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The Prayer Podcast is an attempt to make prayer meaningful, elevating and real in our day-to-day lives for every individual regardless of background.
This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by Dr. Leonard & June Goldberg
Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (00:03.798)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Prayer Podcast.
All right. Good morning, everybody. So wonderful to be here to study our next endeavor in prayer. We are now going to talk about Pesukah Dezimra, which literally translated is the verses of song or the verses of praise. And this is a very essential part of prayer, as we'll see.
throughout today's presentation about the importance of Pseudo-Dezimra, what its purpose is, and why our sages instituted this as the introductory to prayer. So first is we talked about everyone should have a handout. Those of you who don't, it's in the description below. You will have it once we're done with our live broadcast. You should have the link to this document.
And that is, we first have the introduction, is Mizmor Sheer, which is Psalm number 30. Then we have the Mourners Kaddish. And then we have, if you see the bolded areas of the three main parts of Sukkot D'Zimra. And that is the beginning, the middle, and the end. Baruch Sh'amar, Ashray, Psalm 145, and Yishtabach at the end. Now, in between Baruch Sh'amar and Ashray, there are three segments. The Hodu, Mizmor Soda, which is Psalm
100 and he he vote and then between Asheri and Yishtabah there is Five hallelujahs that we say from Psalm 146 to 150 and then we have baruch Hashem l'olam by baruch David vichorus imarabris and then as Yosher which is the verses from Exodus chapter 14 through chapter 15 verse number 19 and this is our unbelievable introduction
to our prayer every day. Why do we have this? So number one is we need to understand that there is the… If you think, let's go back a little bit. The previous segments that we spoke about was the morning blessings, and then we spoke about the Karbonothi offerings. Now this is a transition part from those early morning prayers, now to the soon we're going to get to the Shema. So what we spoke about
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the offerings was to encourage us throughout our generations. We're always going to be in a situation. What's our life? What are we here for? Look at the challenge we have with our oppressors. Look at the challenge that we have with all of the antisemitism. This was an encouraging prayer that was instituted by our sages. Also, we mentioned when we talked about the carbonos that
It was an opportunity for us to also learn Torah, also learn Mishnah, also learn Talmud. That way every day someone, by reciting the offerings section of the prayer, which precedes the Pesukah de Zimr, you already fulfilled the obligation to study Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud. But why do we say Pesukah de Zimr? Why do we have these verses of song or these verses of praise? Why do we recite it every day?
So there's some very, very interesting pieces of Talmud that we need to explore. Number one, the Talmud in 31 Ayn, Tractate Brachot says, Ayn omdim lehis palel. How do we come to pray? Not out of sadness, not out of worry, not out of concern. El mitoch simchah shol mitzvah. Only through joy in performance of a mitzvah.
From here our sages tell us, miqan na gulamu psukkhu dhezimra. That's why we say psukkhu dhezimra. Because what's the main part of prayer, the amida? How do you get to the point of being in a state of joy? Psukkhu dhezimra. When we recite these verses of song, what we're doing is we're getting ourselves prepared to the ultimate prayer, which is the prayer of the amida. The purpose is to take our time and to go through these verses, and we'll see soon.
The Mishnah says that the Talmud says that the Halacha says that when you recite these verses of song it should be like you're counting money. It should be like you're counting money. So someone once came to the rabbi and he says to the rabbi, rabbi I count money very fast. He says yeah, but you don't miss a single bill. Right? That's the idea is that we don't miss a single word in our Psyche of Zimri. You can say it fast, but don't miss a word. Why? Because each one the praises
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that we sing to Hashem bring us great joy because we realize how blessed we are. The second Talmud that we want to talk about is... Our sages tell us that we learn from Moses that always before you ask Hashem for something, you have to praise Hashem with something. We see that Moshe in Vaischanon in Deuteronomy 3, when Moshe comes,
and asks God he wants to go into the land of Israel. He wants to go into the land of Israel. What does he say? He first praises Hashem. The first thing is praise. Then request. The halacha says, the Torah says that anyone who recites the ashré three times a day is guaranteed to be a ben olam haba.
to get a portion of the world to come. Why? Because, and this is the essence of all psoeca de zimra. If you want to know the real purpose of all of psoeca de zimra is to recite the ashré. What's in the ashré that's so special? So the sages go back, is it because the ashré has the olive base? Because we say it in order of the olive base? Or because it has a very, very special verse in ashré?
and that is, Poteach et Yadecha umazbiya lechol Chai Ratzon and excuse me if you look at that verse in middle of chapter 145 in Psalms it says Poteach et Yadecha umazbiya lechol Chai Ratzon you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing every living creature is taken care of by the Almighty
every single creation that Hashem brought into this world is taken care of by the hand of Hashem. This is such an incredible praise of Hashem by King David in Psalms that by reciting this three times a day we are guaranteed to be a member of the world to come. That's the purpose of all psalms for that. But we have to get ourselves to a point where we can feel it and then we have to get ourselves to be
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taking it to the next level, that praise and elevating it further. Now, if you want to talk for a second, we can talk about why we say that praise and why that's so powerful. You know, we mentioned previously that when one washes their hands before they eat, they have to do is that we recite the blessing of Al-Nut'ilat Ya'daym, have to, while their hands are still wet, raise up their hands, open up your fingers and say,
the blessing of al-Nati la Tidaym. Sages teach us something very special. Why do we do that? We do that because when you open your hands, when you wash your hands before you eat bread, what you're saying is you're demonstrating in action that Hashem, look, what do my hands possess? What am I able to hold? I'm not able to hold anything. It's porous. Look, everything falls through my fingers. Try to hold water in your hand.
It'll fall right through, it'll seep right through. I really have nothing. Everything I have is from You. Me and my own hands? I can't do anything. The only reason I have bread is because of You, Hasein. Say just tell us, when we wash our hands, what we're, in a spiritual sense, what we're doing. We're washing away our arrogance. We think with our hands, I've accomplished.
Look at me, look at my wealth, look at my success. Wash away that thought. Wash away the thought that you've accomplished and you've done such incredible things. Remember it's all the hand of Hashem. What do we do when we say this praise of Hashem in Asheret? We're saying, your hands and see that who is... Hashem is the one who fulfills all of the needs
and desires of all creation. Hashem is the one who fulfills all of that. And in so doing, this is the great praise that we give to Hashem. The Talmud says further, the Talmud says further, The Talmud in Erevim says that anyone who is not in a state of mind, meaning you're in middle of a business deal,
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You're angry the Talmud says there are B'chanina biyom sha'osah Ali b'chaz lo'yam espa'olah then on the day that he got angry he wouldn't pray You can't talk to God when you're His datto is not meusheves olah when your mind is not in a pleasant state It says that the father of shmuel kishibom in a derech lo'espa'olah ge'l miyamin when the father of shmuel when he would travel he wouldn't pray for three days
after his travel. Because you have to travel, you're still a little harried, you're all over the place. He didn't pray for three days. Why? Because you can't come to pray when you're not in the proper spiritual state. Prayer is a spiritual state. You know what's amazing? Is that we don't see this about any other mitzvah. It doesn't say, you know what, if you're not in the presence of mind, don't do the mitzvah of
Shabbos. If you're not in the presence of mind, don't do the mitzvah of Tefillin. If you're not in the presence of mind, don't do the mitzvah of Tsitsis. If you're not in the presence of mind, don't do the mitzvah of Sukkah. Or don't do the mitzvah of Lul of Nesrog. Or don't eat the matzah. Doesn't say that. Every other mitzvah, you're obligated whether you're in the presence of mind or not. It's a benefit to be in the presence of mind, so you can fulfill the mitzvah appropriately. But with prayer,
If you're not in the presence of mind, you're not allowed to pray. It's an amazing thing.
That's the power of prayer. And there are some opinions that say that since we learn from Moshe about prayer, that if a person doesn't recite the psalms of from a biblical standpoint, you can't. You can't pray. But our sages conclude that that's not the way we actually look at psalms Lord.
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and that since it's a takana, it is a decree from our taneic sages. It is not a biblical obligation, but it is definitely an appropriate part of our prayer. So we also know that psukei de zimra, the verses of song, the verses of praise, has another meaning. What is zamer? Zamer is also to prune. What are we pruning?
If you remember previously in our prayer podcast, we talked about that there are the evil forces don't want us to pray. The evil forces don't like when we talk to God and we connect to God. So what do they do? They create barriers. I mentioned to you here in this class, I've accepted upon myself, it's now over four months, not to take my phone in to synagogue. My phone stays home. Why?
because it's a communication device. What is synagogue? A place of communication. They're going to interfere. I feel for me personally, it's an interference. And I can't communicate to Hashem properly when I have other communication devices. So I leave it at home. So I don't have the distraction. I don't have the interference of the waves. My waves in my connection to Hashem and the telephone waves. But what is Zamer? Pruning.
I say just tell us we're pruning all of the blockages from prayer. We are cutting them away, allowing us, giving us the ability. By the way, this can also be on a very personal level. A person can be defeated. A person could be pessimistic. A person can say, me, me, I'm coming to pray.
in front of the Creator of heaven and earth? How is that possible that me, the little guy in Houston here, that I'm going to talk to the Creator of heaven and earth? God maybe doesn't even want to hear from me. Why would I merit to pray? And when we sing all of the verses of song and all the verses of praise, we suddenly see, Hashem created the world for who? Hashem created the world for me. Hashem created the world for me.
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Hashem wants me exactly where I am praising Him. So we're pruning away our shortcoming and our thought that perhaps I'm not worthy to pray. No, no, no, no, you are. And Hashem loves. We're pruning away, we're cutting away all of the negative thoughts. Our sages teach us, Shua brings this down, Pinkos bring this down, that each part of prayer is leading us into the depths
the temple, the service of the temple. We know that the prayers that we pray are in lieu of offerings in the temple. So when you brought the offerings in the temple you had to go from one section to the next. When we recite the birch ha-shachar, the morning blessings, we are in the Azorah. When we say the Karbonos we're in the Ezra Sishraal, in the inner courtyard.
When we recite the Pesukah Dezim, we're in the ulam, we're in the hallway. And then we go in the blessings of the Shema, or the Amidah, the Tfilodim Yushav, the Shema blessings, we're in the Hei Chol, we're in the sanctuary. And then in the Amidah, when we're saying the Shemona Esrei, the 18 blessings, then we're in the Kodesh HaKadash, and we're in the Holy of Holies. And we're going from section to section in our transition.
our closeness to God and there are many time limits in synagogue to reciting the Pesukah Dezimrach. They say from that in the Kalam Yeshiva they would give 45 minutes to reciting the Pesukah Dezimrach, 45 minutes a lot of time to get you to the proper state of mind that you can recite every word with clarity, with understanding.
with introspection. Other places, half hour, some places you can go today and it's sadly six minutes, eight minutes. It's like, you know, rushing through it. But the most important part is that it should be a pleasant, a pleasant recitation of God's praise. I will tell you that my grandfather would love to pray in a shtibl. You know what a shtibl is? A shtibl is where you have, it's like a minion, minion factory. If you go, I was just in New York.
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and there's a shul called shiners in Mansi and you can go there any time of day you will find a Minyan on the hour, on the 15, on the 30, on the 45 and again on the hour starting from sunrise all the way till midday and then you have the minchah services about every 15 minutes maybe even every 10 minutes at certain times and then evening prayer you can go there two o'clock in the morning it's an amazing thing
You could pray at any time. My grandfather loved to pray in such synagogues. Although synagogues usually go very fast. But my grandfather loved that he would be able to sit and start at his own time, at his own pace. And when he arrived at the Borjul, after he finished his Sukkot Dezimr, after he finished this section of prayer, then he can find the minion that was up to that point and then continue praying with them. And this would be an unbelievable joy for him that he was able to
have focus and have a presence of mind that when you pray, you pray properly. We know that we're supposed to recite all the words. We're supposed to say it with all of your strength, with all of your intention. So, Rabbeinu Yonah in the introduction to Perkiavos, in the introduction, Rabbeinu Yonah is one of the great early commentators.
On the Mishnah, says, we know the Torah says, the Mishnah begins, that the world stands on three things. It doesn't say that the world exists for three things. It says that it stands on three things. Meaning that the purpose of the world, one of those is prayer. The purpose of the world is for prayer. We have to understand that prayer is an essential part of our lives, our living.
Our sages tell us is instead of the temple, but you know, there's a big challenge Offerings in the temple were only brought for sins that were by mistake If someone did an intentional sin or he did it Not by mistake He couldn't bring an offering but he could pray and we see this with King David
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King David, when he says, Hashem opened my lips so that I can sing your praise. That was even though he had done a sin. That was not by mistake. He couldn't bring an offering, but he could recite a prayer. Prayer is even greater than offerings. When we discussed previously that we're transitioning from world to world, when we
when we begin psuke de zimra we're going into the world of yitzirah the world of formation so we said we have the world of asiya the world of action we have the world of yitzirah the world of formation we have the world of briya the world of creation and then we have the world of atzilos these four worlds were transcending
from world to world when we recite the morning blessings and the Karbonot, we're in the world of Asiya. Then we go to the world of Yitzirah and Pesukah Dezimra, we go to the world of Bria and the blessings of the Shema, and then we go to the world of Atzilah and Amidah, and then we wind down, at the end of prayer, we go back down, we get back to the world of Asiya. In this, with the beginning of the Pesukah Dezimra,
We're transcending to the next world. We're going to the next level. Additionally, our sages teach us, and this is what we mentioned when we talked about the Kaddish previously, in the previous two episodes. We talked about how Kaddish we recite at each transition point. Going from world to world, we always recite the Kaddish. So the power of song. Our sages teach us that there are 10 different types of songs in Psalms.
And in our psalms we have 10 different songs. We also have 10 times that we say hallelujah, praise is Hashem in the psalms. But psalms binds us with Hashem through song. Psalms has 10 times that we say hallelujah, praise is Hashem.
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subduing the klippot. Remember we said that there were 10 different barriers. We're subduing them by reciting the hallelujah. Thoughts, the desires, the confusion, the obstacles, we're able to remove them. There are four parts of each word. We have the cantillation, we have the vowels, we have the crowns, and we have the letters. When someone is just reciting the words with cantillations,
have no grasp of Torah. When someone is the Nikudos, the Nikudos are the vowels, the vowels tiny little dots that we have in our Hebrew reading. That's the small insights. Then we have the tag and the crowns, and that's something to hold on to. And then we have the actual letters, and that's the insights that we comprehend. All of these levels we attain
in the recitation of the Pseudo-Zimra. All levels can connect us to Hashem. Each one of these levels, even the one who doesn't grasp, you study Torah, you read the Torah, even if it's not understandable to you, it is able to elevate us and get us to a greater level. One cannot pray without calmness, we said. Only by prayer can we take account for our emotional state.
Only in prayer, we only find this in prayer. We only find in prayer that we perform our prayer only when we're in a healthy mental state, a healthy emotional state. The main part of Pesukah Dezimrach, a sages called Pesukah Dezimrach Halil, it says that one of the great sages, he says, I want to only be among those who recite the Halil every day.
Hallel every day, they're not allowed to say Hallel every day. Pesukah de-zimr is Hallel. It's singing the praise of Hashem. People who recite the Pesukah de-zimr every single day are bringing themselves closer to God every single day. The main part of Pesukah de-zimr we said is Asherah, and it's appropriate to recite a blessing before
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and a blessing after. And the blessing before is the Boruch Sh'amar. The blessing after is Yishtabach. And this is why our sages tell us that one should not talk during Psyche de Zimra. Why? Because you're in middle of a blessing. You recited the blessing of Boruch Sh'amar at the beginning and you're reciting the blessing of Yishtabach at the end. In the middle you're reciting the Asherah and you have the Hodu.
You have the Mismillah Soda, you have the Yihih Chavod before Ashray and then you have all the Hallelukas and you have the Azjashir after. It's all one unit and therefore we don't talk. We have to also remember that the purpose of Pesukah Dezimra is to serve as an introduction to all of prayer.
that's to get us to the right frame of mind. And finally, Boruch Shoma and Yishtabach are the entrance and the exit of the main hallway of prayer. We start off at one doorway, we end off at the other doorway. What do we go through? That's the channel, the hallway that brings us from one level to the next level. We started off with the blessings,
We spoke about the offerings, we say the offerings. We want to get to the Shema. How do we get there? We have got to go through this hallway. This hallway is a place that transforms us. What does a hallway serve? It brings you from one place to the other. The hallway of our prayer, the hallway of our greatness in life is the song and praise that we sing in front of God.
When we are thankful to Hashem, we're transitioning ourselves to higher heights, to greater level of greatness, to a greater revelation. We mentioned this so many times when we talk about blessings. If a person doesn't recite, a person supposed to recite, the Talmud says, one should recite 100 blessings a day. We bring a proof from the Torah. We bring a proof from King David that we should recite 100 blessings a day.
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100 blessings? It's a lot of blessings. Remember how blessed you are. That's what it is. Remember how blessed you are. Every day when we come to synagogue or if we're praying at home, remember to recite the Psyche Dezimro with focus, with intention, with calmness. Sing. You're supposed to sing it. Particularly the Mizmer al-Asada. You're supposed to sing it. We don't have that about other prayers. You're supposed to sing your prayers.
When you're saying thank you to Hashem, sing your thanks so it becomes part of you. It becomes part of who you are. My dear friends, Hashem should bless us that all of our prayers should be accepted. They should all be elevated. We should all grow every single day via our prayers. It should be a vehicle that carries us closer and closer every single day to the service of Hashem. Amen.
I have one beautiful paragraph that I found here from the Ola Stamit. This is his introduction to Pesukkide Zimra, to these verses of song. He says as follows, Yohin v'yazmin ha'odom kol khusha ve'kol chosav lezamer ve'l eshorer le'forer u'leromim la'kodesh boruchu. He says the person should prepare and he should welcome all of his senses, all of his strength, all of his song to praise
and elevate the Almighty. And he said, get yourself to a point where you're calm and relaxed, that you can recite each word clearly, and at the very least to understand each word that you are reciting. The more you look into these precious words of
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He says, the more you invest in your prayer, so too will your joy, will your connection with God, your love of God will grow as well. Meaning, it is essential, it is essential for us to invest time on this journey of learning prayer.
to really understanding each and every word. That's his introduction. It's a very short introduction, but I think so powerful and so incredibly important for us to realize that the preparation for our prayer, the words, every single word, most of which is from Psalms from King David, is going to open up new pathways in our connection to Hashem, in our love of Hashem, and in our closeness with Hashem. My dear friends, thank you so much.
Have a wonderful week. Even if you don't understand what he's saying by reciting Amin, you're saying, I agree with what he's saying. I know he's praising God. I don't know exactly in what way he's praising God, but I'm adding myself to it. Count me in. So it's a very powerful thing to recite Amin because you're including yourself in that blessing. Even more so, let me share with you an amazing halacha. You know, you just mentioned previously that you're supposed to say a hundred blessings a day.
But what happens on Shabbos? On Shabbos we don't recite the Amidah, the 18 blessings of the Shmoness, right? We only recite Amidah of 7 blessings. So now we're in a deficit. We have like another 50 blessings to go. Our sages tell us by reciting a main to the blessings, for example, the reading of the Torah. Reading of the Torah, we're calling up 8 people who each recite 2 blessings, one before, one after. So there you go, you have a ready
16 blessings right there. Then you have the five blessings that when before they read the Haftar they read one and then four after. You got another five Amin's. Then you have the repetition of the Amidah, of the Chazen. You're getting more because every time you recite Amin it's as if you yourself recited a blessing. It's an amazing privilege, an amazing opportunity.
You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by Torch, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit TorchWeb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.