The Tal­mud tells the sto­ry of the time when King David sets out to dig the foun­da­tion of the Tem­ple that would stand in Jerusalem. David digs and digs until he finds a lit­tle ceram­ic pot and reach­es to pull it out. But this piece of pot­tery speaks and says to David, ​“Do not move me.” David asks, ​“Why not?” The pot replies, ​“I am here to hold back the tehom, the abyss” (Jerusalem Tal­mud, San­hedrin 10:2).

The Book of Gen­e­sis intro­duces us to the idea of tehom in its first vers­es: ​“When God began to cre­ate the heav­ens and the earth, the earth was unformed and void. And there was dark­ness over the face of tehom—the chaot­ic abyss” (Gen. 1:1 – 2). In the sto­ry of cre­ation, the tehom seems to be an essen­tial, if dis­or­dered, ingre­di­ent of cre­ation, part of the foun­da­tion upon which the world is built. How­ev­er, just a few chap­ters after the cre­ation of the world in Gen­e­sis, once Noah and his fam­i­ly are safe­ly inside the ark, ​“The tehom bursts open and the earth is entire­ly over­come” (Gen. 7:11). In Noah’s sto­ry, chaos is a relent­less, crush­ing wave that over­takes every­thing in its wake. Once it is released, there is noth­ing to hold it back. The same tehom that serves as the foun­da­tion of all cre­ation also becomes the sin­gu­lar force for its destruction.

This is the force David encoun­ters when dig­ging the foun­da­tions of the Tem­ple; just a sim­ple shard of pot­tery lies between him and chaos: ​“I am here to hold back the tehom.”

But David lifts it any­way. And when he does, the tehom ris­es and threat­ens to flood the world. David can’t fit the pot back into its place. So what should he do? The Tal­mud tells us that he begins to sing:

A Song of Ascendings.

From the deep­est place in me I called You, Adonai.

… For with You par­don dwells … (Psalm 130:1, 4).

David com­pos­es the ma’alot psalms, the songs of ascent. And as he sings each of these soar­ing psalms, the world is lift­ed from the tehom (Jerusalem Tal­mud, San­hedrin 10:2). Push­ing the dark­ness back down is not pos­si­ble, so instead, David — with his music and poet­ry — lifts the world up. Leg­end has it that our most beau­ti­ful and endur­ing songs of hope were cre­at­ed in the face of over­whelm­ing despair.

When I began my own explo­ration of the psalms as part of my rab­binic cap­stone project about eight years ago, I often felt myself in David’s place, try­ing to sup­press the ris­ing dark­ness, to stop it from seep­ing through the cracks. This is what led me to write To You I Call: Psalms Through­out Our Lives. There is so much tehom in the world around us; there are so many rea­sons to despair. I was search­ing for the words to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly express the yearn­ings of my heart and to con­nect me with Jew­ish tra­di­tion. I was look­ing for a way to face the grow­ing tehom, and for words of com­fort to offer to oth­ers. I was look­ing for a way to do my small part to lift the world up. Just like David, I felt com­pan­ion­ship amid hope­less­ness. The psalter pro­vides us with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to deep­en our con­nec­tion to each oth­er, to our ances­tors, and to God, if only we know where to begin. That is what To You I Call strives to do: to pair ancient psalms with our con­tem­po­rary needs, whether we are expe­ri­enc­ing despair and pain (such as los­ing a loved one or fac­ing anti­semitism) or grat­i­tude and heal­ing (like com­ing out or cel­e­brat­ing a birthday).

Our tra­di­tion teach­es us that years after David dug the Temple’s foun­da­tion, the con­struc­tion was com­plet­ed and these ma’alot psalms became the ones our ances­tors recit­ed as they ascend­ed the Temple’s steps. And after they did so, they would enter the court­yard of the Tem­ple, recit­ing vers­es of psalms the entire time. Then, the usu­al path around the court­yard would take them along a cir­cle to the right. But a per­son who entered the court­yard in despair would cir­cle instead in the oppo­site direc­tion, to the left. The peo­ple cir­cling to the right would look into the faces of the peo­ple cir­cling to the left, and would ask: ​“Mah lach? What has hap­pened to you?” After the per­son cir­cling left answered, the per­son cir­cling right would offer them a bless­ing (Mish­nah Mid­dot 2:2).

It was upon the Tem­ple Mount, the place where David unleashed the tehom and where pri­mor­dial dark­ness threat­ened to over­whelm every­thing, that our ances­tors would look each oth­er in the eyes and offer the sim­plest yet most pro­found acts of kind­ness: recog­ni­tion, under­stand­ing, bless­ing. Relief was not nec­es­sar­i­ly pos­si­ble, but com­pan­ion­ship was.

There is much rea­son to despair today. In the past year alone, we have all entered that court­yard and, dare I say, turned left. We have all felt despair’s depths, lost loved ones, strug­gled with ill­ness, felt the crash­ing of deeply held beliefs, the feel­ing that we can­not sum­mon any more strength or fath­om any more grief, any more pain. We have felt the shat­ter­ing of hope itself, the threat of the ris­ing tehom. So much has been lost, and it seems that there is still so much yet to lose.

We learn from our ances­tors, who expe­ri­enced times as dark as these, that we can­not force the chaot­ic abyss back beneath the earth; it was released long ago. What we can do is return to that court­yard. We have a com­mu­ni­ty, a whole world even, singing beside us. We are all despair­ing. And because of it, we are not wait­ing or look­ing for hope — we are com­pos­ing it. We are becom­ing it. We greet each oth­er, shoul­der to shoul­der, we grasp hands, and step by step, we lift the world up. We are each other’s Songs of Ascent.