From Kitzingen to London, From Berlin to Boston Charting the Pathways of an Intriguing Siddur Translation

From Kitzingen to London, From Berlin to Boston
Charting the Pathways of an Intriguing Siddur Translation

Yaakov Jaffe

The vast library of Koren English-language Siddurim generally follow the same translation of the prayers, authored by the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, including “The Koren Siddur” (Sacks, 2009),” The Koren Soloveitchik Siddur (2011), “The Magerman Edition” (Goldmintz, 2014), “Zimrat Ha-Aretz Birkon” (2015), ”Birkon Mesorat Harav” (Hellman, 2016), “Rav Kook Siddur” (2017), and others.  Of note is their translation of Psalm 37:25, the penultimate verse of the Grace After Meals: “Once I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never watched a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread.”  This translation followed an interesting path from its original formulation to the siddur, and simultaneously addresses Hebrew lexicography, theology, and poetics.  This essay will investigate the impact and origins of this translation, within the context of the original verse, Psalm 37.  

Psalm 37 and the Pursuit of Wisdom 

The 37th Psalm is one of the 8-9 acrostic Psalms (9-10, 25, 34, 37, 119, 111, 112, 119, 145); in this Psalm every letter of the Hebrew alphabet begins one long verse or two average-size verses.  The acrostic Psalms have much in common besides just their format or structure as they share common themes and also common phrases.[1] Many of the acrostic Psalms contain basic principles of Jewish thought, a basic, foundational outlook on Judaism, without some of the deeper theological musings of some of the other, non-acrostic Psalms.[2] They provide basic guidance and encouragement on how to live one’s life, without considering deeply or in any detail the outcomes of living the religious life. 

For that reason, it is common to find broad, overarching promises of good for the righteous in these chapters.  Not intended philosophically but intended educationally, they paint in broad strokes that good things befall the righteous.  Guarding one’s tongue yields life (34:12-15), Hashem saves the righteous and none of their bones are broken (34:18-23, 37:39-40, 145:19-20), the righteous person is wealthy (112:3), the righteous will inherit land (“Yirshu Aretz” 37:9, 11, 22, 29, 34), will merit peace (37:37), will be full at a time of famine (37:19), will lack nothing (34:10-11, which also appears at the end of the Grace After Meals).

Thus, the key verse in question, 37:25, “Once I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen/watched a righteous person forsaken or his children seeking for bread” is consistent with the wider tone of this Psalm and this type of Psalm; it speaks in simple absolutes about the benefits of religious experience without attending to the details of theodicy and the real world, practical experiences of the righteous individual.  The words “le-olam,” and “La-ad,” “forever” appear four times in the chapter (37:18, 27, 28, 29).  The chapter paints a picture for the righteous to strive for; it doesn’t describe factual realities experienced by the author and Psalmist.

Talmudic Solutions to the Problem of Psalm 37

The student of literature and poetry would, thus, not be bothered by 37:25 and its implication that no righteous person ever went hungry. The genre and tone of the Psalm indicate that the verse isn’t meant to be understood as literally describing the goings-on of the world.  It is aspirational and hortatory more than it is descriptive.

Still, the simple reading of the verse is troubling to many, especially when read out of its originally literary context. The simple translation appears to state that the Psalmist has never seen righteous never go hungry, something we know to not actually be the case. Numerous answers have been given and can be given to this question; one appears to be given in the Talmud even.  Before turning to Rabbi Sacks’s approach to the verse, we survey these earlier approaches.

Psalm 37:25 finds many parallels with 37:32-33, and it is helpful to look at these two verses side by side, with shared words in bold:

Once I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen/watched a righteous person forsaken or his children seeking bread.

The wicked watches for the righteous person and seeks to kill him. Hashem does not forsake him into his hands and will not cause him to be incriminated in his judgment.

The two verses share three words in common, and also convey the same idea in unequivocal terms – the righteous faces nothing bad, and is always protected by G-d.  Though the Talmud never discusses any theological problems with 37:25, it has a lengthy discussion of the parallel problem in 37:32-33, and the same Talmudic solution for the latter verse can also solve the problem with the former.

The Talmud reads (Brachot 7b): 

Rav Hunah said, what is the meaning of the verse [in Habakuk’s theodicy] ‘Why do You look at treacherous ones, are you silent when a wicked person swallows someone more righteous than him’?  Does a wicked person swallow a righteous person?  But does it not say: ‘Hashem does not forsake him into his hands’…?”  Rather, he swallows someone ‘more righteous than him,’ but he does not swallow someone who is fully righteous (Tzadik Gamur).

The Talmud provides a solution to understanding why the blessings to the righteous person of Psalm 37 are not entirely fulfilled today. The Psalm refers to someone fully righteous, with no sins or faults, a rare individual; perhaps everyone to reach this lofty status does, indeed, never lack from bed.  The Talmud uses the same phrase “fully righteous” (Tzadik Gamur) on the previous page to solve the general problem of theodicy; when there is a righteous person who faces difficult times, our interpretation is that this righteous person is not “fully righteous.”[3] This argument can apply to the entire chapter, and surely also to 37:25, the verse which shares so much which 37:32-33.  The word “Tzadik,” righteous, appears nine times in the chapter (37:12, 16, 17, 21, 25, 29, 30, 32, 39), and once the Talmud limits one of the nine to someone fully righteous, it would follow that all nine occurrences, and thus the entire chapter, only speaks of the rare, special, fully righteous Tzadik Gamur.  The word Rasha, which Brachot 7a says can similarly be limited to someone totally wicked also appears frequently in the Psalm (13 times -37:10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, 40).[4]

I have never “seen a truly righteous person forsaken,” because this unique, singular, generational figure is never forsaken by G-d, never goes starving and never lacks anything.

Other Solutions to 37:25

The literary solution to 37:25 and the Talmudic solution to 37:25 should suffice to explain the verse fully, and no additional solutions to the problem are necessary.  Still, traditional commentaries have offered many more solutions to the problem, listed below:

• Ibn Ezra and Radak explain that the righteous are never totally forsaken, lacking bread and clothing (based on Bereishit 28:15), even if they sometimes face poverty, lack, or destitution.

• Malbim explains that the speaker has never seen the righteous and his children forsaken, for any setback is temporary, and success always follows for the righteous in the next generation.  This view was also offered by Kli Yakar to Devarim 15:10.[5]
• Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch explains that the righteous are never forsaken by G-d, such that even if they are impoverished, G-d sends agents, sometimes other charitable human beings, to provide for the needs of the righteous. They are not forsaken, because other people performing the Mitzvah of Tzedakah take care of them.

• Maharam Shik to Yevamot (16b) says that the verse means to say that the righteous never feel forsaken.  Even when facing difficulty, even when starving for bread, the righteous always feel Hashem is with them, and are never emotionally, spiritually alone.[6]

• Others take the descriptions of physical want as being mere metaphors of spiritual want.  Perhaps the righteous go starving, but they never lack from the real, true spiritual “bread.”[7]
• Still others offer different translations for “seen”:  I never “mocked” (Riva Bereishit 28:15), or never “understood” (Pnei Shlomoh Brachot 7a)

The Preferred Translation of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

With many possible interpretations and solutions for the line, each reader can choose the interpretation and translation that resonates best for them, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks already expressed his preferred translation in 2005, before the publishing of his siddur translation.  In To Heal a fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), Rabbi Sacks wrote (57):

I cherished an interpretation Mo Feuerstein offered (he had heard it, I think, from Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik) of one of the most difficult lines in the Bible: ‘I was young and now am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread’… The verb ‘seen’ [ra’iti] in this verse, said Feuerstein, is to be understood in the same sense as in the book of Esther: ‘How can I bear to see [ra’iti] disaster fall on my people?’ (Esth. 8:6). ‘To see’ here means ‘to stand still and watch’. The verse should thus be translated, ‘I was young and now am old, but I never merely stood still and watched while the righteous was forsaken or his children begged for bread.’ (pp. 57-58, italics in the original)

This solution is different from all the other ones, because it turns the narrator of the chapter from a passive reporter of events to an active participant in the conversation of moral action and righteousness.  Instead of passively narrating that the righteous never lack food, he makes an active statement about his own righteous action, saying that as a good person, he would never allow the righteous to go hungry.  This answer provides a wonderful interpretation for the verse, albeit one that does not exactly conform with the role of the narrator over the course of the chapter.  Out of context, however, the translation works and create a resounding charge for how we should ask.

There is no reason to doubt that Rabbi Sacks preferred this explanation, or that he heard it from Mo Feurstein, a leader of the Jewish community in Brookline, Mass. when Rabbi Sacks visited in the late 1970s.[8] There is also no reason to doubt that Mr. Feurstein had heard this explanation from one of the leading rabbis of the Brookline community at the time.  However, there is some reason to question whether this view was indeed the translation preferred by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rav z”l.

Beiurei Ha-Tefillah and the Rabbis of Maimonides School

There are three reasons to doubt whether the Sacks translation should be associated with the Rav z”l.  First, it seeks to solve a theological or Biblical-exegetical problem using Biblical lexicography – which was not the conventional way Rabbi Soloveitchik generally addressed Biblical or theological problems in his other writings.[9]  Second, when considering Turkel’s extensive index of the Rav’s writing, one finds no entry for Psalms 37:25.[10]  Though this index does not include every last one of the Rav’s writings, and surely also doesn’t include his oral addresses and personal conversations, its absence from the list is telling.  Ironically, the idea that the Bible asks us to respond to the experience with poverty through action and not idle speculation is an idea that finds resonance in the Rav’s writings,[11] but the author has not found this particular reading of Psalms 37:25 yet in the Rav’s writings.

The best reason to doubt the attributions can be found in the writings of Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth, another leading Rabbi in Brookline at the time.  A holocaust survivor, Rabbi Wohlgemuth taught at Maimonides for decades, later focusing his attention on a course on the prayers, affectionately titled “Beiuri Ha-Tefillah.”  The course notes were later published as a book, which has since been republished a number of times.[12] and Rabbi Sacks’s preferred translation does, indeed, appear on the 231^st page of that book, without attribution to any earlier scholar by name.  Rabbi Wohlgemuth often quotes the Rav z”l in the volume, his colleague and neighbor for decades.  Why would this explanation be introduced cryptically with the words “I have seen it interpreted the following way” instead of being directly attributed to the Rav?  Given how many times the Rav is mentioned by name in the volume,[13] one imagines Rabbi Wohlgemuth heard this translation for someone else, or better still read it in the name of someone else, and not from the Rav, otherwise it would have been attributed to Rabbi Soloveitchik.

To review the provenance of the translation, we now see that Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth heard or read the translation from a hitherto unidentified commentator, and that he communicated this translation to his students in Maimonides, and to other residents of the Brookline community, including Mo Feurstein or a third party who then shared the translation with Mr. Feurstein.  Mr. Feurstein shared the explanation with Rabbi Sachs, with the slight error that the view was associated with Rabbi Wohlgemuth and his teachers, and not specifically with Rabbi Soloveitchik.  But who originated the translation?  We must look back earlier to the start of the 20th century to discover who first offered this translation.

The Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary

Before moving to Boston, Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth’s (1915-2008) first position was in Kitzingen, Germany, a Rabbinical post he began after concluding the Hildesheimer Rabbinical  Seminary in Berlin in 1937, shortly before the school was closed upon the eve of the Holocaust.[14] One of the teachers in the Seminary who died shortly before Rabbi Wohlgemuth attended, was Dr. Abraham Berliner, best known for his critical edition of Rashi’s Bible Commentary and his work behind the Mekitzei Nirdamim publishing society.[15] Berliner also wrote a short work on prayer, later translated into Hebrew and published by Mossad Ha-Rav Kook.

In a short paragraph at the end of a chapter of collected short notes on the siddur, Berliner suggests the same very reading found in the Sacks translation, noting that it goes against the exegetical tradition found in the Book of Psalms, and nevertheless offers the idea as his own, with the proof text from Esther cited above.[16] Berliner is the first and the only translator to offer this interpretation and not to cite it in the name of any other source, and so it is fair to say that he is the original author of this translation.[17] Thus, even if the Rav was part of the chain of the transmission of the insight, it ought not be attributed to him, given that Berliner had already began to circulate the insight when the Rav z”l was only nine years old.

Though Berliner had passed away before Rabbi Wohlgemuth arrived at the seminary, there were less than 20 years in between the two, and so the insight was either passed down orally in Berlin and possibly also accessible through Berliner’s book in the seminary.  Given that Berliner was essentially unknown to his students at Maimonides – in noted contradistinction to the Rav – Rabbi Wohlgemuth intentionally chose not to provide his name when sharing the idea with his students. But he had read the idea in the name of Berliner, not in the name of the Rav.

Chains of Transmission

The Siddur is one of the biggest repositories of the Jewish tradition – recited daily in synagogues and in homes, with a safely guarded set of customs for each Jewish community.  So much of what we say today can be traced back to a specific historical moment of time, and each generation adds a new element or aspect to the siddur.  Users of the Koren siddur now can appreciate the lengthy and somewhat circuitous history of their translation.  Birthed by Dr. Abraham Berliner in Berlin in the early 20th century, a young Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth learned the idea in the late 1930s and brough the insight out of the destruction of the holocaust to Brookline and Boston by way of a small synagogue in Kitzingen.  A major community leader, Moses Feurstein heard the insight in Boston in the 1960s, internalized its message, and then shared it with a young Rabbi Jonathan Sacks upon his visit to Brookline in the late 1970s.  Rabbi Sacks treasured the idea for decades, returning to it in his writings and his siddur translation, back in Europe although now in London, publishing it in the Koren siddur roughly one century after the idea was first formed.  London and Berlin are less than 600 miles apart as the crow flies, but ideas sometimes take a somewhat more complicated route to get from one place to another.  And anyone using said siddur now continues the path of insight, from Europe to your own home, wherever it may be.