Lift your Eyes
Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
May15, 2020
We possess a liturgical balm in our tradition.
Made up of 150 prayer poems, psalms.
We know they were sung by the Levites in the Temple.
Some say King David wrote them, but like Shakespeare, authorship is hard to prove.
Our psalms aren’t easy, not a quick fix.
They Provoke. Comfort. Inspire Yearning. Praise. Despair, rejoicing. Hallelujah. The whole range of human feeling in 150 short chapters. Emotional bootcamp.
As a despairing adolescent living in Israel, my Breslov Hasidishe cousins, brought me to see the rebbe. While wildly distrustful of authority figures, and particularly any Rebbe or guru, as soon as I sat down before him, I began to weep. He listened with great empathy, then he opened up a book of psalms, and prescribed a dosage for the morning, and before bedtime. Take these 7 psalms and call me...in a month or so.
I have returned to one of these psalms in times of despair. Psalm 121.
שיר למעלות
אשא עיני אל ההרים. מאין יבוא עזרי?
עזרי מעם השם. עושה שמיים וארץ
A song for ascending:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains
From where will my help come?
My help is from Y-H-V-H, maker of heaven and earth.
I want to meditate on these first 2 verses.
שיר למעלות Shir La'ma'alot -- a Song for Ascents
Maybe you noticed already, I hadn’t before--שיר למעלות. Shir la’ma’alot--Song for ascending. Not your usual שיר המעלות Song of ascending. Maybe we haven’t started the climb yet. This psalm is to pack with us when it’s time to go, when the climb truly begins. It’s an energy bar or extra oxygen for high altitudes.
At least in a mythic sense, we are climbing. We are 2 weeks out from Shavuot, from Mount Sinai, from receiving this year’s harvest of Torah and we climb, night by night, the ladder of the omer, towards revelation. Don’t forget to pack this psalm.
Shir La’ma’alot essa einai el heharim שיר למעלות אשא עיני אל ההרים.
‘I lift up my eyes to the mountain’
According to 11th century commentator and sometime therapist Ibn Ezra--any time you are in despair, lift your eyes. It seems to have been a known practice.
I lift my eyes towards the mountains. Especially on days you find yourself staring at the ground, or focused on one screen or another, or noticing the dirt that’s collected without street sweeping over the past 8 weeks, look up. Lift eyes, lift soul. Lift. Cry. Don’t get stuck. here.
And the mountain you look to, maybe it’s Mount Tam, or maybe it’s Mount Sinai, where Torah flows from. Or maybe that mountain of Torah is covered in fog right now, or too far away or too daunting, then, says the Sephardic ga’on, the Hida, lift your eyes toward your next act of kindness. When the mountain of Torah is eclipsed, kindness is your direct conduit to the Divine.
If we ask some of our more fanciful Talmudic rabbis where to lift our eyes, they would say: don’t read אל ההרים (el heharim)-- toward the mountains rather, אל ההורים, (el hahorim)--toward the ancestors. In moments of despair, look to: our mythical ancestors who navigated unprecedented terrain; and look to our genetic ancestors who crossed continents, seas, all alone, adopted new languages, suffered and thrived, who invented resilience; and more literally, train our eyes on our parents, ההורים or on our chosen family. Our elders: Our first protection and source of human comfort, whom we called out to countless times before we even had words. And now it’s incumbent upon us to protect them. Even as I can’t imagine a year before hugging my parents again. Even as stringencies loosen around the country, we must protect all of our beloved parents, grandparents, aunties and great-uncles. Let us look toward our parents and ancestors.
Shir la’ma’alot essa einai el heharim שיר למעלות, אשא עיני אל ההרים
'I lift my eyes to the mountains’
When you feel the tightness rising in you, lift your eyes, lift your soul, and look to the mountains, --whether Mount Tam, Mount Sinai, or the people who are mountains, those living and those who have died, the ones who surround you with strength, and the ones whom we all must protect.
מאין יבוא עזרי me'ayin yavo ezri
And here things get trippy.
The simple translation of מאין (me’ayin) is ‘from where’? From where will my help come? And yet... מאין (me’ayin) can also be translated as ‘from nothing.’ God created יש מאין (yesh me’ayin), something from nothing. מאין יבוא עזרי me’ayin yavo ezri becomes : My help emerges out of nothing.
And right now, when I struggle to visualize a future where tested medical leaders and scientists are given room to lead our communities and country through a storm only they are equipped to navigate, It’s strangely comforting to know that sometimes help, and future, and rehabilitation and healing can emerge, and grow, from seemingly nothing and nowhere.
In mystical Jewish interpretation, the אין, this nothingness, isn’t an emptiness. it’s thick with movement and meaning, ‘Nothing’ is the primordial source of all life. It’s what we sense, but can’t see. Anything beyond our comprehension, concealed or unknown is called ayin.’ God is called ayin, our soul is called ayin.
13th century kabbalist, Azriel of Gerona writes provokingly: “How did God bring forth being from nothingness? Is there not an immense difference between being and nothingness?” For him, there is no distance between the two, there is no two/no duality here. He sets up the question to tear it down. In the way that the heavens and the earth from our psalm seem so far apart, yet are made from the same creative matter, just as illness and cure emerge from one virus, יש and אין being and nothingness, are made from the same stuff. And the point where they touch, where the first hint of being takes root in the nothingness? That is the beginning of faith, according to Reb Azriel of Gerona. He writes, and here’s Professor Danny Matt’s translation: ‘The mode of being as it begins to emerge from nothingness into existence is called faith. For the term ‘faith’ applies neither to visible, comprehensible being, nor to the nothingness, invisible and incomprehensible, but rather to the nexus of nothingness and being.”
Faith is that nexus, it’s the co-mingling, Faith comes at seeding time, Faith is hearing the idea, imagining a future, hearing the heartbeat of a not yet knowable being, visualizing the ability to breathe again. Faith is Winter, with renewed life simmering underground. You can’t force faith, like you can’t force Spring
Essa einai el heharim, me'ayin yavo ezri אשא עיני אל ההרים, מאין יבוא עזרי
Our help, our way forward, will emerge from nothingness. It seems that it must come from that nexus point, where nothing and being kiss, it must come from faith.
And yes, the ultimate help comes from God; we are in the psalms after all.
עזרי מעם השם עושה שמיים וארץ. Ezri me’im Hashem oseh shamayim va’aretz
The Piezetzner Rebbe reminds us that the psalmist doesn’t write: My help comes from God who redeemed us from Egypt, but ‘My help comes from God Who made heaven and earth’ -- ex nihilo, out of nothingness. The One who built a world in a black hole. This is the One who must help us, The only One who knows how and can teach us to create something out of nothing.
We’re not in Exodus anymore, with God intercepting in history, extracting us from individual and collective despair. But we can learn, and practice, and acquire this Divine skill, יש מאין (to create ex nihilo, from nothing) to visualize and actualize a present and future where no template exists.
We don’t know how we will emerge from this time, practically, emotionally, financially, physically.
But let us draw strength and comfort:
שיר המעלות shir la'ma'alot
I pack a song as I set out on the journey -- a song made for climbing
אשא עיני אל ההרים Essa einai el heharim
I lift my eyes from the mundane, from my navel, toward the majestic mountains Of Torah, family, and nature
מאין יבוא עזרי me'ayin yavo ezri
My help emerges from hidden, unforeseen places. I keep my eyes and heart open
עזרי מעם השם עושה שמיים וארץ ezri me'im Hashem oseh shamayim va'aretz
My help comes from The One who teaches us to create with no template, no trodden path. To return to the nexus where being emerges from nothingness, and where faith is born inside of us.
