{"id":80950,"date":"2020-10-05T13:01:46","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T10:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=80950"},"modified":"2020-10-05T13:01:46","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T10:01:46","slug":"ever-mindfulness-a-great-torah-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/ever-mindfulness-a-great-torah-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEver-Mindfulness\u201d – A Great Torah Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"80950","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34243,"related_cahpter":"583","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Imagining life as a never-ending royal audience\r\n\r\n","content":"

Our psalm is bookended by two supplications. In v.1, the psalmist asks: \u201cProtect me, O God, for I seek refuge in You,\u201d a request for physical security, while in the last verse, his request of God is that \u201cYou will teach me the path of life,\u201d seeking spiritual guidance. Implicitly, between the opening and closing he found the protection he sought, freeing him to concentrate on his religious self-improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n

This psalm has long been earmarked for use in and around occasions of death: funerals, cemeteries, houses of mourning, and death-day anniversaries (to Ashkenazim: <\/span>yahrzeit<\/span><\/em>, to Sephardim: <\/span>hashkabah<\/span><\/em>). This association appears to derive mainly from two lines in the psalm: \u201cYou will not abandon me to Sheol\u201d (10), and \u201cdelights are ever in Your right hand\u201d (11). Sheol is one of the \u201cseven pseudonyms of Gehinom\u201d (Eruvin 19a) and \u201cever\u201d (<\/span>netzach<\/span><\/em>) conveys both the sense of eternity and\u2014particularly when accompanied by God\u2019s \u201cright hand\u201d (see Exodus 15: 7)\u2014conquest (<\/span>nitzachon<\/span><\/em>). The combination, then, is understood as the triumph of the spiritual over the physical, exactly the <\/span>peshat<\/span><\/em> message we took at the outset, joining the form of the psalm with its content.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reference to the Lord\u2019s \u201cright hand\u201d in the closing is matched in v.8: \u201cI am ever mindful of the Lord\u2019s presence; He is at my right hand; I shall never be shaken.\u201d In its Hebrew original, <\/span>shiviti Ha-Shem lenegdi tamid<\/span><\/em>, the first clause is more readily identifiable as a commonplace of synagogue art, often decorating the reader\u2019s platform or displayed above the Holy Ark.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it is not limited to liturgical use, but has been applied quite broadly to religious aspects of life in general, as witnessed by its inclusion in R. Moshe Isserles\u2019s note to the very first paragraph of the opening chapter of the Orach Chayim section of the Shulchan Arukh:<\/span><\/p>\n

“I have set the Lord before me constantly” (Psalms 16:8); this is a major principle in the Torah and amongst the virtues of the righteous who walk before God. For a person’s way of sitting, his movements and his dealings while he is alone in his house are not like his way of sitting, his movements and his dealings when he is before a great king; nor are his speech and free expression as much as he wants when he is with his household members and his relatives like his speech when in a royal audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

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