Help will Come from What is Not

Ps. 121:1

Where will the help we so badly need come from? 

We look up. We look within. Beyond. We seek some sort of hope and sometimes it is hiding in what’s not here at all. 

Today’s psalm hides a profound secret about what helps and where it will or will not come from. 

And this secret may be one of the reasons for why this is also a superstar psalm and super popular in many circles, worldwide. 

This psalm is also a meaningful and vivid memory for me, influential on who I am and how I got to be here today.

Back in 1996 I was still living in Israel. Just one year after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish terrorist intent on stopping the Oslo Peace process at any price - the country was still in shock and political-religious tensions were rising. What we’re seeing now was then just beginning to become the reality of deep divides. There were already whispers of a civil war. The prospects of peace seemed so far. 

Netanyahu was about to be elected as prime minister for the first time. 

The far-right religious narrative was on the rise - but so was the alternative. 

More and more  so-called secular Israelis were getting more curious about finding meaning in their Jewish roots - beyond the Orthodox Judaism that most of them knew and still know - dominating the Israeli landscape in an unholy alliance of political and religious interests that retain male-dominance and many other patriarchal tropes. 

Many Israelis traveled to India or South America as soon as their army service was over, and they often encountered spirituality and religious options that they didn’t know existed - giving their thirsty souls narratives of purpose, meaning and joy. 

And when they’d come back to Israel they’d wonder - how can this meditative and ecstatic religious life we found so far away - exist in our own backyard, with our own language, symbols and songs?  The 1990’s was a jewish renaissance  of liberal, progressive, spiritual and experimental Judaism that borrowed from American liberal Judaism as much as from the New Age movement and created fusions that were sometimes amazing and sometimes fell flat. 

I was part of this movement, and was there on one summer  night, up on a hillside in the Galilee, when a band called SHEVA, just starting out, with an audience of several hundreds, premiered one of their new songs — a musical rendition of Psalm 121. It was composed by Yosef Karduner, a Hasidic musician from nearby Safed. But it was my friends at Sheva who took it to the next level:

Watch/Listen:

Sheva's Shir La'Maalot - Psalm 121

By the time they were singing these hallowed words for the 4th or 5th time - we were all dancing, swaying, crying, laughing, mouthing every word by heart. 

I think we knew that we were witnessing a historical moment, a Jewish revival that was not limited to men or to Orthodoxy, to the way things were but to the new spirit with which so many were reimagining a more inclusive, wild and hopeful Jewish life. 

The song spread like wildfire through Israel, made it into congregations and festivals all over the world. 

All these years later it is still the go-to in many vigils and prayers, protests, peace rallies and memorials - of all walks of life and political-religious worlds. 

It’s been prayed and played a lot this past painful year. 

And beyond the haunting tune - are the words, what they promise, and the secret hiding in the first line: 

שִׁ֗יר לַֽמַּ֫עֲל֥וֹת אֶשָּׂ֣א עֵ֭ינַי אֶל־הֶהָרִ֑ים מֵ֝אַ֗יִן יָבֹ֥א עֶזְרִֽי׃

A song for ascents.

I turn my eyes to the mountains;

from where will my help come?

Ps. 121:1

Where will salvation come from? Where do we turn for help?  

Unlike the other fourteen psalms that begin with the Hebrew words Shir Ha’Maalot - the Psalm OF Ascents — this one claims - Shir La’Maalot - a Psalm To, or Towards Ascents. 

Why the difference? Some claim that this was originally the first of the fifteen, charting the course, leading up towards the staircase that led to the sacred center. Some claim that it is forever about the future, with the letter L pointing the way. 

But the real secret here is in the source of salvation. 

We follow the poet’s gaze up to the mountaintops, and ask - from where will help come? Any one of us, in some sort of distress, has asked this question, looking out toward the hills or the horizons, in need of some sort of a miracle to save the day. 

It doesn’t always happen. 

But the Hebrew word AYIN - translated here as ‘where’ as a question -- can also be translated as ‘no-where’ — as in — the void, the no-thing, the space between us all.  The answer.  Stephen Mitchell chose to translate this opening line this way:

“I look deep into my heart, to the core where wisdom arises. Wisdom from the Unnamable, and unifies heaven and earth.”

The Jewish mystics, like the Zen sages, claim that this is where salvation comes from - not from what we know - but from the unknowable. The mystery of Ayin  is where the magic waits. 

The root ‘shomer’ shows up eight times in this short psalm -it means ‘guardian’ --  again and again seeking out divine protection. 

Perhaps, the psalm’s secret  points out — it’s not about the steps or the songs or what we already know and what already happened — what will guard us  comes from the void, from what is between us. 

Look out towards the horizon, beyond the hills, and where the no-thing is — is where the hope is waiting. 

We’ve sung this song so many times at times of joy and sorrow. 

The ‘no-thing’ manifests as some sort of protection and aspiration, a solid something to cling to, even when reality talks louder and the divine is not always protective and violence happens despite defenses and hopes and whatever we try. 

And yet - we sing, and still, it is a choice to believe that our wildest yearning come from beyond, from what we don’t know yet, from the force that somehow, we hope will protect and guard as many of us and as much of our lives as possible - an ancient and desperate prayer that concludes this psalm - here with Norman Fischer’s translation:

יְֽהֹוָ֗ה יִשְׁמׇר־צֵאתְךָ֥ וּבוֹאֶ֑ךָ מֵ֝עַתָּ֗ה וְעַד־עוֹלָֽם׃ 

Guard my arrival, secure my departure. Always

Ps. 121:8

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