Welcome to Tahilim Unveiled, this is Ari Levison and we have a very special guest for this Preach of Remote episode.

Rabbi Alex Israel is a formidable scholar of Tanak who's lectured internationally and published 2 authoritative books on 1st and 2nd kings.

He also shared years worth of insightful articles on every single parsha available at alexisrael.org.

He's also the host of the acclaimed the Tanakh Podcast, which has been journeying through the daily Tanakh cycle and has now put out an episode on nearly every chapter of Tanakh.

They're almost finished.

I don't know how you do it, Rabbi Israel.

But above his impressive scholarship, Rabbi Israel is a beloved teacher who has spent more than two decades inspiring students at some of the most respected issue but in seminaries.

It's truly an honor to have you on the podcast today and I'm really excited to discuss Hilim 19 Your Tet, which is a personal favorite of mine, and to explore how its insights about our relationship with the Torah can help us prepare to receive to re receive the Torah on Chevrolet.

First of all, Ari, thank you so much for inviting me.

It is an amazing thing that you're doing with this podcast.

There are a lot of people who encounter Tahilim either in moments of crisis or through the prayer book, but very few people understand to heal him and very few people really know how to how to study it.

So I think you're doing a great service to the Jewish people in enabling people to encounter it, to learn it, to deepen their understanding.

And so I just want to say a big dish, Akak to you.

And so let's take a look into this chapter 19, which at first glance is not necessarily about Torah.

We're going to see the second-half is about Torah, but the first half seems to be about something completely different.

It's about the natural world.

And maybe I'll already frame this chapter by saying scholars have always looked at this chapter and wondered whether it is 1 chapter or two chapters.

But what we're going to see is the first half seems to deal with the perceiving God through the natural world and the amazement at the natural world and the way it leads us to God.

And then suddenly the chapter takes a very stark turn to the second-half and starts talking about Torah and observance and relating to God through God's laws and through God's.

And it's not.

And the question that we're going to face is what's the relationship between Part 1 and Part 2?

Is this really two chapters, or is it in fact one integrated chapter?

The argument I'm going to make is that it is one integrated chapter and it has a great deal to do with that moment of Matan Torah.

What I'm going to do is I'll read the first half and maybe we'll talk about it for a few minutes.

Then we'll read the second-half and then we'll try and see how we can look at it.

I'm going to read it in English with the Rabbi Sachs translation for the first half so we can get an impression, and then we'll go through a little slower with the Hebrew and analyze it.

So Lambda and Sehem is more or less deviated for the conductor of Psalm of David.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

The skies proclaim the work of his hands.

day-to-day they pour forth speech.

Night to night they communicate knowledge.

There is no speech, there are no words.

Their voice is not heard yet.

Their music carries through the earth, their words to the end of the world.

In Nemi has set a tent for the Psalm.

It emerges like a groom from the marriage chamber, rejoicing like a champion about to run a race.

It rises at one end of the heaven and makes it circuit to the other.

Nothing is hidden from its heat.

That is the way Rabbi Sacks translated it, somewhat poetically.

So what's going on here?

You already heard this, that what we've been talking about is that the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of their hands.

There's something about looking up to the sky which is amazing Sometimes the sun is shining, or maybe it's the moon at night, but sometimes it's the clouds or sometimes it's the stars.

Remember the ancient times people navigated by the stars and people also really felt that the the stars and the heavens and the constellations and the the sun and the moon as an effect of human beings.

So they they felt there was real power there.

So let's just go in Harshal mine is up in fodel the heavens.

They they tell the honour of God Umassi ODA of Mugid Arakiya the sky.

It tells the the work of his hands.

Yomli Yomiya be on there, the Laila Laila of Habidat Yom Leon by day and by night.

There's the sense of amazing regularity, right?

We can literally predict the moment the sun will rise tomorrow morning and also to in 100 years time.

There's something clockwork about it.

It's something we can predict Yom Yom yabiya Omer they speak.

There's a sense of speaking Yabiya means to express Lila Lila.

You have their that they give wisdom and we gain the sense that, and then in the very next verse, it says Anal Mereva and Barin Balenishma Kollam without uttering A syllable, without even hearing their voice right.

This happens to silence.

They're totally silent.

It's a sense of they express so much without uttering a word.

They're sort of talking to us without uttering A syllable.

This chapter really uses the notion that the heavens are talking right or Mare yisra verdat.

And then even in the next one, yes, Sir, the whole artists of Kabam.

It's not just in the heavens that we have this communication, but throughout the land.

Their words cover in this regard means words, right.

Remember Nishayal Kavlakov Tavlettov and over the exceptive al milehem their their their language.

I just want to point out that if we go back to the creation story, God actually creates the world through language by the honor Elohimi he or right.

Everything in Brexit is done not through.

You know, if you look at mythology, sometimes mythology has all sorts of actions by the gods us in the Torah Lahavdil God only creates the world through language, right?

There's the sense that language is is is phenomenally creative.

Rabbi Sax used to talk about the idea that God created the world through language.

We create relationships through language the most we with God revealed that the tourists through language we continue to engage in in in building or destroying worlds through language.

A great example of that, the Tower of Babel, where, you know, humans were beginning to to really build up civilization, build cities.

And we're getting so egotistical that they wanted to build a tower to rival God.

And the way that God stopped them is by mixing up their language.

And as soon as they lost the power to communicate, they weren't able to do anything.

They were building with with, you know, mortar and bricks in truth and a deeper level, they were building with language.

Right.

Wow, that's a powerful idea.

And here there's something like funny because again, you've got these incredible, you know, constellations and galaxies, and we're saying they're talking to us even though there's not a word.

It's almost like it's the the voice of God that created them in the beginning is is reverberating through them.

I love that, I love that.

And by the way, you know, I don't think it's it's incidental that in the modern age, we've got this fascination to try and go to the moon to go and reach Mars, right.

You know, the first Russian cosmonauts who went up she he didn't reach the moon, but he went to space.

And one of the first things he broadcast down to Earth was I don't see God up here.

And then always being the sense that somehow Hashemite in the Supreme Claudel that the the heavens are so formidable that they talk about God.

I have to tell a story on that note.

I heard this from my grandfather.

It's also his favorite paragraph to MMM.

There's this famous physicist named Philip Morrison.

He was part of the Manhattan Project and then later was instrumental in the project called SETI to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

These big satellites and receivers, and they were trying to listen to, are there any intelligent aliens out there that are communicating with us?

Literally, they're listening for the heavens to speak.

And in the inauguration ceremony for this project, he actually, he reads this paragraph to him here, he was Jewish, not religious, very much not religious, but he so he reads this, but he stops after this first half where it talks about it talks about the heavens.

And then he reads the first half and then he, you know, pulls the lever and starts the thing.

I think it's really interesting that he didn't include the second-half, which which we're about to to talk about.

OK, so we're still in the we're still in the first half.

We're going to still be talking about the first half because suddenly we're going to take a turn and we've been talking in generalities and this notion of the heavens articulating and now we're going to read pasuk.

Hey, Lashemesh's son or help by him for the son.

He made the heavens like a canopy.

You've got to imagine that.

Imagine this is a stage and you have the whole of the backdrop of the heavens.

That's almost like the backdrop on a on a stage.

And then what's going to actually move through heavens?

That's going to be the sun, right?

The sun is the major actor, the leading actor, right?

He made the heavens like a backdrop for the sun.

The hookah cut down.

You'll see me who baton.

He is like a bridegroom, right?

Leaving his marriage chamber, he rejoices like a warrior.

La roots Orach to run a race.

Possibly la roots Orach might mean to greet a guest, Mick, say Hashemi mozza.

Oh, from the beginnings of the heavens is his origin.

What comforto on the end is the other side.

The inner nistar may come at all, and nobody is hidden from his heat.

Suddenly we stop talking about the heavens in general, and we talk about the sun, and they talk about this idea that the sun is like a battalion.

Where do you get the notion of a bridegroom?

Maybe, you know, if you can imagine a young man on the way with David's wedding, full of energy, full of, you know, joy, well, that sense that the sun is just always emitting it, it it's just radiating, right?

And he's running like a warrior, warrior with all that strength and energy.

Lawrence Ora he's willing to run great distances from one end of the heaven.

He never gives up with his energy.

He could run a marathon.

Vainly stomach Hamato.

And we even feel the heat, so to speak.

None are hidden from its heat.

We might want to be protected.

We might want to be hidden.

So the first half when we look at it seems very, very, it seems like one of those chapters, chapters which we see in other places in Tahilim Barkhilashi, for example, Psalm one O 4, which just talk about the magnificence of nature.

They talked about natural phenomenon.

And God has put everything in like the watchmaker.

Everything works, it all clicks together, everything is perfect.

It's gorgeous, it's powerful, and look at the God who put this together.

But what's unique about this chapter here is really where it goes in the second-half, and how it contrasts that to Torah.

Until now we're reading, we're happy, and now we start the second-half right.

And maybe some of these words will be familiar.

Torata Shantzmi Mamashi but not that she do to shame that Manama Fatima Petty Who dare shame Sharima Sama Fele meets Bata shame Baram Irati 9 you write Hashem Torah omid laad you should tell Hashem emet sadhqoo yahdab we have 6 praises 6 times.

The name of God is Yudhe Vaabhe.

In the first half he's only seen God until now as the name Al once God, the short and former Elohim L actually means power and now only you'd say Bob.

Hey, six times the Lord's Torres perfect refreshing the soul.

God's testimony is faithful making the simple wise.

God's precepts are just gladdening the hearts.

God's commandment is radiance.

Radiance.

That's going to be a convention.

It is that we have this sense of Barack, which often we say Barack Hama irate naim.

It gives light to the eyes.

The fear of God is pure, enduring, forever.

The Lord's judgments are true, altogether righteous.

So we've got six things about Torah, about Torah, about God's laws, a duttis houdin houdeh, Hashem, his mitzvot, even the Erat Hashem and God's mish, but his judgment or his justice.

And then we say these are so incredible that Aneka Mahdim Mizabui Pazarov.

By the way, notice the gold color here.

They are more precious than gold.

They're more than fine gold, right?

Paz is another word for gold.

Umatu Kinley Devashvanov that sufin.

And now we don't really go into how they look like gold and they that gold color which gladdens the eyes, but they always value.

But they're sweeter than honey and and nectar.

So it's, it's like it's saying, you know, nature is great.

You know what's even better than great is Torah.

Right.

Torah refreshes our soul.

It makes the simple people petty, the single people wise, it gives wisdom, it makes you happy with some haleigh, it gives you joy, it gives you light.

OK, it is everlasting or men at La odd sad kuya dao, right?

What area of symmetry Did you notice how in the first topic was obsessed with words, right?

It was talking about, you know, the Sapeta and Magid and Milim and the Barim.

And suddenly we talk about Torah, which is obviously create a few words, words and action words.

So I'm already even in the first half, you're hearing a hint of the second-half.

And in a minute I'll talk about some of the linguistic connections as we read the last bit.

This is song of Torah.

And the question is how it relates.

Are the first half and the second-half, are they in some way a continuum or are they in some way oppositional to one another?

Rashi and the Matsu dogs and others who all say the world's great, but Torah's greater.

But the punch is going to come in the final segments.

Here's the last bit where we spoke about Torah generically and now we're going to focus in on one specific, just like in the first half, generic and then specific.

Now we're going to talk in generalities.

And now we have gone to Google specific who's the specific, right, The owner of the supplement, right, Me, right.

And now it says.

Just like the sun is the the main character in the heaven, so the author here is the main character in the realm on earth.

Yeah, beautiful.

So Gamma de Firm, these harbor him.

Your servants too.

After we've said they're so sweet, they're like gold, he says.

Gamma de Khan, these harbor him.

Bisham Ram Ekhrav.

Also your servant is very careful observing them.

A kevrath with great pedanticlist.

However, now we have a prayer.

But if you can know errors right, who will understand errors?

Mini stir up Nakini, please cleanse me of hidden faults.

Also keep me away from deliberate things.

Alim Shalhoubi, let them not have dominion over me as a Tam, then I will be blameless.

I will be Tam.

I will be like Yaakov Ishtar more right?

It's Aleka Fanida.

Yet Tamim Abraham is told walk before me and you'll be pure.

You'll be whole.

Then the Casey Mesh Pesharov and I will be blameless and innocents of great sin.

Yuluratzonimerphibi Hagoni be the fanekashem Suri Vigali.

You know I'll read that all in English so people can get the the sense of it.

Who could discern errors?

Who could cleanse me of hidden faults?

Keep your servants away from wilful sins.

Let them not have dominion over me.

Then I should be blameless and innocence of a great sin.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart find favorite before you, You, my Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer.

So whereas the sun is this almost this perfect survey, rushing out like a warrior and serving God, with which left joy and perfection right following this perfect order, going from one end of the world to the other.

The author here is expressing a similar, maybe a similar responsibility in their duty to to perform God's will to follow the Torah, but with the exact opposite confidence.

Extremely worried about his fallibility.

Right, and I think there's something in it because there's, you know, we look at the, you know, I wish I could be as regular as the sun.

You know, I sometimes wake up

for the 7:00 mini and sometimes I oversleep and make it to the

8:00 mini and sometimes I don't make it to minion at all, right.

We're we're human and to be human is to make mistakes.

And to human is occasionally that you're, you're tired or you or or your, I don't know, your pride or your anger get the worst of you, right?

And then suddenly we see this perfect heavens, which run like clockwork.

And you know, suddenly you look at yourself and say, wait, what about me, right?

I love that metaphor of the groom because like we all like, you know, I remember what it was like to be a groom and to think I'm just going to be the perfect husband.

I'm going this is going to be.

Easy, I'm.

Going to do such a great job.

I love my wife so much.

All I want to do is serve her and then a week into marriage I'm looking in the mid thinking gosh, this is harder than I thought.

Wow, I am so bad at this.

It is so hard and I'm more like David thinking right?

Like you know, Sugiyo to me, Avi and the minister wrote me candy, right?

Like who could even who could even counter figure out all of the mistakes I'm making right?

Never mind the deliberate ones, the things that I don't intend to do exactly, and all of that.

By the way, there's something very, very beautiful that we started with Torata Shem Tome Ma in the second-half, and then we end off with as a Tom, I'd like to be as pure as the Torah.

I'd like to be as perfect as the Torah.

Torah might be my benchmark, but could I ever reach that?

And a lot of people have pointed out that and whereas some of the biblical scholars said these are really two Psalms which have been artificially put together, maybe by some scribal error, by some accidents, that there are linguistic connections between the 1st and the and the second-half.

So for example, you will look in the in the first half and it says Anistami Kamato.

And here he says Minister Rots and Lakini, right?

The the, the, the idea of Minister Rots, right?

The the hidden things, the hidden things.

And there are other connections between you know, we spoke before about MI erate Nayan, right?

The Torres meant to create illumination, just like the heavens, great illumination.

And there's one other connection which I'm somehow forgetting.

There's this sense that you turn around, you look at the heavens, you've got this agenda of Torah which is so illuminating, which is so wise.

And then you turn around and you see your prayer and you say, wow, if I could only live up to that standard.

There are going to be hidden things.

I am not the sun.

I am not full of endless energy.

I have to be very, very careful and I have to.

I asked God for my assistance in keeping Torah.

I think it's just a very, very beautiful, humble approach.

Torah, I think we, you know, often feel like we have a, a divine something which is given to us from above, a divine way of life.

But there is.

So we've just had Yomi Rushalayim and there's the sense of Yushalayim Shalmala and Yurushalayim Shalmata, right this in Jerusalem are high and then there's Jerusalem below and we those of us live or work in true in you shall matter.

We know there's nothing very special.

We come to Jerusalem and we feel that there is a portion of the divine Jerusalem down here in the streets in the in the in the beautiful Jerusalem stone in the air in the in the interconnected city of people.

But anybody who's lived in Jerusalem is fully aware of its problems, right, of its problems that we cannot.

We, we're human beings, we're flesh and blood.

We will always be to, to, to be human is to make mistakes.

And therefore the, and the, the crazy thing is that the only way as human beings made of body and soul, the only way we will ever be able to enter the divine is through our physicality.

But the whole notion, the physical is flawed.

So that's the idea that we we are taking an ultimate godliness and putting it into a, a flawed humanity and we aspire to something much higher.

And yet we're aware that it will always be out of our reach.

Maybe that's the the fundamental idea of the emoto mashiach, right?

The the Messiah.

The idea being that we, we, we yearn for a perfect leader, right?

And we say they come in the guise of David.

And yeah.

And then that's David.

So made his mistakes, right?

Deliberate and inadvertent.

And therefore we come to, we come to this, you come to this club with this sort of magnificent sense of nature, this magnificent sense of Torah.

And then we're like, but so then we the first, the second-half almost in a, in a sort of like oppositional way to the first half that everything up there is so cloud that, but everything in this world is open to to being flawed.

And we have to try and aspire and even ask for God's assistance, right?

In, in, in, in helping us do that.

And the last point I'll say, I'll turn it over to you is I think we already got an inkling of that in the last line of the first section would be pointed out the only Starmy Hamato, right?

Nobody is hidden from the from the blazing heat of the sun, right?

In other words, whereas the heavens can keep on working down here, right?

We're vulnerable.

We're vulnerable and whatever works up high down here doesn't work with the same perfection.

One of the things I think is so interesting about this is you almost could have made the same point without the middle section of this Miss Marr, without the part that talked about Torah.

In other words, if all you wanted to say was the heavens follow God's command so perfectly and we're so fallible, we make mistakes and help us God with our our fallibility.

You didn't need to talk about Torah in the middle, but between those two is this interjection about the Torah itself and how great and it's perfect, but also what it does to you.

It's me Shiva Nafesh.

It, it restores the soul.

It's Nahmad.

It's it's precious.

It's precious.

That's a subjective thing, right?

It's it's precious to us.

We value it and it makes me think about the role that Torah plays for us as human beings and kind of why we need the Torah, right?

Because the the rest of the natural world doesn't need a written law.

It's built into the nature of the sun that the sun rises every morning and sets every night.

But we have a very different relationship with God's command for us.

It it's more of a, a conversation.

It's a back and forth, right that you know, the, the, the heavens when they, their communication with God is silent.

God speaks to them silently and then they speak silently, right?

But for us, we, we have a verbal communication with God.

God speaks to us through the Torah and we speak to God and we, we use our language both directly towards God and as you said before it creatively and how powerful speech is.

And it's, it's our, it's our most powerful tool that we have.

I love that.

That's so beautiful because Torah, obviously we encounter through words and we engage in it through conversation.

And it's that creative power which enables us to to, you know, literally expand the Torah.

And I'd say this maybe with the look, we haven't really paid attention to the last line, but the chapter ends with this lovely little prayer.

It's a prayer of the health, and it's a prayer which says yulu at son imre feel at the words of my mouth.

That's your words, right?

And then they had yon nabila phaneka and the logic of my heart.

And those are hearts.

Of course, maybe I don't know if we think in words, emotions are much more primal than that.

They're Hashem Suri begali, God you my Redeemer.

So there's this almost this sense of saying that in a way we inhabit a world of words, but we also inhabit a world of emotions which are anal mera, but ain't a very that that sometimes we can't even put our emotions into world.

We, we, we, we have a a way of connecting to God which is even, which also is almost like the heavens within us.

I've never been able to think about this para cup to helium without thinking about the story of the hitting Iraq.

Really the two stories of the hitting Iraq when the Israelites in the world, and that's right, there's twice that they they run out of water and the first time God tells Moses to hit a rock and then water comes out of the rock.

And then that's what gives them water to drink throughout 40 years in the desert.

And then at the very end, they basically find themselves again without water.

And but this time, instead of telling Moshe to hit the rock, God tells Moshe to speak to the rock.

But Moshe doesn't do that.

And he hits it and water does come out.

And of course, this is when God gets furious at Moshe, you know, says you had this opportunity to sanctify me amongst the people and you missed this opportunity and therefore I'm not going to let you go with them into the land.

So this was a really big deal.

And you know, everyone wonders what the difference was between that first and second time.

Why?

Why was it that the first time God wanted him to hit the rock and the second time God wanted him to speak to the rock?

And what was this great kiddos Hashem, this sanctification of God that was supposed to happen, that was supposed to come through Moshe speaking to it?

And Rashi says on that, let me see if I can just find this here.

Rashi says that basically the, the, there was a lesson they were meant to learn when they saw Moshe speaking to the rock, and then the rock just listening and giving forth its water.

And they were supposed to say masala zeche Eno MI dabeera for shamea.

But you know, just as this rock, which it, it doesn't speak or listen, it has no power of language velopat Lafar NASA I knew, right?

All the more so we should listen to God.

We who have speech should, should listen to God.

And it's I mean, it's a little bit backwards because of course the rocks going to listen.

It doesn't have free will.

But there is this idea that us who communicate God with God through language, it means so much more when when we actually listen to God.

But but there's still the question of, well, why the first time did did God say to hidden only the second time that God said to speak to the rock And what what changed in between?

And I've always felt like what changed in between is that we got the Torah, and when we got the Torah, it changed our relationship with.

God, I'll be noon has something very beautiful where he says that in the Torah there are two ways that God guides his world.

In Egypt, God guides his wealth through the SMR code, through the 10 if you want, hitting the 10 strikings and that was what we call the Hanagathi Yadav Hazaka.

That's God exhibiting through breaking nature, so to speak, using the force of nature, but may in certain ways breaking nature in order to show his power.

But then after we've emerged out of Egypt, he tries to shift to the Hamadat Tabdi Bor, right by the we need to move to a way of guiding people through through words, right?

And you know, that's, you know, that's a transition which the Jewish people need to make for very impressive, spectacular, miraculous rule breaking events to the notion that we can, you know, you know, we can we can encounter God through a different mode.

And this is indeed raising exactly the question that you're asking.

Is it brute force which has real power, or is it words which in fact have even even greater power?

Right.

Sticks and stuff will break, will break your bones, but words won't hurt me.

No, we know the words can help you much more than sticks and stones.

Words can start wars, right?

Words can change the world.

You know, there's not.

How much can you do with just your hands?

Yeah.

And you know, when you think about it that way, the giving of the Torah, which which we're about to celebrate and shove it out, it is it is so much more than just receiving a book of laws.

It's this fundamental shift in the relationship that God has with the world and the relationship that God has with humanity.

It's a shift where for the first time ever, God is, is reaching out to have this, this, this, it's a relationship, right?

The idea is it's, it's built on language because that's what relationships are built on.

But it's, it's a relationship that's something that the the natural world will never have.

Thank you so much, Robbie as well for coming on.

It's really been an absolute pleasure.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

It's great to be learning together with you and I hope all of our listeners really benefit from learning another paragraph to Helium and hopefully some thoughts which will carry them through and inspire them as we move into Shabba Watts.