Rabbi Meir Soloveichik on the Enduring Power of the Psalms

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, News, Politics, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On October 6, 2023, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik sat at his desk facing a deadline for his monthly column. Israel's citizens were then furiously debating judicial reform, but he'd already had his say on that matter. He decided to write about something else instead: a Jeopardy episode where three educated contestants stared blankly when asked to identify the source of this line: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." This, among the most famous images in all of Western literature, comes of course from Psalm 23. And none of the contestants knew it.

Rabbi Soloveichik submitted the piece on October 6, hours before the festival of Shemini Atzeret. The next morning, October 7, the Jewish people would be thrust into the valley of the shadow of death. T'hillim, as the Psalm are known in Hebrew, would, over the following weeks and months, accompany the Jewish people's every thought. Their distress could be articulated in David's very own words, linking their pain to his pain, their redemptive dreams to his redemptive dreams, their future to his future.

In his new podcast, "Poetry and Prayer: A Daily Journey Through the Psalms," Soloveichik walks listeners through all 150 psalms, one by one. For today's episode, he sits down with Jonathan Silver, the editor of Mosaic, to discuss this ambitious project. He puts forward a striking claim in the course of the conversation: the Psalms represent something unprecedented in ancient literature. While Homer or Gilgamesh depict external action—heroic deeds, cosmic battles—the Psalms take their reader (or reciter) inside someone else's soul. The Psalmist explores the full range of human emotion—doubt and faith, despair and joy, rage and delight—all while maintaining an awareness of God's presence. It's the first example in world literature of what the critic Edward Cahill calls "the eye of interiority."

When Iranian missiles fell on their cities at 2:00 am one night, Israelis immediately Googled "T'hillim" on their iPhones. An IDF soldier named Yossi Hershkovitz composed a new melody to Psalm 23 while serving in Gaza, and was killed days later—his tune surviving because a comrade taught it to his children. In America, the Psalms shaped the country's founding, from the First Continental Congress reading Psalm 35 to Lincoln quoting from the book in his Second Inaugural. More recently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech in Jerusalem's City of David connecting American exceptionalism to the very site where the Psalms were written.

This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is sponsored by Samuel and Malka Harris Susswein in honor of Sam Susswein's birthday. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of this podcast, or of any other in Tikvah's growing podcast network, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On October 6, 2023, Rabbi Mayor Soloveitch sat at his desk facing a writing deadline.
0:13.7	Israel's citizens were then furiously debating judicial reform, but he had already had his say
0:19.3	on that matter, so he decided instead to write about
0:21.8	something else. A Jeopardy episode, where three educated contestants stared blankly when asked
0:27.9	to identify the source of this line, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
0:34.0	This is, of course, among the most famous images and verses in all of Western literature.
0:39.2	It comes, of course, from Psalm 23, and none of the Jeopardy contestants knew that.
0:44.4	He submitted the piece on October 6, hours before the festival of Shminia Tserrat.
0:49.4	The next morning, October 7th, the Jewish people would be thrust into the valley of the shadow of death.
0:56.1	To Helim, the Hebrew word for the Psalms, would, over the following weeks and months,
1:00.8	accompany the Jewish people's every thought. Our distress could be articulated in David's
1:06.5	very words, linking our pain to his pain, our redemptive dreams to his redemptive dreams, our future
1:13.9	to his future.
1:15.4	Which brings us to today's conversation and to Rabbi Soloveitchik's ambitious new project.
1:21.0	He has just launched poetry and prayer, a daily journey through the Psalms, a podcast that will walk listeners through all 150
1:30.4	psalms one by one. It is a commitment to rediscover what the writer Thomas Cahill called,
1:36.4	a roadmap to the human spirit. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
1:41.7	In our conversation today, Rabbi Silvecic makes a striking claim.
1:46.1	The Psalms represent something unprecedented in ancient literature.
1:50.1	When you read Homer or Gilgamesh, you see external action, heroic deeds, cosmic battles.
1:57.1	But in the Psalms, you're inside someone's head.
1:59.7	You're experiencing the full range of human emotion,
	...

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