41st Psalm

.
For the weekly PsalmChallenge that Robert Geiss in Athens challenges us with, here is my illustrated Psalm 41.


1 To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

Blessed is he who considers the poor! The LORD delivers him in the day of trouble; 2 the LORD protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; thou dost not give him up to the will of his enemies.


3 The LORD sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness thou healest all his infirmities.
4 As for me, I said, "O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against thee!"

5 My enemies say of me in malice: "When will he die, and his name perish?"

6 And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words, while his heart gathers mischief; when he goes out, he tells it abroad. 7 All who hate me whisper together about me; they imagine the worst for me. 8 They say, "A deadly thing has fastened upon him; he will not rise again from where he lies."
9 Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
10 But do thou, O LORD, be gracious to me, and raise me up, that I may requite them! 11 By this I know that thou art pleased with me, in that my enemy has not triumphed over me. 12 But thou hast upheld me because of my integrity, and set me in thy presence for ever.

13 Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen. .
.
This week I used the Revised Standard Version translation.
The Hebrew original and a different English translation are here.
.
In Jewish usage the Book of Psalms is divided, after the analogy of the Pentateuch, into five books, each closing with a doxology or benediction.

In his study of Psalm 41 Rabbi Segal says this:

"The last verse is widely understood to conclude the first book of Psalms. Each of the first four books ends with such a doxology (statement of praise). . . .
'Amen' (last verse) is a term of confirmation ('verily, truly').
Although it appears elsewhere in the Bible, in Psalms it is found exclusively in the doxologies that end the first four books (Psalms 41, 72, 89, and 106)."

PHOTOS:
1. An old synagogue door with an arrow pointing to the slot through which you can give anonymous charity (tsdaka).
2. An old photo (exhibited at the new Shaare Zedek) shows windows of the old Shaare Zedek hospital on Jaffa Road covered by wooden beams for protection against the constant shelling during the War of Independence, 1948.
3. A nameless grave in Tel Aviv's historic Trumpeldor cemetery. The marker says only "Po nikbar galmud" meaning something like "Here lies someone who had no one."
During Turkish times (i.e. before 1917) a plague killed so many that no one knew all the names of the dead.
4. Kneading dough for a monastery's daily bread.
.

Bnai Brith helps in Africa

.


Nice how this (I think former) B'nai B'rith office utilized their menorah logo on and above the door.
Nice for Monday Doorways meme.

The B'nai B'rith World Center in Jerusalem is the hub of B'nai B'rith International's activities in Israel, and I think that office is a few blocks away, on King David Street.

As an international humanitarian organization, B’nai B’rith International is opening its disaster relief fund to help victims of the worst drought to hit East Africa in more than 50 years.
It will support projects in cooperation with the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief.

Some 11 million people in Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia are in dire need of humanitarian relief.

The Horn of Africa sounds like a different world a million miles away.
But if you look on the map, it is just a bit south of Israel, just a boat ride down the Red Sea.
.
Let there be rain!
.
.
This post is also for Our World Tuesday.

A Heart for Peace

.
Right after posting about Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo yesterday I came across a heart-warming IDF post (see their video here).
I learned that just a few weeks ago a group of Palestinian children from the West Bank along with their parents had a field day at the Zoo.
.
Their trip was organized by the army's Civil Administration unit and Hadassah Hospital.
Most of the kids had undergone heart surgery at Hadassah.
.
Since 2005 there is a way for these families to get the help they need: Hadassah pays half the cost of the operation and a French NGO, the other half.
Un coeur pour la paix / A Heart for Peace has a nice little video about how it works.
.

Remember the widow, the orphan, . . .

.
There were things I could hardly believe when I saw this car.
1. Its PA system was blaring a recorded message.
2. It was parked at a super-busy bus-stop-only curb near Jerusalem's Central Bus Station.
3. No one was inside.
.
On closer inspection I found a cup hanging on the open window, waiting for our donations.
The signs enjoined to "Remember first the poor of your own city."
The organization is Yad Ezra Veshulamit, one of many that help the poor with food, clothing, and services.
.
In a country of almost 7.5 million souls, 1.5 are under the poverty line.
Jerusalem has one of the highest rates of poverty.
Children go hungry. It's a crying shame.
.
When I passed the car again a short time later, the driver was back.
A gray-bearded religious man, he sat quietly, reading Psalms.
I guess he figured that only an extremely hard-hearted policeman would give him a ticket or tell him to move on.
.

How to give tsdakah

.
I've long been wondering how to use this funny photo.

The meditation that appeared today on a favorite Orthodox Christian website may have the sought connection.

Here it is, from Word from the Desert, Meditations on the Orthodox Life from the Early Church Fathers, Ascetics, Saints and Righteous:

An old man said, “There are monks who do many goods works, and the evil one sends them scruples about quite little things, to cause them to lose the fruit of the good they have done.

When I happened to be living in Oxyrhynchus near a priest who gave alms to many, a widow came to ask him for some wheat.

He said to her, ‘Bring a sack and I will measure some out for you.’

She brought it, and measuring the sack with his hand, he said, ‘It is a big sack.’

Now this filled the widow with shame.

I said to him, ‘Abba, have you sold the wheat?’

He said, ‘No, I gave it to her in charity.’

I said to him, ‘If you gave it all to her in alms, why did you complain at the amount and fill her with shame?’”

.