Why is there so much injustice in the world?
Why do innocent, good people have to starve and suffer today for no fault of their own?
And what can we do about it?
These are the big, painful and persistent questions of life.
Why do bad things happen to good people and the other way round?
It’s this theme that’s the focus of this psalm, explored in other psalms of this section.
There is a particularly problematic line from today’s chapter that is often sung, but sometimes whispered, at the end of Jewish meals.
The ‘Grace after Meals’ set of prayers and biblical quotations, memorized by many of us by the time we were old enough to read, is recited at the end of every meal by the more observant, and more often by the rest of us - when public meals bring us to together to the table.
This line is often sung along towards the end of the prayer — and though few pause to question its meaning it has troubled many thinkers over the ages:
נַ֤עַר ׀ הָיִ֗יתִי גַּם־זָ֫קַ֥נְתִּי וְֽלֹא־רָ֭אִיתִי צַדִּ֣יק נֶעֱזָ֑ב וְ֝זַרְע֗וֹ מְבַקֶּשׁ־לָֽחֶם׃
“I have been young and am now old,
but I have never seen someone righteous abandoned,
or their children seeking bread.”
Ps. 37:25
I remember being curious about it as a child but I don’t remember a meaningful response, just a shrug.
I was told at some time, that after the Holocaust some survivors refused to keep saying it and for a while it was eliminated from the prayer books but somehow made it back.
Did my father say or sing it after he got out of the camps and later at our sabbath table?
I don’t remember this being one of his personal post-Holocaust religious protests. (He did choose to forgo all religious fasts except for Yom Kippur, because “I have fasted enough.”)
But as hunger, and famine, and starvation continues to ravage our world, for so many horrific factors, including the ongoing tragedy in Gaza — how can we not question this verse and ponder its place in our prayers?
Rabbi Raymond Apple, a leading Australian rabbi who died recently wrote about this troubling verse, suggesting that we read it not as theology - but as poetry, and perhaps as protest:
“The words lo ra’iti (literally, I have never seen), seem to contradict human experience. In response, many translations adjust the words so as to lessen or remove the presumed sting of the verse and its thinking. Hence the JPSA version gives the verb a future tense and says I… have yet to see righteous people suffering hunger. Some bir’konim (Grace After Meals booklets) offer alternatives such as, I never overlooked a deserving man; or By the time I reach old age, I should see no righteous person abandoned. Such versions ease the problem but distort the Hebrew, which is probably a simple past tense that says I have not seen.
…Psalm 37:25, when all is said and done, is not doctrine but poetry - an opinion, not an article of faith, and no-one needs to be scandalized by or to blame normative Judaism for it. Whether or not I agree with the psalmist, is a personal judgment; I am not compelled to accept the psalmist’s view or to reject it.
It is probably only the na’ar hayiti verse that bothers many who recite the Grace. Hence the custom of saying the words quietly because someone present might lack means or meals. The idea that believers do not go hungry is so contrary to general human experience that it is an embarrassment. As we have seen, it is possible that the verse is poetry, not doctrine; or the voice of a particular individual or era…. It is a point of view and not a doctrinal tenet. A poet is speaking, not a priest, prophet or the nation as a whole.. Nonetheless, the poet might have had an ideological motivation and wanted his readers to be provoked to think about the connection of hunger and piety.”
These are questions that deeply challenge what we think of as faith, and how or if we trust in the goodwill of the universe.
We are called upon to ponder these and somehow cultivate a sense of safety in better outcomes even as sorrow and suffering are our lot. This is a lifelong journey of exploration - and maybe that’s why the passage from youth to elder is described in this verse. Perhaps the best way to read this verse is to end it with a question mark, as a call to action.
Whatever the original purpose of this psalm, and its inclusion in the prayer, whether poetry or protest or both it is heard today with pain.
Political gain, often in the name of faith and sacred traditions, is responsible for the hunger of millions, all over the world, and many of us feel helpless.
What is our response and responsibility, as we who have food on our plates, complete a meal and contemplate our privilege?
In what small or big way can we respond today?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote this reminder several years ago, reminding us of our moral obligation to ask these questions - and come up with an honest response:
“One of my favourite Jewish sayings is, "Many people worry about their own stomachs and the state of other people's souls. The real task is to do the opposite: to worry about other people's stomachs and the state of your own soul." Or as Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883) used to put it: "Someone else's material needs are my spiritual responsibility."
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Truth be told I was waiting for you to get to this psalm, because Sunday morning I woke to images of fire and charred bodies and the deepest despair yet (which is always amazingly deeper than the last despair), and Psalm 37 has been on repeat in my head ever since. As a Black "Hebrew" girl who grew up following The Way but also being deeply entrenched in Black culture, I started singing in gospel chorus in junior high school and continued through my high school years at Music and Art here in NYC. There are at least two gospel songs that have verse 25 of this psalm either as the verse or the chorus, and so whenever I sang it it meant something to me. But not because of bread...
Psalm 37 was one of my father's favorite psalms (the other being psalm 90 because it was the only one attributed to his hero, Moses) and I can still hear my dad's voice, full of emotion reading:
"Fret not thyself because of evildoers,
Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass,
And wither as the green herb."
The psalm was a favorite amongst the Rastafarians in Jamaica, with whom my dad spent an awful lot of time "likken' chalice." I suspect that they loved it partially because of the mention of "green herb" but also because of the overall theme of holding on to hope when it seems like evil and terror will win. The words in verse 35 and 36 that read (and as much as I hate the King James Version of the Bible for political reasons, it's still one of my favorite interpretations)
"I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a green bay tree.
Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not:
Yea, I sought him, but he could not be found."
... have long been solace to me, as they were to my dad, when I look around and wonder why the corrupt leaders of the world do what they do, and why the people who suffer the most have zero power to stop them. It gives the hope that one day, if you hold out long enough, if you keep trying, if you keep walking in the light as dark as it all feels, when literal people are burning and dying and starving, and there is no mercy, God's got it. Because I was young once, and now I'm old, and I've never seen God entirely forsake the righteous.
And I'm going to hold on to that, because it's all I got....
https://youtu.be/hhXHlfs0Cbw?si=rgQuFWtOlMiDyqQQ