Psalm 23: A Modern Interpretation: Yom Kippur 5769

Ask just about anyone off the street if they can quote you a Psalm, and I bet you something interesting will happen. No, they probably won’t be able to rattle off the first line of the book of Psalms
אַֽשְֽׁרֵי הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ בַּֽעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים
“Happy is the one who does not follow the council of the wicked.”

Nor will they be easily able to recite the words that close the Book of Psalms
כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ הַֽלְלוּיָֽהּ:
“Every living thing says ‘Hallelujah!’”

But prod a little bit further and I bet almost everyone will find these very simple words rolling past their lips:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
יְהֹוָה רֹעִי לֹא אֶחְסָֽר

Yes I would argue that, by far, the most well-known poem in the entire Book of Psalms, is Psalm 23, sometimes known in Hebrew as Mizmor L’David.

The reason everyone seems to know these words is because the Psalm penetrates nearly every aspect of our lives. We know if from funerals of course, where, whether Jewish or Christian, this Psalm serves as a liturgical centerpiece. We also know it from houses of morning as a Psalm that is often recited at the end of the morning or evening service. In fact if you type in the word ‘Psalm’ into Google search, Psalm 23 comes up first! Some of us (perhaps mostly those of my generation) know this Psalm from popular culture as well. The rappers “Coolio” and “Kanye West” have used words from Psalm 23 in their songs, and bands ranging from the Grateful Dead to U2 have referenced it in their music. And if you were paying close attention to a recent episode of Project Runway, you might have caught a contestant reciting this prayer aloud before the big show (not that I watch, Project Runway, cause I don’t.) In any case, the point is clear: Psalm 23 is not only the most well known biblical poem, but it may very well be the most well known Biblical text of all time.
And for us as Jews, this Psalm is extremely important. It is both mournful and hopeful, melancholy and uplifting. It fits perfectly at a funeral or at our Shabbat tables during Se’udah Shlishit. It can be recited on a hospital bed or even upon our beds each night before we go to sleep. In a word, Psalm 23 is ubiquitous, it is everything to everyone. And today I would like to explore this Psalm together with you. I want to show you how it is used in a modern poem, in amodern interpretation and then finally I want you to see how it served as a source of strength for a group of twenty-three year olds in a time of extreme anguish. But in order to begin, let’s start by reading the Psalm together in the English on page 692 in our Machzorim.
[READ]
One of my favorite modern American poets is the former poet Laureate Billy Collins. If you aren’t familiar with him or his poems, go out and buy a copy tomorrow. I guarantee that you will laugh and cry at his work. He has the uncanny ability to be wry, ironic, edgy and refined all in the same poem, and I would like to share one of my favorite poems of his with you. The poem is entitled “Flock” and it begins with an interesting factual quotation from an article on the history of printing. It reads:
“It has been estimated that each copy of the Gutenburg Bible . . .required the skins of 300 sheep.” Then he begins his poem:

“Flock”

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
Behind the stone building
Where the printing press is housed,

All of them squirming around
To find a little room
And looking so much alike

It would be nearly impossible
To count them,
And there is no telling

Which one will carry the news
That the Lord is a shepherd,
One of the few things they already know.

I love this little poem. I can picture the scene he is painting for us. It is of Germany in the fifteenth century as the first versions of the Bible are rolling off of the newfangled printing press. The focus of the poem however is not upon the giant machine, situated in a home, with all its moveable type, but instead the focus is upon the wooden pen which is situated just behind the house. And there we see our players: The three-hundred sheep it will take to produce this Bible. Collins tells us that they all look alike, that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart or even to count their number. But among these sheep there seems to be a competition: who will be the one who merits the reward of spreading the good word that The Lord is a Shepherd?
So what does it all mean? Well I think it is likely that this poem, just like Psalm 23 is imagining the human being as a sheep in God’s flock. The Psalm says that God leads us beside still waters, that we are comforted by the rod and the staff of our Divine shepherd. Just like the sheep in the poem, we humans are simply too numerous to be counted and it is sometimes difficult to tell us apart and yet we believe that God can do precisely that. In fact the Unetaneh Tokef prayer which officially begins the Cantor’s repetition of the Musaf Amidah imagines each of us passing before God as a flock of sheep. And like a shepherd who gathers the flock under his staff, God brings each and every one of us to review. God knows our deeds. God knows our destiny. And on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement that destiny is sealed. It is an image of God that is as equally frightening as it is comforting.
It is precisely this tension between fear or death and comfort in the knowledge that God is with us that Rabbi Martin Cohen picks up on in his modern commentary on the Book of Psalms. In explaining the motivation behind the poet who composed Psalm 23, Cohen writes:

“The poet lies down to sleep and dreams of himself as a lamb grappling with the exquisite ambivalence inherent in wanting to serve in God’s holy Temple, yet knowing that the lambs who serve God in that place usually do so by being slaughtered. . . Yet what can the poet do if not praise God? His life as a lamb, at least so far, has been good and he feels deeply beholden to his Shepherd for all the blessings he enjoys. . . plenty of cool water to drink. . .endless tracts grassy pastureland in which to meander and graze.”

It is a fascinating analysis of this Psalm that many of us take for granted. Ask yourselves, when we read this Psalm a moment ago did we truly feel the tension that Martin Cohen is describing? The tension between feeling comforted, cared for and protected by God, who is our shepherd, and yet all-the-while knowing that our fate is already sealed. Each of us will leave this life and enter the next life, passing underneath God’s staff. Like the sheep in Collins’ poem each of us is destined to die, the only question is: will we truly have lived?
I want to tell you a personal story a story that will no doubt be difficult for me to share and yet one that much like Psalm 23 is both about sorrow and comfort at the same time. I know that earlier I mentioned one of my former campers Michael Levin, who died in Israel; this story is about another former camper of mine, in the same Edah, the same age group, who passed away this past March. His name was Andy Schloss and he was twenty-three years old.
Much like the story I told earlier, I met Andy long before he became my camper. He was a young boy of 10 and he was impossible to miss. He was impossible to miss because what other ten old boy would carry around a copy of the book Frank Rizzo: Last Big Man in Big City America? Yes, this was Andy’s leisure reading as a ten year old. Andy was smart. Sometimes impossibly smart. By the time he was my camper at age 14, he was a wealth of all-sorts of random knowledge; and it was not advisable to take him on in a game of trivial pursuit.
One of my favorite stories about Andy was the time he swore he saw a UFO at our camp. Of course, when I heard his claim I immediately thought he was lying, or making up something outrageous to get attention. But as he continued to explain his ‘sighting’ everyone could see that Andy meant business, and since Andy was trusted by his friends and his counselors…it didn’t take long to convince us that he was telling the truth. After all, why would Andy lie? That just wasn’t something he would do.
Later in life, Andy decided that America just wasn’t big enough for him, so after he graduated college he continued his studies in an International Relations program at the University of Strasbourg. After traveling all throughout Europe he was incredibly proud to tell me that he had been accepted into the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (otherwise known as Sciences Po) to pursue a career in foreign affairs. But that is when Andy got sick.
He was traveling in southern Europe when he was gripped by a terrible fever, nausea and overwhelming weakness. “I never get sick,” he told me, “So I knew something was wrong.” He got back to Paris and checked into a hospital. It wasn’t long before they diagnosed Andy with Leukemia. He was flown back to America where he spent the next seven months in and out of a New York City hospital until finally he succumbed to this terrible disease on March 23rd.
I drove up to Connecticut for his funeral with a carload of friends, including my friend, Andy’s co-counselor. The whole trip we reminisced and smiled. We talked about the time he was extremely late for curfew because he had been ‘talking’ with a girl from a visiting camp. When we found him and were discussing his punishment he stopped us, saying “I will gladly take whatever punishment you deem fit, tonight was a great night!” That’s what it was like with Andy, there were always stories, always laughs.
When we got to the funeral it was a somber reunion. This group of forty twenty-three year olds who last gathered together to say goodbye to their friend Mike Levin who was killed in war, gathered again to mourn the loss of their friend Andy, who lost a battle to cancer. But the saddest and yet somehow the most uplifting moment for me happened at Andy’s graveside.
You see there was a tradition in our camp, that the oldest age group would lead the entire camp in singing Mizmor L’David, The 23rd Psalm each Saturday night at dinner. My fellow counselors and I would always watch as our campers beamed with pride as they led the camp in this beautiful, melancholy tune. This time, as Andy’s coffin was placed in the ground, our campers began to sing this Psalm again. Softly at first, but growing gradually louder until their tears mixed with the music and the notes surely soared up to heaven!
Watching this made me recall a conversation I had with my supervisor after my last year of being a counselor for this particular group of kids. I remember feeling like I hadn’t succeeded in the ways that I wanted, like I had not made this group of rowdy sixteen year olds into the adults, the mensches that I had hoped they would become. My supervisor looked at me and said these very simple words: “Well then you are an idiot?” Excuse me? I asked. “You are an idiot. If you think the job of a Jewish educator can be contained within eight weeks, or twelve weeks or even a year, then you don’t understand the line of work we are in. Instead you have to wait to see the results five, even ten years down the line. Then you will truly see if we were successful this summer.”
He was absolutely right. Standing there, on a day marred by such tragedy, and yet watching as these kids, my kids stood together singing these ancient Hebrew words I understood what he had meant. This was the result. The result of every program, every activity, every moment we spent together all those summers ago: the result was that we had given these children two of the most important things you can have in life:
-A spiritual vocabulary in difficult times and a warm, loving and lasting community.
Parents: remember this story! Remember that we must teach our children the words of our tradition. We must encourage them to live a Jewish life, surrounded by yiddishkeit, surrounded by friends, and couched in our Holy words. Teach them this Psalm. Psalm 23. Teach them this song, for it will be a source of strength and a crutch to lean upon in difficult times.
And so as we prepare for Yizkor, I ask you to remember two things. First, even if you do not have someone that you must say yizkor for right now, your presence is still important to us. You are part of our community, and when an individual in our community cries, we must cry with them. We need you to be present and to hold the hand of those who are recalling a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a child, a friend. Secondly I ask you to remember the words of the 23rd Psalm. I ask you to contemplate how it makes you feel to know that God is our Shepherd. I ask you to contemplate how it makes you feel to know that some day, all of us will be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice…to leave this world and to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We rise for the Yizkor service on page 684. As the Torot are brought to the shulchan, please join me as I sing Mizmor L’David, the 23rd Psalm in the Hebrew on page 692,

And I pray that these words, mixed with music and tears will surely rise all the way to heaven.