Halleluyah: Tehillim 147

Only a thousand stars?

In the Middle Ages, astronomers had a number for the stars: a little over a thousand. Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, Provence, around 1200) asks: if people can count them, what is the praise here? He quotes an answer from an earlier scholar he calls "the wise prince, Rabbi Avraham." Many small stars are too faint to see, let alone count. And a star that looks like one may really be many, so high and so far away that they look like one. No person can know the full count. This was written centuries before the telescope.

The baby ravens

Why ravens, out of all the birds? The Gemara reads this verse as saying that ravens do not feed their chicks. Rashi (France, 1000s) explains: the chicks hatch white, and the parents reject them until they turn black. So the chicks call out, and God sends them food. Rav Chisda, a sage in Babylonia, used this on fathers who would not support their children. He had it announced in public: "A raven wants its children, and this man does not want his."

Scattered like stars

Verse 2 is about Jews driven out and scattered. Verse 4 is about stars. Ibn Ezra (Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, Spain, 1100s) says that is the connection. The exiles are spread across the whole earth. The stars are spread across the sky, and God knows every one of them. "He calls them all by name" means what the prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah) says about the stars: not one is missing. Between those two verses sits the line about broken hearts. The Adon Olam prayer looks at verses 3 and 4 together, in its first hard question.

Who are the outcasts?

"He gathers the outcasts of Israel." Which outcasts? Midrash Tehillim (a collection of the Sages' teachings on Tehillim) gives names you would not expect. Korach and his whole group, who rose up against Moshe in the desert and were pushed out by Moshe's own word. And Achan, who took forbidden loot at Yericho and was pushed out by Yehoshua. A second reading there: the tribes that were thrown into another land. In the first reading, the verse covers even people who were pushed out for a reason.

Verse 2 ends two blessings

"Builder of Jerusalem" and "gathers the outcasts of Israel." Later this morning you say nearly the same words at the end of two blessings in the Amidah: "who gathers the outcasts of His people Israel" and "who builds Jerusalem." The Gemara uses the verse for the blessing after meals too. Rav Nachman, a sage in Babylonia, says the blessing for Jerusalem can open with mercy for Israel and still end "who builds Jerusalem," because of this verse. When does Hashem build Jerusalem? When He gathers Israel's outcasts.

It has not happened yet

Siddur Sefard prints a note above this psalm: it "speaks about the redemption still to come, soon, in our days." Ibn Ezra says the poet is speaking in prophecy, seeing that God will build Jerusalem. Meiri (Rabbi Menachem Meiri, Provence, around 1300) says the past tense in "He has strengthened the bars of your gates" is how prophecy talks about the future. Radak is blunt about verse 6. In our time, he writes, God does not do this, because sometimes the wicked succeed. In the future He will do it completely.

One word for snow and for Torah

Follow the word davar, "word." His word runs fast (verse 15). He sends His word and the ice melts (verse 18). Then verse 19: He tells His words to Yaakov. In a Tanach that last one is even written in the singular, "His word," and only read as "His words." So the psalm uses one word for what runs the weather and for the Torah. Ibn Ezra links the two through the second paragraph of Shema: listen to My commandments, and I will give your land its rain on time.

Broken hearts are healed last

The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah) reads two lines of this psalm as the order in which the future redemption will happen. First the Temple: "Hashem builds Jerusalem." Then the exiles come home: "He will gather in the outcasts of Israel." And last of all: "He heals the brokenhearted." The Zohar says this last one is the dead coming back to life. That is the healing for people whose hearts broke over their dead. It comes at the end, after everything else.

זוֹ הִיא תְּחִיַּית הַמֵּתִים, שֶׁהִיא הָרְפוּאָה לִשְׁבוּרֵי לֵב עַל מֵתֵיהֶם. בּוֹנֵה יְרוּשָׁלַםִ תְּחִלָּה, וְאַחֲרָיו נִדְחֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל יְכַנֵּס, וְהָרוֹפֵא לִשְׁבוּרֵי לֵב אַחֲרוֹן עַל הַכֹּל.

Why the stars come next

One line heals broken hearts. The next counts stars. Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin (a Chassidic thinker who died in 1900) connects them. The brokenhearted, he says, are people who went through something that made their hope seem lost. The sadness God bandages is the thought that it cannot be fixed. Then the stars: God keeps a count of every creature, each with its star, and all the more of every soul of Israel, so that not one goes missing. His example is Yosef in prison, who thought nothing could fix it, until Pharaoh sent for him.

ומחבש תחבושת סמים לעצבותם לעצבות שלהם שנדמה להם שאין תקוה ח"ו לתקן.

To light the dark, start high

The Sages, on the first verse of Shemot, quote this line and say Israel is like the stars. The Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, a Chassidic leader who died in 1905) explains how. A star is above nature. Its size has no measure: each one, he writes, is bigger than the whole world. And it comes down to shine at night, of all times. To give light in darkness, the light has to be drawn from a place high above. The souls of Israel are the same, he says. They come from above nature and are put inside nature to shine in the dark.

שבכדי להאיר בחשיכה צריך להיות נמשך ממקום גבוה מאוד.

Too small to pray for?

The psalm says God gives an animal its food. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (a Chassidic master who died in 1810) borrowed that line. God may give you clothes and a living without your asking, he said. But then you live the way an animal lives. A person should draw everything through prayer, big or small, even new clothes when yours are torn. His student Rabbi Natan once needed some minor thing, and the Rebbe told him to pray for it. Rabbi Natan was stunned. The Rebbe asked: "Is it beneath your dignity to pray to God for something this small?"

אֵין זֶה כְּבוֹדְךָ שֶׁתִּתְפַּלֵּל לְהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ עַל דָּבָר קָטָן כָּזֶה

The cold is inside

The psalm throws down ice and asks: "Who can stand before His cold?" Rabbi Mordechai Yosef of Izhbitz (a Chassidic master who died in 1854) reads the cold as something inside a person. At times, he says, God sends coldness and slackness into the heart. A person says: What strength do I have? What can anything I do accomplish? Next to God it is all nothing. Then he cries out. And then "He makes His wind blow, and the water flows": God lights the person up with confidence again. He chose our ancestors, so He will surely help us too.

בעת שהשי"ת שולח קרירות והתרשלות בלב האדם לאמר מה כוחי ומה אפעל בכל מעשי ונגד השי"ת הכל כאין

This psalm is full of weather. Does weather get blessings of its own?

Yes. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) lists them: for lightning, thunder, winds that blow in fury, an earthquake or a shooting star, you say oseh ma'aseh vereishit, "who makes the work of creation," or, if you like, shekocho ugevurato malei olam, "whose strength and might fill the world." The Mishnah Berurah (a law commentary, about 1900) records the custom: the first for lightning, the second for thunder. If both come at once, he rules, the first covers both. Siddur Sefard prints them that way.

How fast do I have to say it? And at every flash?

Fast, and no. The Mishnah Berurah learns from the Shulchan Aruch that the blessing must come at once. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) gives the measure: the time it takes to say three words. Later than that, he writes, you lost it. Wait for the next one. And one blessing lasts. The Shulchan Aruch: it covers you as long as the clouds have not scattered. The Mishnah Berurah: you bless again only if the sky cleared completely and clouded over again, or on a new day.

Thunder booms while I am in the middle of this psalm. Do I stop?

Opinions differ. The Chayei Adam (a law guide by Rabbi Avraham Danzig, about 1800) allows the blessing even in the middle of a psalm: if you do not say it right away, you cannot say it at all. Peninei Halakhah rules the same and writes that most authorities agree. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s) brings the other view: do not stop for it, in Shema or in these psalms. The Mishnah Berurah, on Shema, gives its reason: someone busy praising God does not stop for a different praise.

The psalm thanks God for rain. Is there a blessing for rain?

Yes. The Shulchan Aruch: when a drought had people suffering and it rains, they bless. Someone with no field says Modim anachnu lach, "We thank You for every single drop," then words from Nishmat: "If our mouths were as full of song as the sea." The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi practice): it is not practiced, since in his lands rain is frequent. The Mishnah Berurah: after a real drought it is required there too. Siddur Sefard prints it, with a rule for the first heavy rain in the Land of Israel.

Is this psalm where Mashiv HaRuach comes from?

The Abudarham (a classic commentary on the prayers, Spain, 1300s) says so: Mashiv haruach umorid hageshem, "who makes the wind blow and brings down the rain," in the Amidah is named for this psalm's yashev rucho yizelu mayim, "He makes His wind blow, and the water flows." The Shulchan Aruch: it is said from Musaf of Shemini Atzeret until Musaf of the first day of Pesach. Skip it in winter and you go back, unless you mentioned dew. Siddur Sefard's summer line does that: Morid hatal, "who brings down the dew."

My tallit and tefillin only reached me now, and I am up to this psalm. Now what?

The Mishnah Berurah: between one psalm and the next, put on tallit and tefillin and say their blessings. The end of this psalm is such a spot. The Chayei Adam agrees about tefillin. The tallit, he says, goes on with no blessing until after Yishtabach, the blessing that closes these psalms. The Kaf HaChaim counts three views. One, a ruling of the Rambam (Maimonides, 1100s), allows the blessings within these psalms. The Kaf HaChaim himself is strict: wait until after Yishtabach, before the blessings of Shema.