that. But why would David reference these in his psalm? I think the reason why these halachot are nodded to in this mizmor Tehillim (psalm-song) is that it emphasizes a very powerful state of being, which is the state of somebody who feels they are completely innocent and yet bears some responsibility.

So let me explain what I mean a bit more. When false witnesses conspire against somebody, that individual, that poor defendant, is completely innocent. But when you think about that tragic individual who has brought about the death of another party, who was allowed, in Parshat Shoftim, to run to a city of refuge, is that a tragic individual? Is he innocent?

Beth: Is he innocent? So it's not a simple yes-or-no question, right? There are degrees of blame. How do I put this? If he were doing everything that he could to be proactively responsible, then the chance of ending up as an accidental murderer who has to flee to a city of refuge is very, very slim. There are things you can do to be extra conscientious to prevent something like this from happening. If it does happen, then we sort of say, okay, no, you're not a cold-blooded murderer. You didn't take an ax and, like, knowingly swing it to separate someone's head from their body. We're not going to punish you like we would a person who did that. But there are degrees of blame, and I think that's why, correct me if I'm wrong, we don't object if that person is outside of the bounds of an ir miklat, of a city of refuge, and the vengeful family members come upon them, they are allowed to enact their revenge.

Adina: Yeah. This tragic individual — and I keep saying tragic individual because I really do think he's this tragic soul. He's innocent of cold-blooded murder, but he does bear some responsibility. The commentaries even debate, is an ir miklat his punishment? Is that kind of his jail Does he look to it as his salvation?

So I think for David to utilize these halachic constructs and to nod to them in his psalm is perhaps the narrator's acknowledgement of, “Oh God, oh God, I am innocent, I am truly innocent. Please allow me to stay in the Temple…but maybe there is some responsibility that I do share in the situation that I'm in.” And that is a much more complex place of prayer; to turn to God in prayer and beg for God's sanctuary and beg for God's salvation while acknowledging, on some level, “I'm innocent, but I'm also responsible.”

And I think the fact that the psalm calls to mind the halachot of conspiring witnesses and the halachot of ir miklat is perhaps the Psalmist’s way of acknowledging that state of mind and prayer.

Beth: Okay, let me say it back to you. What I hear you saying is that you read David's words, and you've got these four terms: קוּם, עֵד, שֶׁקֶר, and חָמָס. All of those are hyperlinked to the laws in Parshat Shoftim of two conspiring witnesses who bear false witness against an innocent person. And that really does seem to be a case of a person who's truly innocent; like, really a poor, tragic soul that these two, Ari Levisohn and Adina, happened upon her and testified falsely that she stole the cookies. And if the parallels ended there, then we might indeed read this as David making a reference to, like, the epitome of total blamelessness; like, “They are the bad ones,” and, “I've got nothing on me,” and, “God, please save me.” What you're noticing that goes a step beyond that is, it's not textual in the same way. Meaning, I don't know if we have…

Adina: We haven't found any specific links between ir miklat and the language of Psalm 27, although I invite you or our listeners, if you do notice, to share.

Beth: Great. But you're noticing that, thematically, isn't it interesting that David's language is connected to the case of the conspiring witnesses? And earlier in David's speech, earlier in his mizmor, is this idea of someone seeking sanctuary from God, fleeing to a place where the people who are trying to attack them are not going to be able to penetrate and are not going to be able to get them. And isn't it interesting also, with the witnesses, if you looked just a little bit earlier in that section too, you find the very same idea, the very same theme?

So I hear you saying that David is actually giving us a nuanced version of like, “I don't know, sometimes I feel like I am that picture of total innocence, but then again, I'm being honest and I'm reflecting on my actions, and maybe there's some blame that needs to lie on my doorstep too. And that's all in my head and in my heart as I speak to you, God.”

Adina: Absolutely. And in addition to that, in the psalm, what does David keep repeating towards the end? He keeps praying: And let me remain here. אַל־תַּסְתֵּר פָּנֶיךָ  מִמֶּנִּי — Do not hide Your Face from me, in verse nine. אַל תַּט־בְּאַף עַבְדֶּךָ — Don't thrust me aside, don't kick me out of the Temple.

Beth: “Don’t forsake me, don’t abandon me. My own mother and father have forsaken me. I can't even go back to my home.”

Adina: Right. Through the lens of somebody who's in an ir miklat, what I think is going on is, he's saying, “Don't kick me out because people are lying in wait, waiting to kill me should I leave the ir miklat.” So David becomes this tragic figure, just like that individual who must run for his life to the ir miklat.

What Makes King David’s Prayer So Powerful?

Beth: I really appreciate this Adina because, on the one hand, sort of playing the role of the skeptic, I'm a little still on the fence of like, okay, is the reference in the psalm to the ir ha’miklat as strong as I want it to be? But I'm also taking you up on your invitation to imagine what David might have been thinking and feeling in this moment of prayer to God.

And I guess, kind of drawing on my sense of human nature as a source and as a text, and sort of realizing, like, but how could you not start wondering about your role in all this? Like, we know there's no one who's blameless, there's no one who's a hundred percent innocent in everything. And when you see yourself as the victim, but then you stop and you think about that and you're talking to God about it, how does that get complicated?

And the other thing that I'll share with you that's coming to mind is, and I would not be so audacious to put myself in the role of God in this scenario that we're painting, but I am a parent. And as a parent, I have been the person to whom prayers are addressed, so to speak. Right? Like, “Save me because she's hitting me, and he stole my this-or-that.”

Adina: My children are falsely testifying about each other constantly.

Beth: Yeah, but it's like — I don't know, I'm just thinking about which are the prayers, so to speak, the prayers and requests that I want to hear from my children and that I'm most likely to warm to? Are they the ones that are an affectation of total innocence, or are they the ones where my kids talk about how they've been wrong, but they also admit to the ways in which blame is theirs as well? In a funny way, in a counterintuitive way, I'm much more likely to warm to the latter, right? And I can only imagine that God, as our Parent, might feel the same way about us taking responsibility for our actions.

Adina: I think that that emotion quite powerfully comes together when you consider the references, both textual and thematic, in this psalm.

I acknowledge that the references to ir miklat aren't as strong, but to me, they are inescapable once you consider the context. I want to invite you, if you were willing to come this far with me, to take this one step further and to imagine not only Parshat Shoftim as a commentary to Psalm 27. But to think about…

Beth: …The other way around.

Intertextuality Goes Both Ways

Adina: …Like all good intertextual studies, the other way around, exactly. How might this help us understand Parshat Shoftim a bit more? Because in Psalm 27, we're saying this is a story of David on the run to a city of refuge, an ir miklat, because false witnesses are out to get him.

So an ir miklat, a city of refuge, is needed because of false witnesses. Now I want you to think about Parshat Shoftim and the structures of ir miklat. Why do they need to be set up? Why does an ir miklat need to exist? Otherwise, what might happen if we don't have it?

Beth: That's a great question. If we don't have an ir miklat, then we may well end up with a society that has a lot of these, you know, revenge killings. And even though the Torah permits them, apparently that's not desirable because the Torah does give us the cities of refuge.

Adina: It’s so complicated.

Beth: Yeah, it is complicated. It's like, does God want it or does God not want it? And the answer sort of sounds like, well, maybe there's that which is permitted and not punished, and God doesn't want this vengeance to take place. We have other laws, by the way, about how we should aspire not to be vengeful, but He's not going to press charges against people who do. I'd never thought about it that way before.

Adina: I'll put it differently. What kind of society breeds the need for this kind of vigilante justice, for an honor killing?

Beth: So I think what you're getting at is, if a person doesn't have faith in the justice system, then they would feel a need to take justice into their own hands.

Adina: Exactly. And what kind of society is that, in Parshat Shoftim?

Beth: That is a society where they're conspiring to testify falsely against one another.

Adina: Exactly. Imagine the following scenario: Someone close to you — horrible to even imagine this scenario — a relative is killed, and there's some investigation, and you're told it was accidental. If you have a high confidence in the society around you being just and true and fair, you mourn and go on with your life.

If you don't believe that the society around you is just and fair, if you believe that there are witnesses who conspire together and that court cases are a sham, then you are motivated. You don't believe, necessarily, that that poor soul that they're telling you, “Oh no, he killed him accidentally;” you believe that he bears responsibility, right? Perhaps the juxtaposition of these two halachot seen in Parshat Shoftim and seen through the lens now of Tehillim Chaf-Zayin (Psalm 27), it's perhaps hinting to, maybe, the necessity of miklat as something that isn't ideal.

This is actually suggested by some of the commentaries. Shadal, for example, or Shmuel David Luzzato, suggests this. There's some debate about, isn't ir miklat an ideal way of protecting those who are innocent yet bear some responsibility? Or is the idea of a revenge killing and the need for an ir miklat, is that pointing to a certain societal degradation, a society where false witnesses are common, a society that breeds vigilante justice? So perhaps that is what comes to mind when you think about Parshat Shoftim through the lens of this psalm.

Beth: Adina, that's really provocative. You're inviting me to shift the way that I'm used to thinking about the laws of the ir miklat. I had always understood it as: Okay, here I am. I am the bereaved relative of someone who was killed. They were killed accidentally. I believe that they were killed accidentally, but I am filled with loss and filled with anger, and I want to see someone suffer and someone be punished because I am feeling this loss. So the way that I act on that is, I kill the person who did it because now there's been some justice done. There's been some response to the fact that my loved one was killed. It can't be that my loved one disappears and no one gets punished for it.

But what you're suggesting is, in some ways, a more cynical view of human nature, and in other ways a much sunnier view of human nature. Which is, okay, so maybe you might have a world in which people — you know, you've got these eidim zomemim and they're conspiring and, you know, dot-dot-dot. But that's going to create the conditions where a person might not trust the justice system, and that's going to lead them to commit one of these vengeance killings. It's not that I, the bereaved relative, feel the need to kill the person who accidentally committed the murder. I respect that a person can do something accidentally and they really didn't mean to do it and they shouldn't be punished for it. But I don't believe that it was really an accident. I don't believe that.

And honestly, now that I think about it, how could you ever really know if it was an accident or not like that? This is one of those laws where it's hard to have faith in the justice system, whether there are conspiring witnesses or not. You always have that lingering sense that there was someone who really should have been brought to justice, and he was just up on the stand saying that it was an accident, and it wasn't, and who really knows his mind? That's a whole new way of thinking about these laws that I had never entertained before.

Adina: Yeah. Quite powerfully, I think what you're articulating is that we are all the products of our societies, and when we stand before God, we never truly get to stand before God as an individual, right? We stand before God as the product of our society, and we kind of stand before God saying, “Maybe I believe I'm innocent, but only you, God, truly know where my responsibility begins and ends.”

How Will You Recite This Mizmor?

Beth: Yeah, that's a nice way of tying it all together. Adina, I wonder if I can just put the mic to you for a moment and ask, how does this change the way that you recite Psalm 27?

Adina: So, for me, when I saw the parallels to the conspiring witnesses and the cities of refuge, I thought: Yes, I stand before God, and it's me in defiance of my corrupt society. God, I am truly innocent. You know that, God. You know that everybody around me is conspiring against me. I'm innocent. But as we discussed, I think what happens is that we're also reminded quite subtly that, when you stand before God and you say, “Everybody's testifying falsely against me,” innocence and guilt, it becomes a zero sum game.

But when you recite this psalm, and you're imagining that the Temple is my place of refuge; outside, our enemies await me — maybe I bear some responsibility. Maybe there are ways that I've contributed to the degradation of my society. You're not changing your prayer, right? You're still praying, “God, provide me sanctuary. God, provide me refuge.” But you're, you're forced to consider, in what ways do you contribute to that type of environment? And you know, certainly when we think about the attribution of this psalm to David, there are so many examples throughout his life where, as he's on the run from Shaul, yes, he's innocent, but he also bears the responsibility perhaps of the escalation of the tensions as the events unfold.

And so I think this psalm is coming from such a human place of, “Oh God, I am innocent, but maybe I bear some responsibility. Please God, allow me to find sanctuary here.” And imagine a whole room of folks saying that.

Beth: Adina, you took me to some really unexpected places here with this psalm, and I'm grateful to you for helping us take some of our early steps into Elul. I’m looking forward to reciting this psalm.

Adina: My pleasure, Beth. Thanks for coming on this journey with me.

Credits

This episode was recorded by me, Adina Blaustein, together with Beth Lesch.

Editing was done by Evan Weiner.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our production manager is me, Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.