Out of the Depths

Gaza, as seen from Kfar Aza. Photo by Itamar Dotan Katz

Dear friends,

To mark 100 days of the hostages in captivity, and 100 days of death and destruction, as a means of praying for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the displacement, destruction and killing of innocents, and a safe return of the hostages, I turn to the ancient words of the poet:

מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יהוה

Out of the depths I call to You

Two great minds help me make meaning of these words and those that follow in Psalm 130. 19th century German rabbi, Samson Rafael Hirsch, and contemporary (Jewish) Zen priest and translator of the Psalms, Norman Fischer. This psalm, writes Rabbi Hirsch “sings of the ways in which the Jewish spirit can rise up even from the depth of that deepest misery of all, misfortune coupled with the burden of guilt.”

This is our situation, after being brutally attacked, and having responded with an operation that took the lives of at least 23,357 people.

The poet continues:

אֲדֹנָי שִׁמְעָה בְקוֹלִי תִּהְיֶינָה אָזְנֶיךָ קַשֻּׁבוֹת לְקוֹל תַּחֲנוּנָי:

Listen to my voice

Be attentive to my supplicating voice

קוֹל תַּחֲנוּנָי, “My supplicating voice,” is not only about begging according to Hirsch. Coming from the Hebrew word חן, grace, it is the expression of a broken person’s commitment to improve: “I endeavor to make myself worthy of Your grace once more,” he translates. God hears our prayers when they are not complaints. The cries of help heard by divine ears are those in which despite our misery and despair we leave an opening to the possibility of human agency and goodness.

אִם עֲוֺנוֹת תִּשְׁמָר יָהּ אֲדֹנָי מִי יַעֲמֹד: כִּי עִמְּךָ הַסְּלִיחָה לְמַעַן תִּוָּרֵא

If you tallied errors

Who would survive the count?

But you forgive, you forbear everything

And this is the wonder and the dread

The dread is related to what Hirsch calls “the iron law of cause and effect.” We know what killing thousands children will do as well as Hamas knew what killing, kidnapping and raping brings. It should fill us with dread to the brim. But the wonder is there too in the form of the unknown, of the possibility of transformation, of the very real existence of changing one’s ways. In Hirsch’s words: “You have provided man, Your creature who is capable of sin, with the ability to rise up again at any time, and assured him of Your help and forgiveness in his striving for redemption from the bondage of sin.” There is both wonder and dread in the idea of forgiveness, in which in Hirsch’s understanding the past is wiped out, and instead we might experience “a new future, untouched by all the consequences of previous error.”

קִוִּיתִי יהוה קִוְּתָה נַפְשִׁי וְלִדְבָרוֹ הוֹחָלְתִּי: נַפְשִׁי לַאדֹנָי מִשֹּׁמְרִים לַבֹּקֶר שֹׁמְרִים לַבֹּקֶר

You are my heart’s hope, my daily hope

And my ears long to hear your words

My heart waits quiet in hope for you

More than they who watch for sunrise

Hope for a new morning

“Together with the awareness of my guilt,” Hirsch explains, “there is also the hope and trust in forgiveness.” It is hard to see forgiveness now, but we know it exists, and can appear unexpectedly as it has done countless times in each of our lives. “Even in the low state to which I have descended through my own fault, within the inalienable core of my soul there lies the force that will draw me up... a force which, in the midst of the night of my own life and from the darkness of the nights of time, will help me find the light that heralds its approaching nearness. And my own trust in the morning to be brought to pass by the coming of forgiveness is greater and surer still than that of the eye which looks eastward at night to watch for the morning.”

יַחֵל יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל יהוה כִּי עִם יהוה הַחֶסֶד וְהַרְבֵּה עִמּוֹ פְדוּת: וְהוּא יִפְדֶּה אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל מִכֹּל עֲוֺנֹתָיו

Let those who question and struggle

Wait quiet like this for you

For with you there is durable kindess

And wholeness in abundance

And you will loose all our bindings

Surely

The word "Yisrael" means those who question and struggle. What allows us strugglers to find peace even in our darkest, most guilt-ridden hours is the knowledge that love is ever-available. Or in Hirsch’s words: “Loving-kindness is ready at all times to redeem.”

Here's Fischer's full translation: