Treasures of our ancestors

Sefer Tehillim, the book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, is a natural place to begin a spiritual practice. Its 150 poems offer readers a choice of praise, laments, and hymns of thanksgiving. At the same time, 150 is a daunting number that “doesn’t match anything in the natural cycle of Creation,” writes rabbi Debra Robbins. New Each Day focuses on the suite of seven psalms incorporated into the Jewish morning liturgy as Shir Shel Yom, the psalm of the day. Believed to have been sung during services in the ancient temple in Jerusalem, these seven psalms are not the most accessible songs in the psalter. Their integration into the daily prayer service has generated reams of commentary. Robbins invites participants to “relearn how to read” these familiar poems and to embrace the fear, rage, longing, doubt, joy, awe, and overflowing gratitude contained within them.

Beginning with Sunday’s Psalm 24 and continuing with the psalm for each subsequent day of the week (48, 82, 94:1–95:3, 81, 93, and 92), Robbins outlines steps for developing a spiritual practice around reading each song on its appointed day. “Ritual trains the muscles of the heart to reflect, to create, and to connect with emotions, experiences, memories, hope, ourselves, and yes, God,” she explains. For each psalm, she includes the text in Hebrew as well as translations, an introduction, and four separate reflections for focus. She encourages readers to commit to daily practice for a month. (She also includes a section on Psalm 104, which is said on Rosh Chodesh, the start of each Hebrew month coinciding with the new moon.)

Reading a different hymn for each day of the week “helps ensure that we don’t see the new day as the one before,” she notes. The cycle “offers the ideal balanced practice: the psalms remain constant, but the person reading them and the surrounding world are new each day.” Robbins envisions a daily practice of 20 minutes or so, done alone or with a partner, online or in person, in any setting and at any time. She includes suggestions to find a regular place, build a routine, be grateful, and forgive yourself on days when you don’t read every word of the psalm or don’t write your own reflection. “These seven may not be my favorite psalms, but they are the treasures and traditions of my ancestors,” Robbins writes. “I feel connected across time to all the generations before me who have offered the same poems . . . for more than two thousand years. I feel connected with others in my generation whom I will never know, but with whom I am in relationship as we share the same practice, engaging with the same text everyday.”