A Song for the Day of Shabbos

Of the fifteen songs of ascents, this one alone is called שִׁיר לַמַּעֲלוֹת, “a song for the ascents”, with a lamed. Rashi brings the Sifrei (as cited by him): it is not written here “a song of ascents” but “a song for ascents: a song for the One Who will make ascents for the righteous in the time to come.”

“I lift my eyes to the mountains: from where will my help come?” And the next verse answers: “My help is from Hashem, Maker of heaven and earth.” Then the word “guard” comes again and again: He will not let your foot slip, your Guardian will not slumber; the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps; Hashem is your Guardian, your shade at your right hand.

Why on Shabbos? The Arizal counts: “in this praise there are six times ‘guarding’.” I counted them in our text: שֹׁמְרֶךָ in verse 3, שֹׁמֵר in verse 4, שֹׁמְרֶךָ in verse 5, יִשְׁמָרְךָ and יִשְׁמֹר in verse 7, and יִשְׁמָר in verse 8. Six, like the six days of the week; and on Shabbos, he says, the blessings flow from above, and through them we are guarded from all evil. The rest of his words belong to the study of Kabbalah.

“I rejoiced when they said to me: Let us go to the House of Hashem.” The Gemara (Makkos 10a) tells what David heard. People would pass by and say: “When will this old man die, so that Shlomo his son will come and build the Beis HaBechirah, and we will go up on the festival?” And David rejoiced. Hashem said to him: “Better to Me is one day that you are busy with Torah before Me than a thousand offerings that Shlomo your son will one day offer before Me on the altar.” And on the next verse, “our feet were standing in your gates, Yerushalayim”, the Gemara asks: “Who caused our feet to stand firm in war? The gates of Yerushalayim, where they were busy with Torah.”

Then David speaks to the city itself, and calls it “you”, in the feminine: in your gates, those who love you, peace in your walls, I will speak of peace in you (§G53). Rashi on verse 6: “Ask for the peace of Yerushalayim, and say to her: May those who love you be at peace.” And on verse 8: “I, David the king, say: peace be in you.”

Tehillim 123 is four short verses. “To You I lift my eyes, You Who dwell in heaven.” We look to Hashem “as the eyes of servants to the hand of their masters”, until He is gracious to us; “for we have had more than enough of contempt.” On the word הַיֹּשְׁבִי, “You Who dwell”, Rashi notes an “extra yud” at the end, a poetic ending. In the last verse our siddur reads two words, לִגְאֵי יוֹנִים, where the written text of Tehillim has one; Rashi says: “written as one, and we read it as two” (§G55).

Tehillim 124 is a song of thanks for a rescue: “Had it not been Hashem Who was with us, let Israel now say.” Had it not been Him, the waters would have swept us away, “then” and “then” again, three times אֲזַי (§G54). “Our soul escaped like a bird from the snare of the trappers; the snare broke, and we escaped.”

Why on Shabbos? The Arizal writes: “David the king, peace be upon him, said it about the future redemption”; then Israel will say, “Had it not been Hashem…”. And he explains why it belongs here: “because Shabbos is a likeness of the World to Come, a world that is entirely Shabbos.”

Tehillim 135 begins and ends with Halleluyah. It praises Hashem Who chose Yaakov “as His treasure”, Who does all He wishes in heaven and on earth, Who struck the firstborn of Egypt and gave the land of Sichon and Og to Israel as an inheritance; and it laughs at the idols, which have a mouth and do not speak.

Tehillim 136, Hodu, is called in the Gemara (Pesachim 118a) הַלֵּל הַגָּדוֹל, “the Great Hallel”. We say it at the Seder, after the regular Hallel: “the fourth cup, one completes the Hallel over it and says the Great Hallel.” Why is it called great? Rabbi Yochanan: “because the Holy One, blessed be He, sits in the heights of the world and gives out food to every creature” (verse 25, “He gives bread to all flesh”). And the Gemara adds: “a person’s food is as hard as the splitting of the Sea of Reeds”, and it reads “He gives bread to all flesh” (verse 25) together with “Who split the Sea of Reeds into parts” (verse 13). Where exactly the Great Hallel begins, the Gemara brings three opinions; in one of them it includes the end of Tehillim 135, from “for Hashem chose Yaakov for Himself”.

Twenty-six times. Each verse ends with כִּי לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ, “for His kindness is forever.” Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says in the Gemara that the twenty-six refrains stand “corresponding to the twenty-six generations that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world and did not give them Torah, and He fed them in His kindness.” Rashi says the same on verse 25. The Arizal adds: “it has twenty-six verses, corresponding to Havayah”, the Name of Hashem whose four letters add up to twenty-six (§G45). Rashi also explains verse 13, “Who split the Sea of Reeds into parts”: “twelve tears, for twelve tribes.”

At the end of page 157, our siddur prints a hymn of twenty-two lines. Each line names two qualities beginning with the same letter, in aleph-beis order, and ends לְחַי עוֹלָמִים, “belong to the One Who lives forever”: majesty and faithfulness, understanding and blessing, and so on to praise and glory.

It is very old. I found it in Heichalos Rabbasi (28), one of the ancient books of the “palaces” of heaven, in a slightly different wording: it begins הָאַדֶּרֶת וְהָאֱמוּנָה לְחַי הָעוֹלָמִים, and some of its words differ from our siddur. The text in our lesson is the one printed in our siddur.

The Rebbe’s French song. Every Chabad child knows HaAderes v’HaEmunah with a tune. Chabad.org tells the story (Mordechai Lightstone, “The Rebbe’s French Revolution”). On the night of Simchas Torah 5734, October 19, 1973, in 770, in a Hakhel year, less than two weeks after Israel was attacked on Yom Kippur, the Rebbe opened his siddur and began to sing an unfamiliar tune. A French student cried out that it was La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. The Rebbe had put on it the words of HaAderes v’HaEmunah, “an alphabetical acrostic poem popularly sung during Simchat Torah dancing.” That night he honored the young Rabbi Shmuel “Moulé” Azimov, his emissary to Paris since 1968, with carrying the “Sefer Torah to Greet Moshiach”, and some sixty young French guests danced with him.

There was a precedent. The Alter Rebbe heard the march of Napoleon’s armies and said: “This is a song of victory!” It became Napoleon’s March, sung at the end of Yom Kippur. At the Shabbos farbrengen after Simchas Torah, the Rebbe explained (Torat Menachem, vol. 74, p. 171, as cited): “My intent was not that someone sitting in Brooklyn should learn a new song,” “but rather those Jews from France should march with it victoriously to greet Moshiach.” And in 1991 he said: “This song has been completely transformed into something holy” (Sefer HaSichos 5752, pp. 183-184, as cited).

The Levites’ song. This is the psalm the Levites sang in the Beis HaMikdash every Shabbos (Mishnah Tamid 7:4). The Mishnah reads its title in a deeper way: “a psalm, a song for the time to come, for the day that is entirely Shabbos and rest for eternal life.” In the Gemara (Rosh Hashanah 31a), Rabbi Akiva explains the songs of the days by the days of creation, and on the seventh he gives the same reading: “for the day that is entirely Shabbos”; Rabbi Nechemiah says: “on the seventh, because He rested.” Rashi too: “for the day of Shabbos: that we say it on Shabbos, and it speaks of the World to Come, which is entirely Shabbos.”

Adam’s song. Bereishis Rabbah (22:13) tells that Adam met Kayin after his punishment and asked him what had become of his judgment. Kayin answered: “I did teshuvah, and it was eased.” Adam struck his face and said: “So great is the power of teshuvah, and I did not know!” At once he stood and said: “A psalm, a song for the day of Shabbos… It is good to thank Hashem.” Midrash Tehillim reads טוֹב לְהוֹדוֹת as “good to confess”: Adam said it “so that all the generations will learn that whoever confesses his sins and leaves them is saved.” And Rabbi Levi adds: “Adam said this psalm, and it was forgotten in his generation; and Moshe came and renewed it in his own name.”

Doubled. Midrash Tehillim notes: “everything about Shabbos is doubled”: the double portion of manna, its offering, its punishment, its reward, and also “its psalm is doubled: mizmor shir l’yom haShabbos”, two words for song. The Chassidic insight below explains that pair.

Morning and night. “To tell Your kindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness in the nights.” Rashi: in the morning, “at the time of redemption”; and in the nights, “while still in the trouble of exile, to believe in You” that You will keep Your promise.

The palm and the cedar. “The righteous one will flourish like a palm tree; like a cedar in the Levanon he will grow tall.” Why both? Rashi: “like a palm, to bear fruit; and like a cedar in the Levanon, to renew its trunk.” A cedar that is cut down grows again from its root. The righteous one bears fruit, and even after a fall he grows again.

“Hashem reigns; He is clothed in majesty.” This was the Levites’ song for Friday (Mishnah Tamid 7:4), and Rabbi Akiva in the Gemara (Rosh Hashanah 31a) explains why: “because He finished His work and reigned over them.” On the sixth day the world was complete, and the King was crowned over all that He had made. So it follows the psalm of Shabbos in our siddur, here and in Kabbalas Shabbos.

Rashi on the first verse: “they will say it in the time to come”: Hashem’s kingship will be seen by all. “The rivers have raised their voice”, the waves of the sea crash and roar; but “more than the sound of many waters… mighty on high is Hashem.”

The psalm ends: “Your testimonies are very faithful; holiness befits Your House, Hashem, for length of days.” Our siddur reads נַאֲוָה, with a patach; Rashi too reads נַאֲוָה, and explains it as “a word meaning a dwelling (נָוֶה)”: holiness dwells in Your House. The siddur also prints, in small letters, the other reading נָאֲוָה, “befits”. I translated “befits”, and both meanings are true.