Not Tehillim needed, but help with Tehillim

amother

Tue, Jan 16 2024, 3:48 pm

I’m sorry, I feel like a bad person, but I just don’t get it. Why do we turn to saying tehillim? They are not tefilla. They are poetry. I break my teeth on the Hebrew. The English really doesn’t make any more sense to me either. Where did we come up with the notion of saying tehillim as the be all answer? If I say tehillim I’m just waiting to be done with the perek and basically say them out of guilt, and if I don’t say them I feel like a bad person who is bailing on some sort of communal responsibility. (And I know never to take on perek 119)

How do they make any sense at all. Why is this what we say? In marathon form no less. It is poetry. And written in poetic form. Shouldn’t we be davening and pouring out our hearts to bring the hostage and chayalim home safe and physically/emotionally whole? I just doesn’t get this ti hill I’m thing. I can’t be the only one.

amother

Brown

Tue, Jan 16 2024, 6:13 pm

amother OP wrote:

This statement is quite an extreme assumption.

Just because it appears poetic doesn't mean it is not a tefilah.

amother

Brickred

Tue, Jan 16 2024, 8:49 pm

I feel the same way about most if not all the piyyutim we recite on yamim noraim. You're right, many Tehillim do seem designed to break teeth. Hint: repetition eventually smooths the rough edges. The more you repeat, the easier it becomes to pronounce. If you find the translation to be cumbersome and incomprehensible, look for a different translation. It's ok not to understand every individual word if you get the overall meaning, after all, the text is "only" about 3000 years old, amazing we can still understand any of it, but if you want more, you can always read the various commentaries.

Here's an example of something one might not appreciate without outside help:
The very first verse of Chapter 1: אַ֥שְֽׁרֵי הָאִ֗ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֤ר ׀ לֹ֥א הָלַךְ֮ בַּעֲצַ֢ת רְשָׁ֫עִ֥ים וּבְדֶ֣רֶךְ חַ֭טָּאִים לֹ֥א עָמָ֑ד וּבְמוֹשַׁ֥ב לֵ֝צִ֗ים לֹ֣א יָשָֽׁב׃
It sounds like a mere repetition in different words, but there's a progression here: first he merely walks in the counsel of the wicked, then he stops moving and stands in the path of the sinners, and finally he sits in the place of the scoffers. And there's a reverse progression, too, from wicked, to sinners, to scoffers. At first one might just walk past a place, not stopping to look because he knows the people are evil; later, they don't seem so bad, they're just sinners, not really wicked, and he stops to check them out. Finally, once he's been desensitized enough, he sees them as mere scoffers, not sinners at all, and plunks himself down among them. How awesome is that? I would never have noticed that on my own.

Tehillim are not the be-all and end-all. There is infinite room for your own prayers. What matters is your sincerity. I'm told that Tehillim have some special, unique attribute --possibly the fact that they were written with Ruach haKodesh--that makes them somehow more effective. This may or may not be true, but there's no question that David and the other psalmists were sincere when they composed them. It's one thing to compose odes in the midst of joyous exultation, but it's staggering to me that in moments of abyssal despair, overwhelming grief and physical agony, David still had the presence of mind to write poetry. And that, in and of itself, is inspiring.