One August morning, I found myself on the banks of the West River in Jamaica, VT, reflecting on what it meant to dwell in G-d’s house. I was perched on a sun-warmed boulder, surrounded by lush forest and the soothing rhythm of flowing water. Yes! I thought. I could live in this house “all the days of my life,” in the words of Psalm 27. 

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It was no mere chance that this psalm was on my mind — I’d been reading it every day since the new moon. It’s a Jewish custom to read Psalm 27 twice every day during Elul, the transformational month preceding Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Elul invites us to prepare for the new year and the High Holy Days work of teshuvah — a word most commonly translated as “repentance” but which can also be understood as “returning to Self.” Reading Psalm 27 — rich with proclamations of faith and encouragement as it honestly bears witness to life’s struggles — each day is a way to support this reflective self-accounting.

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For years, reading this psalm had been one of my favorite practices of the Jewish calendar cycle. But it became even more powerful when I began using the contemplative process of lectio divina or kriat ha-kodesh (reading the sacred)* — a practice of listening with the heart for a word or phrase that resonates and then meditating and reflecting or journaling on it to uncover personal meaning. 

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My journey with this practice had begun that year on Rosh Chodesh Elul with my New Moon Circle. We adopted a fairly simple approach: First, one member read the psalm aloud as we allowed the words to wash over us, without forming any ideas or attachments. Then they read it again, this time inviting everyone to listen for “their” phrase — the words that resonated with their heart — and let go of the rest. We each shared our phrase aloud, then sat in silence together for several minutes, meditating on the words we’d chosen. Finally, we each shared what had emerged in the silence. Each insight illuminated the sacred text from a new angle, until we saw it more fully than we ever could alone. 

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This practice was so powerful that we decided to continue to work with it throughout the month, moving to Slack as a platform to support our daily reading and reflection and to share insights that emerged. Some members of the group worked with the Hebrew words of the psalm, gifting us with their text-study wisdom, while others explored and shared from the rich array of English translations that are available. 

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That day by the West River, I’d been reading a translation by Rabbi Zalman Shachter Shalomi. I felt myself drawn to the words from verse 4: 

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“I want to be at home with you, Yah,

All the days of my life.

I want to delight in seeing You.

Seeing You when I come to visit You in Your temple.”

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To the group, I wrote, “This place feels like G-d’s temple, and I am so delighted! And I love Reb Zalman’s translation of shivti b’veit Adonai as ‘to be at home with’ G-d rather than the more common ‘to dwell in G-d’s house.’ It tells me that home can be anywhere. Can I take this glorious feeling I find in nature and activate it even when I’m far from it?”

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Other days felt far from delightful. Later that month, I found myself facing one of the worst days of my life. As my husband and I confronted a health scare with our young daughter, I wondered how I could still be at home with G-d. But verse 5 rose up to comfort me: “You cover me with the tabernacle of your presence on a day when hardship comes” (Pamela Greenberg). “I’m thankful for G-d’s presence,” I wrote to the group. “It doesn’t make the hardship go away, but it makes it easier to move through it.”

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Over the course of the month, our group’s insights mapped the landscape of the psalm. We explored grief and loss in the verse, “Though my father and mother abandon me” (verse 10, JPS); unpacked the exquisite longing for connection in the line, “My heart says, ‘Seek my face!’” (verse 8, JPS); discovered strength and fresh perspectives on life’s difficulties with the words, “The Infinite … lifts me high upon a rock” (verse 5, Yael Levy); and reveled in the joy of finding one’s voice in the Divine relationship: “In your tent, I will make my songs into offerings, singing forth all my melodies to your name” (verse 6, Pamela Greenberg). 

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By the end of the month, I felt as if the psalm in its entirety — with an array of English translations and a few poignant Hebrew phrases I’d learned along the way — was flowing through my veins. Standing at the threshold of the new year, I felt more resourced than ever for the Days of Awe, ready for teshuvah, for the return to my Self.

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At the end of our time together, one group member expressed their gratitude: “This community practice has shown that when I read something anew many times, paying attention each time, I can find a multitude of meanings — all different, all true.” The gift of this practice is that we can return to it each year, finding what’s new and feeling ever renewed in our annual journey back to Self.

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* Lectio divina (Latin for “reading the sacred”) is a Christian monastic practice of scriptural reading, meditation, and prayer dating back to the 3rd century C.E. In recent years, Rabbi Leila Gal Berner has adapted this practice into a Jewish approach to engaging with Torah, calling it kriat ha-kodesh in Hebrew.

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At The Well uplifts many approaches to Jewish practice. Our community draws on ancient Jewish wisdom, sometimes adapting longstanding practices to more deeply support the well-being of women and nonbinary people. See this article’s sources below. We believe Torah (sacred teachings) are always unfolding to help answer the needs of the present moment.

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Sources

The Psalm to Read Before Rosh Hashana, My Jewish Learning

Psalm 27: A Lectio Divina, Insight Timer

Psalm 27, Sefaria.org

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