Time for another song lyric. This one comes from a song by Jewish Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen that has been, as one writer put it, “repurposed and reinvented by other artists so many times, that it [has become] a latter-day secular hymn”—and not even really all that secular. The song’s title comes straight from our siddur, straight from our mahzor, straight from the soul of the Jewish prayer experience, the song of course being “Hallelujah.” Just a couple of bars for those of you whose memory needs jogging or for whom maybe this is the first time you’re hearing of it:
“Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah”
Hallelujah that word of praise summoned from the depths of our soul, when we don’t know what to say and words of praise just pour out.
So what’s the story behind the song, and perhaps more importantly, behind the word, hallelujah, and therefore in a sense, behind all jewish prayer?
It comes straight from the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, from the second of its three divisions, known as neviim, prophets, from the book of Shemuel, Samuel, and it’s a story about who else, David hamelech. King David.
Now, before I tell the story, what you need to understand about David is that he is in some ways the most beloved figure in all of Jewish tradition. Daveed literally means beloved. Like Dodi li, I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me. David is traditionally understood to be the author of the Psalms, the book from which all our prayers flow, the foundational book of poetry, Each day, Jews traditionally pray three times: et tzemah david avdechah tatsmiach, may the offspring of your servant david soon flourish. We reference David as our touchpoint for what an era of ultimate redemption and peace looks like.
And David is also a man with major cracks in his foundation. As Rabbi David Wolpe wrote in a biography of his namesake King David “Poet Whal Whitman famously said of himself that he contains multitudes. Long before Whitman, David had a soul so large that thousands of years of interpretation have not exhausted its [multitudinous] landmarks and byways.”
Thus begins the story that spawned hallelujah: the song, the word, the prayer. Prayer itself.
וַיְהִי֩ לִתְשׁוּבַ֨ת הַשָּׁנָ֜ה
And so it was at letshuvaht hashanah, the teshuvah of the year, at the turn of the year, a year into a war between the Israelites and the neighboring Ammonites, when King David sent the commander of his forces, Yoav, with his officers, and they devastated Ammon and besieged its Capital city of Rabbah.
David, meanwhile, the story says, remained in Jerusalem.
“Late one afternoon,” it continues, “David rose from his bed and strolled on the roof of the royal palace; and from the roof he saw a woman bathing.” (“Saw her bathing on the roof”). The woman,” the book says, “was very beautiful. And the king sent someone to make inquiries about the woman. “She is בַּת־שֶׁ֣בַע Bathsheba daughter of אֱלִיעָ֔ם and wife of אוּרִיָּ֥ה הַֽחִתִּֽי, Uriah the Hittite,” it was reported, a woman of high station, the wife of one of David’s military officers.
“David sent messengers to fetch her; she came to him and וַיִּשְׁכַּ֣ב עִמָּ֔הּ he lay with her—and she went back home.
“וַתַּ֖הַר הָאִשָּׁ֑ה The woman conceived,” — the Bible is spare in its details—“and she sent word to David, ‘I am pregnant.’
“Thereupon David sent a message to his army commander Yoav, ‘Send Uriah the Hittite,’ her husband, “‘to me.’ And Yoav sent Uriah to David. “Go down to your house and bathe your feet,” David said to Uriah, hoping that he would do what all good soldiers do: be with his wife upon his return home, which would avert David’s concern that the adultery would be discovered; Uriah would of course think that the baby was his.
“But Uriah slept at the entrance of the royal palace, along with the other officers, and did not go down to his house.
“When David was told that Uriah had not gone down to his house, he said to Uriah, “הֲל֤וֹא מִדֶּ֙רֶךְ֙ אַתָּ֣ה בָ֔א” “You just came from a journey; why didn’t you go down to your house?”
“Uriah answered David, “The Israelites are staying in sukkot, in sukkahs, in simple shelters in the battlefield, and my master Yoav and Your Majesty’s men are camped in the open; how can I go home and eat and drink and lie with my wife? As God lives and as you live, I will not do this.”
So The next day, David summoned Uria, and he ate and drank with him until David got Uriah drunk, hoping he would then be with his wife.` But in the evening, [Uriah] went out to sleep in the same place, with the king’s officers; he did not go down to his home.
In the morning, David had seen enough. He wrote a letter to his army commander Yoav, which he sent with Uriah, knowing Uriah would not open it along the way.
David wrote in the letter as follows: “Yoav: Place Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest; then fall back וְנִכָּ֥ה וָמֵֽת so that he may be killed.”
So when Yoav was besieging the city, he stationed Uriah at the point where he knew that there were able city warriors.
The men of the city charged out and attacked Yoav, and some of David’s officers among the troops fell; Uriah the Hittite was among those who died.
Yoav sent a messenger to tell David what had happened, the losses he had suffered. Whereupon David said to the messenger, “Give Yoav this message: ‘Do not be distressed about the matter. The sword always takes its toll.”
When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband Uriah was dead, she lamented over her husband, the text tells us. After the period of mourning was over, David sent and had her brought into his palace; she became his wife and she bore him a son.
But Adonai, God, was displeased with what David had done, and Adonai sent the prophet Nathan to David. Nathan came to David and told him a story. A story within our story. “There were two men in the same city,” Nathan said to King David, “one rich and one poor.The rich man had very large flocks and herds, but the poor man had only one little ewe lamb that he had bought.
He tended it and it grew up together with him and his children: it used to share his morsel of bread, drink from his cup, and be held closely by him; וַתְּהִי־ל֖וֹ כְּבַֽת Bat.It was like a daughter to him.
“One day,” Nathan continued, “a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man was resistant to taking anything from his own flocks or herds to prepare a meal for the guest who had come to him; so he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
At this David had had it. He flew into a rage against the rich man in the story, and said to Nathan, “As God lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He shall pay for the lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and showed no pity.”
David’s moral compass isn’t broken. He recognizes right from wrong. He just can’t see it in himself. He’s allowed himself to become spellbound by the privileges of power.
Nathan snaps him out of it. Nathan delivers to David the message that we all know to be true: אַתָּ֣ה הָאִ֑ישׁ “That man —the rich man in the story — is you.”
That man is you.
David has now been exposed for the shameful person he’s become. Adulterer, murderer. Breaker of hearts.
So how does David respond, and why am I offering this story this morning?
At first, David responds sparingly. וַיֹּ֤אמֶר דָּוִד֙ אֶל־נָתָ֔ן And David said to Nathan חָטָ֖אתִי לַיהֹוָ֑ה. I have sinned before God. That’s it, those two simple words in the Hebrew. I am in the wrong.
No kidding. But as Rabbi Wolpe points out, context is important here. “In the history of the monarchy,” he writes, “the voice of rebuke is generally not tolerated… Prophets were not exempt from persecution” from monarchs they criticized. Israelite, and ancient history, is riddled with examples of kings eliminating their critics. “David’s reaction of immediate penitence,” he writes” —חָטָ֖אתִי לַיהֹוָ֑ה. I have sinned before God — reminds us that piety can coexist in a soul with myriad other qualities, enviable and base.” Wolpe concludes, “Nathan has punctured David’s dormant conscience.”
Awakened by this parable, David has, in a sense, hit rock bottom: the spell of self-rationalization, narcissism, and delusion has been snapped. He has been laid bare for all—most importantly himself—to see.
Where does David turn? Well, under one traditional understanding, to prayer. Tradition teaches that King David composed the psalms, and in particular, it teaches that David composed psalm 51 in the immediate aftermath of these events. “Lamnatzeach mizmor le’david” it begins. “A Psalm of David.”
When Nathan the prophet came to him after he had come to Bathsheba.”
חׇנֵּ֣נִי אֱלֹהִ֣ים כְּחַסְדֶּ֑ךָ David begins. “Have mercy upon me, O God, as befits Your faithfulness;”
David makes no claims of his goodness or his worthiness; rather he rests his pleas solely on God’s chesed, on God’s faithfulness of love. Grant me grace, mercy, chaneni, David says, as befits your chesed, your lovingkindness.
כְּרֹ֥ב רַ֝חֲמֶ֗יךָ מְחֵ֣ה פְשָׁעָֽי׃
in keeping with Your abundant compassion, blot out my transgressions.
“I know you don’t have to do this,” David seems to be saying, “you don’t have to blot out my transgressions. But you can. You are compassionate. You are able. Please, God, According to your abundant compassion, which is truly a part of you—I believe that, he suggests —let it flow. Let your compassion flow over me like a wave, and blot out my transgressions from your sight and from my own experience of myself. Because I know you can. Please, God.”
This is the Jewish expression of what in contemporary terms we might call surrender. It is not unlike what you see articulated in Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve steps:
Admitting our powerlessness over our dependence, coming to believe a power greater than ourselves can restore us to a good path, making a decision to turn our will to the care of that power, to God as some might call it, however we understand,, making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitting to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Being entirely ready to have God, as we understand God, remove all these defects of character. Allowing ourselves to believe in the capacity for rejuvenation, a new page. Humbly asking that source of being to remove our shortcomings, and so forth.
The DNA of these twelve steps are in David’s 51st Psalm. Surrender, honesty, transparency with ourselves and with the divine.
“I have been weighed down by this; let me feel free”
הַסְתֵּ֣ר פָּ֭נֶיךָ מֵחֲטָאָ֑י
Hide Your face from my sins;
blot out all my iniquities.
“Allow this not to be the experience of our relationship. Allow us to have a new chapter.”
Fashion a pure heart for me, O God;
create in me a steadfast spirit.
Do not cast me out of Your presence,
or take Your holy spirit away from me.
Let me again rejoice in Your help;
let a vigorous spirit sustain me.
On he goes like this for a number of verses, until he comes to the verse which is in some ways the crux of this entire sermon: Adonai Sefatai Tiftach, he says, ufi yagid tehilatechah. “O Lord, open my lips, and let my mouth declare Your praise.”
Why do I say this is essentially the crux of the entire sermon?
To some of you this verse will sound familiar. This verse sometimes spoken in whispers, sometimes sung, Adonai Sefatai Tiftach, ufi yagid tehilatechah, is the singular verse that precedes the amidah, the standing prayer that serves as the centerpiece of each traditional Jewish service. Shivah minyans, B’nei Mitzvah services, weekday, Shabbat, and Holiday services, the amidah is the central prayer of the service.
But it’s actually more than that. In the Talmud, the amidah is known as simply ha-tefilah—the prayer. Or just prayer. The amidah stands for the entire experience of this thing we call prayer, of being in that foxhole, those moments when we’re invited or called to imagine ourselves in the presence of the divine—which tradition teaches, we always are, but of which we need to be reminded every now and then—those moments when we’re called upon to open ourselves up and pour out whatever is on our hearts and minds.
Over time, the specific liturgy for the amidah became codified into a specific set of blessings which we encounter in our siddurim and our mahzorim, our prayers books, today. Filled with words, so many words. They were codified so that far-flung Jewish communities could be on the same page, literally and figuratively—the prayers were prescribed in more detail so that communities would all be speaking the same words.
Prior to this, however, Jewish prayer inherently had to be more spontaneous, more emotional. Perhaps there were some agreed upon basic topics, but no prescribed liturgy. A section of the prayer was meant to be bakashot, petitions, we petitioned God for that for which our hearts yearned. Mercy, compassion, healing, nourishment, love, connection, sustenance. Different individuals or different leaders pouring out different spontaneous expressions of their yearnings to feel connected to the divine and the healing or blessings that would flow from that connection.
And what was the verse the rabbis chose to get us in the right headspace, the right heart space, the right spirit, to pour forth this thing called hatefillah, the prayer?
Adonai Sefati tiftach u’fi yagid tehilatechah, God open my lips so my mouth may speak your praise.
When Nathan the prophet came to David after he had come to Bathsheba.
The significance of a certain verse as referenced by the rabbis often comes not simply from its surface meaning but from its context and surrounding verses.
The mantra chosen by the ancient rabbis to get us an the right head, heart, and spirit space to enter into a moment of prayer—tefillah, prayer, which comes from the word palal, which means to divide’ or ‘to intervene,’ but in context, means ‘to break down the barrier.” To break down the barrier between us and God, between what is within and what is beyond—the mantra the rabbis chose for this moment comes from the mouth david right when he has hit one of the lowest imaginable points a human being can hit.
The very verse we’re invited to use — adonai sefatai tiftach u’fi yagid tehilatechah — continues.
You do not want me to bring sacrifices;
You do not desire burnt offerings;
זִ֥בְחֵ֣י אֱלֹהִים֮ ר֤וּחַ נִשְׁבָּ֫רָ֥ה
True sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; לֵב־נִשְׁבָּ֥ר וְנִדְכֶּ֑ה אֱ֝לֹהִ֗ים לֹ֣א תִבְזֶֽה God, You will not despise a broken and crushed heart.
God, we bring forth our brokenness to you.
These are the words which the ancient rabbis selected to center us in prayer, the words spoken by David at his most heartbroken, when he has begun his climb towards redemption. That’s the spirit we’re invited to tap into as we enter the space of prayer, as we enter the religious experience.
Oft cited is the teaching from the Kotsker rebbe, the hasidic rebbe Menachem Mendl of Kostk that ayn davar yoter shalem me’lev shavur, there is nothing more whole than a broken heart.
To put a different slant on it, one of the most meaningful stances from which to open ourselves to the unknown, to the mystery, to the divine, to the grandeur that suffuses the universe, intimately available to us, is through a broken heart.
This isn’t self-evident. Through the course of life, our hearts don’t so much break open, as harden, another trope of biblical tradition that I’ve written about: Pharoah’s hardened heart. וַיֶּחֱזַק֙ לֵ֣ב פַּרְעֹ֔ה the Hebrew says, Pharaoh’s heart hardened, literally strengthened. We often confuse hardness with strength, toughness with hardness.
Jewish tradition suggests something different. We shouldn’t harden; we should break open.
It relates to another teaching in chassidut, the modern mystical reflective movement, about the notion of yeridah tzorech aliyah. That sometimes ascent can proceed from descent.
Look no further than our foundational story. Torah, revelation, the moment of profound clarity about the pathway forward comes not in Genesis, before the Israelites experience the descent into Egypt, but afterwards, after Mitzrayim, after the constriction of the narrow places, m’etzarim, the narrow straits associated with the Nile, that’s what the Hebrew word for Egypt means: constriction, pressure, having blinders on, before we finally break free, bursting forth from the waters of the sea.
Or, to put it more colloquially as nobody can do better than Mark Twain, “Good judgment is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgment.”
The notion of yeridah tzorech aliyah in chassidut comes from the midrash, which I’ve talked about a number of times, including on Rosh Hashanah, of shevirat ha’kelim, the shattering of the vessels. The rabbininc understanding that when God created the universe and said let there be light, that light was initially encased in vessels sent forth from the source of life, but the light was too strong for the vessels to contain, and the vessels “shattered.” And it is our task as human beings laredet, to descend, to immerse ourselves in the world, to be present to the moments in which we find ourselves, including, and perhaps even especially, the broken parts—and then, through our intentionality and our consciousness and our acts of justice and repair, free the trapped sparks of light found throughout the universe, so that they can la’alot, make aliyah, so they can ascend, reuniting with their source in the divine.
On a more personal level, we’re invited to offer up the broken parts ourselves. Not to shy away from them. As the Talmud teaches לוּחוֹת וְשִׁבְרֵי לוּחוֹת מוּנָּחוֹת בָּאָרוֹן. Both sets of tablets, the unbroken set containing the ten commandments, and the set Moses shattered, the broken set, both of them, were placed in the holy ark alongside one another. They were both carried with us throughout our wilderness journey. The people held the broken tablets, the broken parts of their covenant, of themselves, to be a bridge to God.
We’re invited by tradition and by the wisdom of the ages, to tap in, not only during the High Holidays, but every time we step into the prayer experience or the experience of seeking wisdom and guidance, to crack open our hearts, beating ever so softly on our chests—to tap into those experiences of regret and heartbreak and feeling lost and to allow that level of surrender to lead to the insight only those experiences can yield.
As Rabbi Alan Lew writes. “Every soul needs to express itself. Every heart needs to crack itself open. Every one of us needs to move from anger to healing, from denial to consciousness, from boredom to renewal. These needs did not arise yesterday. They are among the most ancient of human yearnings, and they are fully expressed in the pageantry and ritual of… Yom Kippur.”
So there is the rabbinic paradigm of the prayer experience. That as we enter those solitary moments, whether we’re by ourselves or surrounded by our community, yearning for connection for guidance, for light. That the posture we inhabit is adonai sefatai tiftach, the words David whispered when he’d hit rock bottom, when he’d been cracked open, when all of his actions, his soul had been laid bare for him—that cracked open experience is the one we seek.
The next question, of course, is how? How do we do this, having brokenness serve as a pathway to light?
Here’s where I tell the story about the man who goes to the Zen master and asks, “how long will it take me to be enlightened?” The Zen master pauses and says “ten years.” The man is disappointed by this and so responds, and what if I try really hard. And so the Zen master pauses and says. “Twenty.”
We can’t force this. As my teacher Bobbi Breitman offers, this is not a space for the ego, for the will to take. Rather it’s a space for surrender, for vulnerability, in the hands of the divine, however we understand that.
For Jews, this notion was distilled most profoundly once again, by the hasidim, the mystical pietests of eastern europe that include many of our forebears, most prominently through a practice honed by the famous Reb Nachman of Brazlav, a town in what today is southwestern Ukraine, the practice known as hitbodedut, literally translating to self-seclusion.
Hitbodedut, Rabbi Green writes, refers to solitary, daily conversation with the Holy One.
“‘Oh, so prayer,’ you’re saying’ is what some of you might be thinking. No. And yes.
No if you’re thinking of prayer as found in here. [Point to the siddur/mahzor].
Yes, if you think of prayer as found, in here. [Point to the heart].
The words of heartbreak, cannot be found in here [the prayer book]. They can only be found in here [the heart].
In fact, as Reb Nahman writes, when we perform hitbodedut, when we pour out before the Holy One our most intimate longings, needs, desires and frustrations, and this is a direct quote from Reb Nahman, “This prayer and conversation should be in the language one normally uses,” for us English, “because it is difficult for a person to say everything he wants to say in the Holy Tongue, that is, Hebrew… In our native tongue, in which we normally speak and converse, it is much easier and so more likely le’shaber libo—to break one’s heart.”
This is one of the most traditionally revered masters, rabbis in history. Whole movements of Orthodox Judaism have been devoted to him. And here he is saying, when you’re on your own; don’t worry about the Hebrew. Speak in whatever language you know. Easier to break one’s heart that way.
This is not meant to abolish the practice of taking out our siddurim, our mahzorim, our prayer books. These serve the purpose of uniting us together, giving us a shared set of words to rally around, to gather around, also fundamental to the religious experience.
But, he says, the original prayer experience was an expression of the heart before God in each person’s native tongue. “Make a [daily] habit of praying before God from the depths of your heart,” he says. “Use whatever language you know best.”
Now, he recognizes that effort won’t always spark fireworks.
No matter where a person is coming from, he says—even if he is totally and absolutely distant from God—they should speak about it all.
“I have no idea where to even start,” one might say. I don’t even believe in God,” one might say. It’s all fair game. Whatever is real and is happening for you in that moment. I’m bored. I’m antsy. I’m disconnected. Whatever is real for you.
“Even if occasionally a person’s words are sealed and they cannot open their mouth to say anything at all to Hashem, this itself is nonetheless very good,” he says, “That is, their readiness and their presence before Hashem, and their yearning and longing to speak despite their inability to do so—this in itself is also very good,” this 18th century rabbi says.
The renowned monk Thomas Merton once wrote what was, in essence, a version of this. “My Lord God,” he said. I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.”
That’s hitbodedut. We don’t have to bring anything to the practice other than our hearts, wherever they are.
“It is written,” Rebbe Nachman says, quoting the Book of Job,
“Your heart may be like stone,” he says “It may seem that your words of prayer make no impression on it at all. Still, as the days and years pass, your heart of stone will also be penetrated.”
That’s the paradigm for Jewish prayer. Working on our hearts, tapping on our hearts, cracking at our hearts, until they break open.
That’s the story of hallelujah:
I heard there was a secret chord that david played and it pleased the lord
But you don’t really care for music do you.
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing “Hallelujah”
That secret chord, Hallelujah, that word which symbolizes the breaking of hearts which allow our truth to pour forth in service of the divine.
Perhaps it’s more appropriate to close this sermon with a different set of lyrics from Leonard Cohen, “Anthem.”
