Rabbi Jade Sank Ross is the author of To You I Call: Psalms Throughout Our Lives from CCAR Press. In this excerpt, she discusses how psalms can be a uniquely valuable companion on our spiritual journeys.
The genesis for this book followed the completion of my rabbinic capstone project. This project—the culmination of my five years of rabbinic study—was, as far as I know, the first of its kind at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, combining a comprehensive, immersive study of the Book of Psalms with a presentation of an original Hallel—“set of psalms”—selected to be incorporated into a Shacharit (morning) service. The psalms I selected addressed the current moment through text, music, and digital images in the context of prayer.
While working on this project, engaging in the ancient practice of reading daily psalms, I started to see the psalms everywhere: in synagogues, at archaeological sites in Israel, in artwork, and in music. Their texts accompanied me every day. Their words became meaningful in situations when I found myself speechless and searching for words. I found that the psalms respond to human nature in a unique way. The language of the psalms is open enough to allow space for all of us to “come as we are” and to take what we need. The psalms also belong to American society as a whole: they are part of both the Hebrew and the Christian Bible, they appear widely in both our religious and secular culture, and their universal themes of fear, suffering, and rejoicing reach all people. The psalms enable us to access our spirituality at any given moment and in ways that speak to our souls.
As I incorporated psalms into places where I felt the set liturgy did not address contemporary experiences, I realized that a resource connecting the psalms to experiences in our lives, whether on an average day or one with unique pain or joy, would be very useful for the creation of rituals and worship. Additionally, such a book would be a rich spiritual resource for the personal practice of anyone seeking modern connections to our ancient sources. The volume in your hands aims to do exactly that: it pairs our traditional psalms with different moments of our contemporary lives.
My vision is that this volume will make the psalms more accessible and easier to navigate so they can be seamlessly incorporated into formal worship and other moments of personal prayer. This, in turn, will create opportunities to deepen Jewish spirituality, since these psalms accompany anyone on any occasion: at home, in the hospital, by the graveside, while traveling, or during meditation. Finally, this volume and the psalms within it will, I hope, empower you to establish a meaningful, personal prayer practice, whether regularly or occasionally.
To meet the vision I have for this book, it was important to make this book easy to navigate by narrowing down the 150 psalms to 72 (four times eighteen, quadruple chai/life) and dividing the 72 psalms featured here thematically into six broad categories—anticipation, commemoration, despair, gratitude, pain, and relief. Each category is then further divided into specific moments and experiences, such as “Looking Back on a Life-Changing Moment,” “Experiencing a Climate Disaster,” or “While Waiting for Important News.”
As I categorized the psalms, some clearly called to be linked with certain occasions, and then there were additional occasions that in turn called out for psalms. Clearly, by making these decisions, I made assumptions about your emotional responses to particular moments. You might find these inaccurate or one-dimensional. To help guide you toward a psalm that might ring more true for you, I offer suggestions in the footnotes of each psalm to at least one other psalm included in this book. I invite you to look for what you are feeling at any moment—beyond the way I have divided the contents, beyond the specifics of the occasions identified here, including among the remaining seventy-eight psalms that are not in this book.
The translations in this book are adapted from Songs Ascending by Rabbi Richard N. Levy, published by CCAR Press. Rabbi Levy’s English translations are poetic yet clear and largely preserve the intentions of the original Hebrew. For me, where Songs Ascending really meets the work of To You I Call is not in the unique translations themselves, but rather in Rabbi Levy’s richly spiritual commentary, where he raises questions like “How might this psalm articulate an aspect of our spiritual lives . . . help us celebrate a holiday or another special day? How might it accompany us when we are ill, or visiting someone who is ill? How might it provide comfort when we have lost someone dear to us?” I turned to the psalms because I was looking to answer exactly these questions. What I needed was a concise resource to inspire me. My hope is that the volume in your hands will be exactly this: a resource and a space to see the psalms as poetry, prayer, and song to inspire our spiritual journeys.
The title of this book, To You I Call, is taken from Rabbi Levy’s translation of Psalm 30. It captures the spirit of the psalms and applies to many of the situations and moments included within these pages. I hope it calls to you.
Rabbi Jade Sank Ross currently serves the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, New York. She is the author of To You I Call: Psalms Throughout Our Lives from CCAR Press.
