Original subtitles

good evening everyone good evening my name is Phil Miller

Jewish life here at the 92nd Street Y and on behalf of the Y and the Bronwen Center it is a pleasure to welcome all

of you here this evening and I welcome our our live audience here in in New

York City but I must also with very special guests this evening there are

eight communities around North America that are joining us this evening via

satellite and I'd like to welcome them now if you'll give me just a second I

would like to welcome the Gordon JCC in Nashville Tennessee the JCCC of greater

Albuquerque the JCCC of Omaha the Jewish educational alliance in Savannah Georgia

the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte the Michael and Russell JCC in

North Miami Beach the Tucson JCC and the Valley of the Sun JCC in Scottsdale

Arizona let's give him a big a big welcome than joining us this evening welcome welcome everyone this is the

annual Aaron Friedberg Bible lecture which the Bronfman Center is so proud to

to present each year and I would must

recognize dr. Phillip and Jamila Weintraub who are the the sponsors of

this this lecture each year and they are here with us this evening and we we thank them so much for all that they

have done for for the Bronwyn Center and the 92nd Street Y

our our guest speaker this evening is is someone who is a great friend of the

92nd Street Y and an a remarkable figure in both the American Jewish community

and and and throughout the world rabbi Harold s Kushner is a rabbi

laureate of of Temple Israel in the Boston suburb of Natick Massachusetts after serving that Congregation for 24

years he's best known as the author of when bad things happen to good people an

international bestseller first published in 1981 the book has been translated into 14 languages and was recently

selected by members of the Book of the Month Club as one of the 10 most influential books of recent years he has

also written when all you have ever wanted isn't enough which was awarded the Christopher medal for its

contribution to the exaltation of the human spirit his other books include

when children ask about God who needs God to life and a 1996 bestseller how

good do we have to be and with novelist the late novelist Haiyan Potok he is

co-author of the new conservative commentary on the Torah eights hyeme which has been enthusiastically received

by hundreds of congregations since its publication in the fall of 2001 his book

living a life that matters was a fall of 2001 bestseller as well this is the most

important part Rabbi Kushner was born in Brooklyn New York and graduated from

from Columbia University he was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1960 and awarded a doctoral degree in

Bible by the seminary in 1972 he also has six honorary doctorates in 1999 the

National Organization religion in American life honored him as their clergyman of the year his topic this

evening will be Psalms the ancient songs of the spirit now before I welcome every

by Kushner to the stage just a few quick housekeeping notes for our audience here in New York as you

came in this evening you received index cards from our Usher's and I encourage you as as rabbi

Kushner is giving his presentation to fill out index cards those index cards with questions that you have for him and

those in communities who are joining us around North America you know how to get

in touch with us by fax or by email and encourage you to start sending in those questions now at the conclusion of

around by Kushner stock I will join him again here on stage and I will I will

pepper him with your questions and and he will he will share with us his his

answers also everyone both here and around North America night should

received as you came in a copy of the 23rd psalm which rabbi Kushner will be

really teaching this evening as as as part of his if I was part of his talk finally last bit of housekeeping the

rabbi Kushner will be will be in our art gallery at immediately adjacent to our

the concert hall following his talk this evening his his his books will be on

sale and he'll be available to sign those books in to meet all of you who are here with us in in New York it is

now my pleasure and honor to welcome again to the 92nd Street Y rabbi Harold

Kushner

Thank You rabbi Miller and good evening thank you to all of you who are tuned in live or by satellite I would say first

of all how exciting it always is for me to be here speaking at the 92nd Street Y it is such a very special institution

periodically I run across this multi-page series of notices in the New York Times about the programming's that

you have here it's just an astonishing array of programs and I feel very

honored to be part of it and makes me almost wish I was back living in New York and to those of you who are seeing

me on satellite first of all a very special word of good evening to all of you with the Tucson Jewish Community

Center my wife and I were in Tucson just about 10 days ago on vacation we love it we go there every January for reasons

that you will readily understand for those of you watching in North Miami Beach we're gonna be down there

beginning next Sunday for the month of February our daughter and our grandchildren and our son-in-law live in

Miami we spend as much time with them as we can and to those of you watching at that wonderful magnificent Jewish

Community Center in Omaha Nebraska my wife is from Omaha grew up there her parents were Sylvia and Dave Estrada

very active and fondly remembered at Bethel and we have very fond feelings

toward Omaha and for the rest of you I just want to make sure that if you're watching on satellite TV instead of live

here in New York please don't feel like second-class citizens my congregants back in Massachusetts get

to see me live all the time and when they see me on television they get very excited The Book of Psalms has a very

unique place on the Shelf of Jewish classic spiritual literature for one

thing if you realize it is the only book of the Bible that God did not write

think about it everything else in the Bible the Lord spoke to Moses and the

Lord said and thus says the Lord and the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah it's all God's words to us The Book of Psalms

is the only instance in the Bible of our words directed to God

and what are those words that we find directed to God in the 150 chapters the

devotional literature of the Book of Psalms more than anything else what we find in the Psalms is the Israelites

articulation of the joy and the privilege of coming into God's presence

in my synagogue and Natick Massachusetts on the front wall alongside the Ark we

have inscribed a line from Psalm 26 Haddon I a half-demon beta Lord I love

coming into your house we have it in Hebrew because if we had it in English the congregants probably would feel it

was the height of hypocrisy they walk into synagogue with the expression that they usually reserved for going to the

dentist's office but the psalmist's the people who wrote the Psalms felt there was the most

wonderful thing that ever happened to them to come into the presence of God we

find in the sums a typically Jewish idea but very much worth calling your attention to the legitimacy of being

angry at God you don't find that in every religion but you find it in the Book of Psalms Lord how long will your

anger be kindled against us how long will you permit the wicked to triumph over the righteous when are you gonna

get around to doing something about this terrible mixed-up world you find that religious people saying something very

religious and what is the religious message they're articulating God you are

not living up to your promises you're not living up to what it means to be God get with it

the Psalms can be individual or collective phrase in the singular or

phrase in the plural they can be words of praise that can be words of lament and I must tell you I

wrote my doctoral dissertation on history of the composition of the Book of Psalms spent about two years writing

it and it messed up my diving life I mean I did I'd be at the minyan I'm trying to read the Psalms and my head is

saying oh yes this is a communal lament except for lines five and six which were added at a later date and only when I

finally finished the dissertation could I get back to actually praying instead of studying Psalms why were they written

where did they come from there are two theories they're probably both probable either they were just

written composed to give the averages relight the opportunity to put his thoughts and feelings into words or they

were written so that the average is real I could feel like a participant at the temple service it seems unmistakable that many of the

Psalms were composed to be recited at the temple as the daily offerings were being brought the offerings of course

were carried out by the priests the people who brought the offerings the worshipers had no active role and maybe

they didn't want to be purely passive maybe what they craved was a sense of

ownership of the religious service at the temple and reciting the Psalms or even having them recited by the Levites

the singing the choirs on their behalf while the priests carried out their work in silence made them feel involved and

behind it all every single one of the 150 chapters in the Book of Psalms is

suffused with a confidence of the ancient Israelites that there is a God

that this God cares about what happens to us and that makes their life in this

vulnerable dangerous unpredictable world possible and with that I want to

transition to the text we're gonna study this evening line by line probably the

only chapter of the entire Bible that many of you know by heart Psalm 23 the

Lord is my shepherd I shall not want for many years when I was a congregational

rabbi I found myself wondering - what question is the 23rd psalm and answer I

would recite it at funerals I would recite it at user services and it was

always a source of amazement no matter how tragic the circumstances the funeral

no matter how raw people's emotions were I would begin to recite those familiar

words of the 23rd psalm and it had this tranquilizing effect on the entire congregation

it just comforted people it made them feel better - what question is that the

answer I finally decided it's an answer to the question where do I find the

courage to live in this crazy world where there was a personal source of grief a

personal loss rejection tragedy whether was a wider one the attack on the World

Trade Center in 2001 they attack on a commuter bus in Israel this morning

whatever the event when we see things that happen to decent people when we

learn how life hangs by a fragile thread how do you get the strength on the faith

to wake up tomorrow morning and go back about your duties how do you get the courage to send your children off to

school and know that you can look forward to seeing them again Psalm 23 is the answer to that let's

take our time tonight and just take a close look at the psalm virtually line by line it's short it's an immensely

compact masterpiece in Hebrew there are only 51 words that's the whole Psalm 51

words in Hebrew about a hundred and twenty in English depending on exactly which translation you're using but

within this 51 words a composition it says so much I've come to see the 23rd

psalm as a drama in three acts Act one the psalmist finds himself in a perfect

placid safe orderly sun-drenched world everything is fine green pastures and

still waters and everything he could possibly want when I was traveling around the country talking about my book

on the 23rd psalm the Lord is my shepherd in three separate cities in three different parts of the country somebody

asked me the same question it wasn't exactly a question a questioner said I don't like this Psalm I don't like this song because it begins

the Lord is my shepherd and if the Lord is my shepherd that means I'm a sheep and I don't like being told I'm a sheep

sets of the questioner first of all give me a break this is a poem you don't take

a poem literally a poem uses imagery to get its point across and you don't take

the image literally secondly all right the psalmist starts out saying the Lord is my shepherd that is there is a god

out there who takes care of all of my needs so nothing bad will happen to me that's where it begins

that's not where he ends up he ends up with a much more nuanced understanding of God's role in his life and third even

when he comes to understand what God's role in our lives is there's a part of

him that still wants to be taken care of there's a part of him that remains a child that craves that sense of there's

somebody out there looking out for me that's what he means the Lord is my shepherd why green pastures you know

there's an old Jewish joke about the the father and little boy were going for a walk in the park and the boy says to his

father daddy why is the sky blue the father says I don't know it's guys blue it's always been blue what color you

expect sky to be two minutes later and the boy asks him daddy why is the grass green the father says what kind of

question is that grass is green if it wasn't green it wouldn't be grass two minutes later the boy says daddy do you

mind my asking you all these questions fun says now go ahead and ask how else are you gonna learn but you know maybe

there is a reason why the grass is green and the sky is blue bright colors red

white orange they assault the eye you can't miss them that's why rental cars are either white or red if you ever

noticed hospital rooms used to be painted stark white as a sign of purity

of cleanliness and then somebody realized that stark white walls make the patients anxious and now if you go into

a hospital the walls are probably gonna be light green or pale blue because those are colors that relax us so why is

the grass green and the sky blue and the trees brown because God painted his

world in colors that would let us relax that's why when you have a long weekend you want to go out to the shore you want

to go to the mountains you want to buy a house with a large lawn a house with a water view you're gonna pay extra for it

because those greens and blues relax us bright colors neon signs they stimulate

us they keep us awake God's colors let us relax and the psalmist sees himself

in green pastures still waters everything is safe everything is calm

that's act 1 the world is perfect I shall not want there's nothing at which

a Genet and then suddenly the psalmist and actu'ly finds himself thrown out of the

sunshine into the darkness though I walk through the valley of the shadow of

death what an incredible metaphor that is the shadow of death because the psalmist

understands it's not the experience of death that terrifies us by then it's too late it's the knowledge that we are

going to die that casts a shadow over every day of our lives the woman whose

mother and aunt have died of breast cancer she knows what it means to live in the valley of the shadow of death a

gay man in America conscious at all the times that he is one blood-test away

from being told he is a life-threatening disease he knows what it means to live in the valley of the shadow of death my

father had his first stroke when he was 79 years old fortunately it was a mild

one physically he recovered completely no speech impediments no motor functions disrupted he lived for six years after

that but he didn't really live he was never the same person after that first stroke because he lived every day of

those last six years in the valley of the shadow of death waiting every tremor every headache every muscle pain

terrified him that this might be another stroke that would send him over the edge to know that anything anytime now

something can happen to you that will cost you your life makes us look at time and choice and everything else

differently last April the conservative rabbis from all over the continent in fact all over the world gathered in Los

Angeles for our annual convention and one of our really gifted colleagues gave her brilliant paper on the question what

happened in the Garden of Eden what was the knowledge that had him and Eve acquired when they ate the fruit of the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil what did they learn which is both good and bad

his suggestion they learned that they were mortal they learned that one day

they would die and that made them different from all the other animals if you remember your Bible chapter 3 of the

book of Genesis God says to them don't eat the fruit because the day you eat of the fruit you

will die yes will they eat it they don't die but they learn they're going to die

and that color is every subsequent day of their life if you remember in the Bible what happens the very first thing

after Adam and Eve have eaten that fruit they realize that they are naked and they're ashamed may I remind you there

is literally nobody in the world to see them literally there is nobody in the

world who can see them what are they embarrassed by they're embarrassed to have bodies they're embarrassed to have

bodies because it is their bodies that will one day betray them their bodies

that make them vulnerable to sickness to disease to illness and accident and injury and if it weren't for our bodies

we wouldn't be in the valley of the shadow of death but the psalmist something has happened to him which has

taken him out of the sunlight and into the valley of the shadow or maybe it's not something that happened to him maybe

it's something that happened to somebody close to him somebody he loved died and suddenly the light has gone out of his

life and he finds himself shadowed by the experience of this death and that's

why I have come to understand that maybe maybe the most important single word in

the entire 23rd psalm is one that we really don't pause we skip right over it

when we recite the somme though I walk through the valley of the shadow of

death in my congregational experience I've known a lot of people who had

suffered reverses rejections the losses somebody close to them had died and I've

seen so many of them gets stuck in the valley of the shadow they remain in the darkness they just never permit

themselves to laugh and enjoy life again the woman whose husband dies and her

entire identity is absorbed in being a widow all she can talk about is how lonely it is to be without a husband the

parents who lose a child as my wife and I did 26 years ago and it becomes their entire identity it's becomes all they

can think about and talk about and I look at these people and I wonder why are they stuck in the shadow why don't

they find their way out of it and the conclusion I came to sometimes people

remain in the valley of the shadow because maybe when they were young somebody a parent a teacher a religious

leader told them that they were no good and nothing good would ever come of their lives and they believed it and they think this is the punishment they

deserve but most of the time I think people remain in the valley of the shadow because they're afraid because

they're afraid that if they ever permitted themselves to get over the loss and recover and be happy again they

would lose their loved one permanently death took him out of their lives physically and if they ever let

themselves get over the loss that would take the person out of their lives emotionally and I would try and explain

to these people that no that's not the way it works when you have loved somebody no matter what happens to that

person that person has entered so permanently into the fabric of your soul that you can never be separated from him

that that memory will always be there you don't have to be afraid that you will lose touch what I now say to

gatherings of bereaved parents is when your child died and you inherited his

books and his toys and his stereo one of the things you inherited from the child who died is all his unlived years and

they should be a precious legacy live those years that he never got around to

live don't say how can I go out and enjoy the world when he's not here to share it with me go out and live those

years on his behalf the psalmist who once praised God as his

shepherd the one who would always take care of him the psalmist now has a new understanding of God once he found out

that God could not protect him from the bad things that happen in the world I had a teacher Mordecai Kaplan in

rabbinical school who used to say expecting the world to treat you fairly because you're a good person is like

expecting the bull not to charge you because you're a vegetarian

the psalmist the author of the 23rd psalm has come to understand god's role is not to protect him from bad things

God's role is to find him in the valley of the shadow of death and make sure he doesn't stay there to give him the

strength and the will and the courage step by step to find his way out of the

valley of the shadow to where the sun is shining again because what is a shadow a shadow is something you see only if the

Sun is behind you and what God does is say turn around turn your back to the

shadow and you will find yourself in the sunshine again this is what God does in

times of tragedy of misfortune times when events throw us into the valley of

the shadow of death God does not explain God does not justify God comforts that is the

authentic voice of religion not to make sense of what happened not to tell you you deserve it you'll be better off for

it but to comfort there's a scene in the Torah in the book of Exodus right after the Israelites across the Red Sea

they're wandering in the desert they're thirsty they see in Oasis they could hardly wait to get there and drink the

fresh water they arrive they can't drink the water it's polluted it's brackish in

the Torah God shows Moses a certain tree Moses cuts a few branches off the tree

throws it into the pool it purifies the water and they can drink it that's the story in the Torah the midrash the

rabbinic commentary on that story has the following imaginary dialogue between God and Moses it pictures Moses saying

to God God would you explain to me what's the point of making brackish water in the world I mean who who needs

polluted water that doesn't do anybody any good and while you're at it God would you explain to me what precisely

did you have in mind when you invented mosquitos and cockroaches and then gypsy moths and termites wouldn't the world be

just as well off without them and God says Moses this is not a time for theology this is not a time for

wondering why I do or don't do certain things you got people who are dying over there you got people who are desperately

thirsty make them feel better we'll talk about the theology some other time that's what religion does religion

doesn't explain to you why you deserve it you'll be better off religion comforts you in your pain religion finds

you in the valley of the shadow and shows you how to find your way out to the sunlight again remember years ago I

read a book by a Christian ethicist by the name of Stanley how or was it was about religion and mental retardation

and he's got one great line in that book he writes confronting a child

the question a religious person should ask is not why does God permit this the

question a religious person should ask is what kind of community should we be

so that child can lead a fulfilling life that's the authentic voice of religion

this is what the psalmist never understood before until he found himself in the valley of the shadow and when he

discovers he is capable of finding his way through the valley of the shadow and coming out the other side he realizes

this is what God has done for him that's act 2 the third act the last third of

the psalm is the psalmist tribute to what he has just learned about God and

what he wants to share with us so we will learn it - if you look at your text you'll see it line by line what comes

right after that after he finds his way out of the shadow what is he right about vai rod and thy

staff they comfort me now you gotta be a shepherd to understand that line it's probably lost on a lot of contemporary

readers the shepherd would use his staff to help stumbling falling lambs a sheep

trips and falls into the brook the Shepherd uses his staff to extricate it a little lamb gets stuck in the mud

shepherd uses staff to pull him out as as well as to lean on it himself and the

Shepherd's rod a phrase you metaphor I used an image he was very off in the Bible the rod was to punish the sheep

that were getting out of line and make sure that they behaved themselves so when I read that line thy rod and thy

staff they comfort me what I hear the psalmist testifying to is this he says there are two things

that happen in the world that convinced me that God is real and not just a bit of wishful thinking

when I see good people stumble and fall and from somewhere they find the

strength to pick themselves up and go on when I see people come up with these incredible resources of resiliency

that's God at work that's the Shepherd's staff helping the falling and he says

when I see bad people get what they deserve that's the rod of God coming down on

them in the last 22 years I have lost track of how many people have come up to

me and said hey rabbi I got a great idea for your next book why don't you write a book called when good things happen to

bad people because that's what really bothers me they say to me I suppose

you're right that if you're a sensitive caring person you're not gonna make it through life without events hurting you

it makes sense and I think I can go along when you say that God's role is not the we've a magic circle around me

and my family and protect us from what happens everybody else okay what I can't understand is if there is so much grief

and anguish in the world could let some of it land on my neighbor who deserves it why do bad people get away with

murder why don't we could people prosper my answer is they don't my answer is you'll pay for everything

you take in this life in one currency or another and if it's not public

embarrassment in jail time it is losing the opportunity to know what it feels like to be a fully realized authentic

human being when I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s we did not know

that smoking was bad for your health I remember ball players doing ads for

cigarettes I remember doctors doing ads for cigarettes well we learned that smoking

could take years off your life and now we try and encourage people not to smoke what if in the next couple of years

science were to discover that lying was like smoking that every time you told a

lie you did something to your cardiovascular system it's not so implausible that's that's how I a lie

detector works every time you told a lie it would shorten your life by one minute

why because God has made the world in such a way that just as our bodies have

behave and take take note of what we eat and drink and how much exercise we get our souls are made so that certain

behavior nourishes the soul keeps it healthy and other kinds of behavior is toxic to the soul a couple years ago I

read the second volume of Robert Caro's Magisterial biography of Lyndon Johnson

it's the one about the Senate years and what I remember about reading that book Johnson has this serious heart attack

when he was a majority leader of the Senate in 1950s almost dies he has his

heart attack not when he is working hard he is capable like everyone of us have

working incredibly hard he has it's when he is working deceitfully when he's

telling one senator don't listen to what i'm saying over there I'm really on your side and then he turns around and says

the other senators no I'm I'm with you I'm only pretending to be with them until he's lost track of which lie he's

told to which group of senators don't wonder he gets sick human bodies were not made to tell lies

human bodies were not made to be selfish and deceitful and mean we are meant to

be honest and cheerful and generous and cooperative and when we do that we just feel good this is the staff of God

reaching out to people who need sustenance and the rod of God coming down on people who need to be brought

back into line now prepares the table before me in the presence of mine

enemies how did that line get in the Sun I mean here you've got this wonderful optimistic deeply spiritual Psalm about

how how helpful God is and how much I appreciate it and all of a sudden in the

middle of it we encounter this line god thank you for treating me better than you treat all those people I'm feuding

with it you know what it sounds like it sounds like the attitude of the guy who says I'm going to my 30th highschool

reunion only to have it see what happens when I pull up in my new BMW and all the

girls who wouldn't date me will eat their hearts out for what they missed out on it sounds so mean-spirited so

ungenerous what do you do with that line now prepares the table before me in the presence of mine enemies

if any of you are familiar with ribs almond Schachter salami a wonderful sage

and teacher he has an interest in take on that well he says in one of his books is once a year he convenes an

imaginary dinner party all in his mind and to this imaginary dinner party he

invites everybody he's angry at everybody he's feuding with everybody he's having a fight with and in this

imaginary dinner party he goes around the table one at a time and thanks every

one of his guests for what they've taught him some people he thanks for teaching him not to expect too much of

people that people are gonna have their own concerns their own well-being in mind and he better get used to it some

of them he thanks for what they've taught him about himself they forced him to ask himself why did that person get

under my skin why did she upset me so much she didn't think she was doing anything monstrous what hot button did

she touch that bothers me and what do I learn about myself so that I'm not so

easily upset that's ribs almonds take on that line I've got a slightly different one I

noticed that in Hebrew the word which is translated in the presence of mine enemies the word is naked so did I

naked usually means opposite an opposite can mean in contrast to and I find the

line saying God you nourished me spiritually when I was in the valley of

the shadow you nourished me spiritually in contrast to my human friends who could not give me what I needed you know

what happens when something bad happens to you somebody you love dies you you lose someone you you get I have some

major rejection you're fired something terrible happens to you you feel empty

inside you feel empty right here and people have to come and fill that emptiness you know we have this

wonderful custom in Judaism somebody you love dies you go to the funeral you go

to the cemetery when you come back to the cemetery what's been going on at home your friends have been there

setting out the spread of bagels and cream cheese and coffee and Danish not because you need the calories because

you need the expression of love which all that food in Carnot's at a time when

you have been struck down you need to be told that there are people who care about

you who love you who are there for you but you know sometimes that doesn't happen sometimes you turn to your

friends in your time of emptiness and need and either you are so needy that you scare them off or they are so

sensitive because they you remind them this could happen to them that they run away and the psalmist says when I found

myself hurled into the valley of the shadow of death and I turned to my friends around me to to reassure me that

I was okay that I had not been abandoned in the valley and they weren't there for

me God you found me there you found me and took me by the hand and led me

through the valley and I'll never forget it that's what saved me when everybody else didn't know what I needed that prepares

the table before me in the presence of mine enemies thou anointest my head with oil once again very difficult line for a

contemporary reader to understand sound like something goes on at the beauty parlor the ancient reader would have

understood immediately what that image is to anoint somebody's head with oil

what does it mean it means to mark somebody is special you know the word Messiah you know the word Christ those

are the Hebrew and Greek equivalents of being anointed with oil that's what the

word Messiah means the one who has had oil poured on his head to designate him

as having special responsibilities the psalmist is saying when you found me in

the valley of the shadow and I felt so alone and rejected and you cared enough to take me and take me by the hand and

lead me out God you made me feel that I was special to you and I've never forgotten it and I think that imposes an

obligation on me to do something for you in return Harvey Cox teaches the history

of Christian thought at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge Massachusetts he's a

devout Christian married to a Jewish woman raising their son is Jewish a couple years ago he wrote a charming

little book called common prayers in which he describes the experience of being a Christian in a Jewish family

we going through all the holidays of the Jewish year and it's really interesting to see how those holidays appear to him

through the eyes of a devout Christian I thought the most interesting chapter was the one about Passover with all of its

christological implications you know that scene at the Seder right after the meal where you open the door for Elijah

when I was a boy growing up in Hebrew school I was taught that Elijah is the messenger of the Messiah and you opened

the door and you wait for the year when Elijah will be there and he will say this is it this is the year this is when

the Messiah is going to come and make everything fine and for many years as a rabbi that's what I would teach my congregation

Passover comes in the spring the world is coming to life again the flowers are appearing at the baseball season

starting everybody's full of optimism and we're ready to be told this is the year when everything's gonna get fixed

Harvey Cox writes that he has a different take on this he says you know when you've done that four or five six

years in a row and Elijah is never there isn't the time you got the message he isn't coming Elijah is not coming and

the Messiah isn't coming either and you've got to be the Messiah you want to make this world better you do something

about it a child's understanding of a mess is the cry so somebody will come and fix it for him a mature adult says I

didn't make that mess but I have to live here so I'm gonna do something to make this a little bit better though

anointest my head with oil means God you have given me the ability to do some special things and one of them is to

make this world a nicer world for your residents my cup runneth over

gratitude that's what that line is about my cup is overflowing with blessings I

would insist gratitude is the fundamental religious emotion it is the

one religious emotion I could expect of people who are not conventionally religious you don't have to believe in

God you don't have to have any kind of theological commitment to be capable of gratitude it's simply a way of being

aware that things have fallen into your lap that you did not earn and could have arranged for and the proper

response is to be grateful you know there are few more eggs aspirating

things than buying a present for a person giving it to him having him look

at it and say I really wanted something more expensive I mean you want to strangle a guy like that isn't that what

we do when we take a look at the Givens of our lives the circumstances of our

birth the abilities were born with how good-looking we are how intelligent how

athletic we are and instead of being grateful we say you know I wish I were

better-looking I wish I was smarter I wish I were born to wealth of your parents this is to receive a gift and

say gee I wanted a nicer one it's not very nice that's a terribly rude thing to do what is fascinating about the

sense of gratitude I in the book I I quote the British poet WH Auden who has

a wonderful line he says weather is what nasty people are nasty about and nice

people celebrate isn't that great especially this weekend in this week in New York member we got 10 inches of

slush outside the front door there are people who complain about the weather not because the weather is nasty but

because they're complainers and there are people who have the capacity to look out and say gee that's beautiful and if

it's not beautiful it's good for the flowers and if it's not good for the flowers it's still what happens in January what do you expect if you're

gonna live in New York in January people are grateful not because they've been luckier than everybody else they're

grateful because they their eyes are open to just how lucky they are if I get

personal for a moment every night before I go to bed I have to put eyedrops on my eyes to fend off incipient glaucoma and

every morning with breakfast I take a pill to control my blood pressure and every night with dinner I take another

pill to lower my cholesterol I could contemplate that and just fetch about

how I'm not as young as I used to be and my body isn't there capable of doing things he used to do but that's not how

I respond I respond with a sense of boy am i lucky I lived long enough to to achieve the illnesses of old age a lot

of my relatives never live long have to do that and when I did get to the point where I have all these things going wrong with me at least there's a

pill the doctors can give me to try and control it and make it feel better one can respond with gratitude one can

respond with a sense of all the good things that have fallen to your life and you know what's fascinating what's fascinating is the psalmist writes that

line my cup runneth over not when everything is going well for him he

writes it after he has passed through the valley of the shadow only when he has found out how vulnerable all his

blessings are only when he finds out when he's made to realize they can be taken away from him

only then does he appreciate how truly blessed he is and one more line I would

look at with you surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my

life before I analyze that line I have to tell you something you understand it

is impossible to translate poetry you simply cannot do it the essence of a

poem the words have to be so carefully chosen the essence of a poem will inevitably be lost when you move from

one language to another you simply cannot translate poetry but the translators of the King James Bible

did it they translated the masterpiece of Hebrew into a masterpiece in English

and in some cases they the English is even better at expressing the Hebrew

than the original Hebrew was the original Hebrew probably does not talk about the valley of the shadow of death

gates all Moffatt probably gate solemn with the valley a very deep dark Valley

but you know the psalmist chose a word for darkness not your typical biblical word for darkness he chose a word for

darkness that has echoes of death Moffatt in it and the translators very sensitively picked this up they did a

wonderful job better than anybody could have anticipated this line is the one place where they blew it surely goodness

and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life because the Hebrew doesn't say follow

Tovah kress adhered the funny goodness and mercy will chase me that

but the Hebrew says they will pursue me all the days of my life it's like the

Hasidic story of the rabbi who says to one of his prominent congregants you know whenever I see you you're always

rushing you're always running here running there I've been meaning to ask you were you always running and the man

says I'm running after success I'm running after prosperity I'm running after making a good living and the rabbi

says okay that's a good answer if you assume all those blessings are in front of you trying to avoid you and you

gotta run hard to catch them what if they're behind you what if they're behind you trying to catch up with you when they can't

because you're running so fast what if God has all sorts of wonderful presence he wants to deliver but you never home

to receive them there are some blessings you will only attain if you work hard

you want your marriage to be strong you can't count on it to happen just by itself you've got to work at it want to

be a good parent to your children can take a lot of hard work you want to be successful in your chosen profession

you're probably gonna have to work hard at that also but then there are blessings which will come your way not

when you chase after them but only when you slow down and stop and let them find

you and among them our goodness and mercy goodness I would interpret as

feeling good about yourself liking who you are if in order to feel good about

yourself you have to reach a certain level of achievement make a certain amount of money achieve a certain title

win a certain award it's never gonna be enough because when you finally get there you will still have to satisfy

yourself well I've got to go to the next rung and just reassure myself this wasn't a fluke the only way you'll ever

get get to feeling good about yourself and just to say I'm fine I don't need it

I don't need recognition I don't need a title I don't need a letter from somebody I don't need a plaque I like

myself the way I am that's goodness and goodness finding you wherever you are and mercy an important

biblical word has said usually translated unearned love as if there was any other kind of love you you know you

can't talk somebody into loving you you tried that in high school and it never worked I said the sense that God gives you the

benefit of the doubt that God loves you enough to put up with you despite your shortcomings

you can't persuade God that you deserve his love all you can do is just stop and

let it find you goodness and mercy will find you will run after you will chase

you down all the days of your life when you're young when you're a teenager and

terribly insecure about who you are and what you're good for and what your life is gonna turn out to be and you know

will you ever get married and who are you marry and will you be good at anything you can make a living at God's

goodness and mercy find you when you're a middle-aged man and woman and you have

to confront the terrifying reality that you've done as much as you're ever gonna do God's goodness and mercy are there to

reassure you that you're as good as you need to be you don't need further achievements you don't need more accomplishments you're fine and when

you've come to the last stages of your life and you look back either with satisfaction or with disappointment

God's goodness and mercy can find you there and let you feel good about yourself and it's not only God's

goodness and mercy finding you what's the qualities of goodness and mercy that you will have for others that you will

not spend your middle years jealous of people who are passing you by and you

will not spend the last part of your life looking back with resentment on people who are younger and still have

things that you've lost I want to share with you just the last page or so out of my book to summarize what I think the

23rd psalm is about it's a hymn written by a man who started out believing in a

God who was his shepherd a God who takes care of him a God who makes it possible

for him to wake up in the morning and not be afraid that anything bad will happen to him but then one day something

bad happens to him and he comes to understand God in a much more mature way

God with whom he can have an almost pure relationship a God who cares about him

even if he can't put to find him in the valley of the shadow and lead him through it and he pledges

the rest of his life to try to do something for God the way God has done for him and this is how my book on the

23rd Psalm concludes when events in our world bring us dismay and we fear that

evil is prospering God reminds us that evil acts invariably carry the seeds of

their own destruction when people disappoint us when they can't give us

what we need whether because our needs are too great or because their emotional

resources are too meager God is our reliable friend an inexhaustible source

of love and strength when we find ourselves wandering aimlessly through the world wondering why we're here and

what our lives will have meant when they're over God blesses us with a sense of purpose a challenge a list of moral

obligations and opportunities every one of which will give us the sense of living our days in his presence there is

pain in the world if we are to be truly alive we can't hide from it but we can

survive it and God's caring presence lessens the pain there is death in the

world robbing us of the ones we love and one day robbing them of our presence but

God who is immortal assures us that death may take a person out of our future but cannot remove him from our

past but all the things we loved a person for have entered so deeply into our souls that they remain part of us

the Lord gives but the Lord does not take away the presence is every bit as

real today as their absence there is fear in the world there is vulnerability and uncertainty God can't tell us that

nothing bad will ever happen to us but God can tell us that we need not be afraid of the future no matter what it

holds he can't protect us from evil without taking away from other people the human power of choosing between good

and bad he can't protect you from the illness or bad luck he can't spare you

from death and let you and those around you live forever but he can give you the resources to

transcend and overcome those fears so that bad luck never causes you to lose faith in yourself so that bad people

never caused you to lose faith in humanity so that the inevitability of death never causes you to give up on the

holiness of life there will be dark days days of loss and days of failure but

they will not last forever the light will always return to chase away the darkness the Sun will always come out

again after the rain and the human spirit will always rise above failure fear will assault us but we will not be

afraid for thou art with me thank you very much

okay Thank You Reverend it was beautiful we have a number of different questions

you're expanding spanning all kinds of issues from some sort technical textural

issues to really the some of the most

essential questions of the meaning of life so I'll start with the the technical texture will and work up to

the to the big the big the big the big $64,000 questions the first question is

about translation and clearly that's for many of us that's how that's our access

to the Psalms or the Bible as a whole and the the the question here is please

talk about translations of modern translations of the 23rd psalm which

this particular person finds takes all the joy meaning and pleasure out of out

of it and clearly the emphasis here is on Sudan modern translations as opposed to the more I guess King James and some

others you know the truly interesting rabbi Miller 2,000 years ago when the

Hebrew Bible was first being translated into Greek and other accessible language

of a Greek and Latin mostly this is exactly what happened there were earlier

translations earlier versions when saint jerome translated the Vulgate the

original latin translation he had to keep the older latin translation of the

psalms even though he came up with a new latin translation of every other book and the Hebrew and Christian Bible

because people wouldn't put up with it every place else every place else in the

Bible we want to get rid of the baguettes and thees and thous and have it accessible when it comes to our book

the book we wrote the one book God did not write we don't want accuracy we want

magic we want music we want poetry we don't want to be told when it comes to

the laws and the stories and the prophets we need to be told exactly what God had in mind when it comes to putting into

words the deepest emotions of our souls we don't want accuracy we want to sing

we want to soar we want the poetry I feel the same way the questioner does

the modern translations translations that feel obliged to improve on the King

James not an improvement I crave the familiar I crave the the comforting

Cadence's the the magic the 20th and 21st centuries are a wonderful time for

building computers in a very bad time for writing poetry so I think we ought to leave it to the people of 16th

century to do the poetry writing this

was also a it's a technical question also but just simply the Hebrew

obviously for Psalms is Tehillim the but one questioner asked the word Psalms

what is that where does that come from it's a Greek word for song huh as tequila is well more specifically de la

probably means a word of a West song of praise but Psalms is Greek for songs in

general next next question also is the

textual question and I'm a historical question you touched on it at the

beginning but the question asked there's authorship of the of the Book of Psalms

and just like who wrote the book of love this question is who wrote the Book of Psalms and is there as is there an

author do you imagine King David when you always when you read or who you imagine

when you read the Psalms first I don't know who wrote it second he there's

anybody else the Psalms were written at

a time where I am absolutely convinced the concept of into individual authorship did not apply in the same way

that we today say it takes a village to raise a child people of the biblical world said it takes a culture to write a

poem it would have been an unacceptable act of hutzpah for one person to say I wrote

this and deny the contributions of his teachers and his neighbors and his

parents and of God and of the Holy Spirit they would say this is in the air

this is what we were all feeling and it was just my opportunity to put it into words there is a tradition that King

David wrote it Psalms are very often including the 23rd psalm begins a psalm of David what does that mean it's not

impossible that David wrote some Psalms I'm sure he wrote several whether we find them in the Biblical Book of Psalms

is impossible to know but the Prophet Amos who lived only couple of generations after David remembers David

as a singer and composer but a psalm of David could mean a psalm in the style

that King David wrote it could mean a psalm dedicated to the the current king

of the the Judea a descendant of David it could mean a psalm in honor of King

David any or all of those things but the Psalms are anonymous they are the product of a of a people a people who

wanted to express the very deep heartfelt joy of being permitted to come

into the presence of God I know we now begin to expand a bit it's just some of

the some of the larger questions which which which which people asked you

talked about the notion of this which which on the surface of the line which

is on the surface very very puzzling to most modern readers either anointest my head with oil it's again something my

four-year-old might do that all the time in the book that's that's but again pouring oil over our head is something

very foreign to us when you talked about they did over by Messiah and how how each of I think you talked about each of

us acting as a messiah but the questioner asks but do you what is your

belief about the the the Messianic era and is there as there it will there be a

time that that will that we read that that Amos I singular Messiah will come

and and bring them that era in you know what's interesting is that Jewish

theology has never been terribly specific about this there there was a range of opinion as to what the Messiah

messianic era will be as a rule of thumb the worst things were in this life the

more extravagant our images of the Messianic era becomes Maimonides for example said the Messianic era will be

different from the current era and only one small way that Israel will become an independent power again and not not

subject to dispersion among the Gentiles which is why the prayer the official prayer that we recite for the State of

Israel refers to it as Rey sheets it's me thought to Google attain you the beginning of the Messianic Redemption

because for the Jews to be redeemed from exile and again have a sovereign Jewish

state is Maimonides definition of the Messiah half the opposite extreme at the

most extravagant and significant change there is this more or less Kabbalistic

view that history is divided into three acts there is act one from the creation

of the world until the giving a little of Sinai the pre-tour age when people pretty much depended on their own

instincts to try and know what's right and generally did a pretty lousy job of it act to is from the giving of the

Torah at Mount Sinai and so the comedy in the Messiah and that's where we are now where human nature is so unreliable

that we have to be given laws telling us don't kill don't steal don't commit adultery and then according to this view

we look forward to the curtain falling on the age of Torah and rising again on

the Messianic era on an era when human nature will have changed so radically that you won't need the Torah anymore he

won't need the Torah because people will be incapable of doing anything wrong you won't have to tell them don't do it in

their hearts they will know not to do it this is what we pray for when on Rosh

Hashanah we talk about sounding the great shofar for our freedom and bringing in the Messianic era an age

when when human nature will be radically different from from the way it is now the lion will lie down with the lamb

somewhere between there between those two extremes is is a wide range of opinions as to what the Messiah means my

own take and once again I go back to cite my teacher with a capital T Mordecai Kaplan who said the good

parallel to the notion of Messiah is the concept of sovereign excuse me was

sovereign in the medieval world the sovereign was one person an emperor a

king azad who had total control in a democratic world it's the will of the 1:00:06 collective people that is sovereign that is we get to choose who our rulers are and we get to tell them what we want we 1:00:13 get to throw them out of office if we don't like them dr. Kaplan said the word messiah has 1:00:20 undergone a very similar process of evolution originally in biblical times 1:00:25 the messiah is just an honest king because that's what we need to fix things as the situation became more and 1:00:32 more dire as we were oppressed by the romans the messiah needed superhuman powers to get rid of this superhuman 1:00:40 oppressor and through much of european exile that's the way they saw the 1:00:45 messiah nowadays he would say the messiah represents the collective will 1:00:51