What Psalms do you say for Israel in shul? Different communities have different customs ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

What Psalms do you say for Israel in shul? Different communities have different customs

1729 Psalms, translated into Latin by Dominican friar Santes Pagnino (1470–1536)

In my town, the Orthodox and unapologetically Zionist synagogues that I know of tend to say Psalms 121 and 130 every day after prayer since October 7 2023.

Those Psalms are asking God for forgiveness and help in times of trouble:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: From whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. ...The LORD shall keep thee from all evil; He shall keep thy soul. . The LORD shall guard thy going out and thy coming in, From this time forth and for ever.

O God, if You keep [a record of] iniquities, O Lord, who will stand? ...Israel, hope to the Lord, for kindness is with the Lord and much redemption is with Him. And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.

On the first days of Sukkot, however, I went to a (not particularly Zionist) yeshiva minyan, where they say Psalms 79 and 83 - which are a lot more oriented towards vengeance and towards the specific events of October 7:

O God, heathens have entered Your domain, defiled Your holy temple, and turned Jerusalem into ruins.
They have left Your servants’ corpses as food for the fowl of heaven, and the flesh of Your faithful for the wild beasts.
...We have become the butt of our neighbors, the scorn and derision of those around us.
...Pour out Your fury on the nations that do not know You, upon the kingdoms that do not invoke Your name, for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home.
...Let the nations not say, “Where is their God?” Before our eyes let it be known among the nations
that You avenge the spilled blood of Your servants.
Let the groans of the prisoners reach You; reprieve those condemned to death, as befits Your great strength.
Pay back our neighbors sevenfold for the abuse they have flung at You, O Lord.
Then we, Your people, the flock You shepherd, shall glorify You forever; for all time we shall tell Your praises.

For Your enemies rage, Your foes assert themselves. They plot craftily against Your people,
take counsel against Your treasured ones. They say, “Let us wipe them out as a nation; Israel’s name will be mentioned no more.” Unanimous in their counsel they have made an alliance against You— the clans of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria too joins forces with them; they give support to the sons of Lot.
Deal with them as You did with Midian, with Sisera, with Jabin, at the brook Kishon— who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for the field.
...As a fire burns a forest, as flames scorch the hills, pursue them with Your tempest, terrify them with Your storm. ...May they be frustrated and terrified, disgraced and doomed forever. May they know that Your name, Yours alone, is the LORD, supreme over all the earth.

Or as I jokingly told my son, my shul says "Oh, God, help us" while his says "Smoke them mofos." It is a completely different vibe.

I know that some minyanim say Avinu Malkeinu every day since October 7 as well. And many shuls are saying "Av Harachamim" every Shabbat since October 7, including those weeks where it is normally not said.

Traditional Judaism is heavily oriented towards uniformity in ritual, so these differences fascinate me. To an extent, they reflect the communities we live in.

What other customs have you been seeing?

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