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DebraCohenMusic.com shares her secrets to happiness as a senior citizen full of Light. The answer is found in Psalm 1.

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Transcription

• Speaker #0

  I'm muted. Okay. Hello, this is Debra Cohen, "A Story in a Song", and today we're going to talk about happiness, because in the Jewish calendar, this is Adar, we're asked to be happy, put on a happy face, or that song that was popular decades ago, Don't Worry. Be happy! Okay, so how do you get happy? If that interests you, I'm going to share what works for me. And I'm not saying it's the only answer, but it's obvious that people are curious because I've had many people, when they meet me for the first time, ask me if I'm on drugs because I'm happy! So the answer is: I am not taking drugs (other than what senior citizens have to take for their aches and pains). But I do have an answer for what makes me happy. And the answer is found in the Bible. I would like to share the song that I wrote that teaches about this meaning of happiness. And if that interests you, I encourage you to find a happy place for the next 30 minutes where you can listen, learn, and share this teaching, because Lord knows we all need to get happy. I'll be right back after this message. Well... Okay, did I accidentally delete that message? Well, let's try another one.

• Speaker #1

  i [AD} plays song "Ashrei": debracohenmusic.com [END AD].

• Speaker #0

  and again this is Debra Cohen and technology is great when it works okay so I am going to share the secret to how to get happiness and it's not really a secret because it's in the Bible, right? For those of you who read or would like to read or want to know how to get happy, because some people might be saying, why should I get happy? Well, because it's important for your health. And see, God knew when he gave us the manual for the human condition of ailments, a lot of the healing secrets for us are written in the Psalms. So I'm going to talk about Psalm 1 today, which I recorded several years ago. And when I listen to it now with the ears of an engineer, recording engineer, which I'm a "DIY" artist, meaning do-it-yourself out of necessity, you know. Okay, so I noticed, you know, we get better when we practice something, right? So that includes it. engineering in the recording studio. I listen to this and I'm like, man, okay, so that's all I'll say. If you're an artist, you know exactly what I mean. Okay, all right, so let's talk about how to get happy based on Psalm 1. And if you have your Bible, I encourage you to open it up to Psalm 1. And in the Hebrew, it starts out by saying, If I can read this correctly, I'm a Hebrew language learner. Is this the right word? Okay. Oh, yes. Okay. Pardon me. Ashrei Ha-ish = Happy is the man. Ashrei (Hebrew) = ha'ish = the Man, well, wait a minute. If you're not a man, okay, don't worry, ladies. Isha, (just add an A at the end of ish), and now it's woman. Woman! Yeah, I'm a woman. I'm a woman. I'm a woman. Okay. "ashrei ha-isha" means happy is the woman or woman right ashrei. so now you're learning a little hebrew if you're interested, ashrei ha-isha = happy is the woman or "ashrei ha-ish" = happy is the man. Okay well why is this woman is happy! well i can tell you that i wasn't always happy i mean i actually was healed from depression in a church of all places, singing praises to God. So that gives you a clue of why I love to sing to God. For the health of it, for one thing. Okay, that was Psalm 1. Now the reason I'm talking about it today is because in Judaism, this is the month of Adar, which is our month to be happy. So we're commanded to be happy during this month. It's a month of increasing happiness. So if we talk about happy things and we're around happy people, we are happier. But it's not just that, because some people, they say they're happy, but their face says something different. Your face is a roadmap to your feelings. So if you're looking at somebody and... Take a look at whoever you're with right now, or if you're not with anybody, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, do I look happy? Your face, just like your eyes are a window to your soul, they reveal the truth of who or what you're feeling at the moment. Now I'm not saying that we should be happy 24-7. I mean, everybody with this life that we're in has issues of struggling, yes. And sometimes your countenance falls because you're dealing with life. Life happens. But the secrets... when we are struggling, are found in the Tehillim, the book of Psalms. So let me read this to you and listen with your spiritual ears. Because if you don't know it, your spirit being has senses just like your physical being has five senses. I think there's six or seven in the spiritual realm. A little rusty in that teaching because I haven't looked at it for like five years. I need to go back and revisit. So let's think about the fact that we are a physical being and a spiritual being. If this is a new concept to you, then you're in the right place. I didn't always know this. I thought, yeah, we're a physical being on a physical planet, and, you know, let's get physical. But it's much, much more. God made us even more complex than we can ever understand. There's a spirit within each one of us, wearing this earth suit, the physical body that goes back to the dust when it takes its last breath. The spirit lives on, and it's up to each one of us where that spirit goes, but that's for another topic. All right, Psalm 1. Happy is the person who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or taken the path of sinners, or joined the company of the insolent. Rather, the teaching of the Lord is their delight, and they study that teaching day and night. They are like a tree planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose foliage never fades, and whatever. they do, produces and thrives, or prospers is another word for thrives. And that is not so with the wicked. Rather, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not survive judgment, nor will sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord cherishes the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is evil. doomed. And that is Psalm 1. Of course, there's many translations from the Hebrew, so you have to pick the one that you can glean understanding from. And if you don't quite understand it, then ask God to give you understanding. After all, that's where spiritual understanding comes from. from God. We have to ask for wisdom. We have to ask for knowledge. We have to ask for understanding. We have to ask for prudence. and we have to ask for, let's see, what's the fifth one? Discernment. Discernment. We must ask for these things from our creator so that when we read these words, we don't go, huh? And even if we have these five ingredients, we can still go, huh? It could be shelved for a later time because God shows the understanding. of his word at different times in our lives. That's one of the things that is beautiful about getting older, and I speak this as a senior citizen, because we never know it all. Although you probably know some people that think they know it all, but I call them experts who like to keep us gagged and bound because of their pride. And if you are easily intimidated, as I once was, those people can start to make you feel small because they want to, the Bible calls it, they're puffed up. All right, so let's get on to the teaching. I hope you enjoy this, and I love to revisit these songs that I previously recorded to see where I was at. when I wrote this song. After all, this podcast is called A Story and a Song, so I will share my recording of Psalm 1 at the end of this teaching. Now let's get into the story. People wax lyrical It says wax, right? Let me make my screen bigger. Yeah, people, and this is from the happy man of Psalm 1, from the website jbqnew.jewishbible.org. People wax lyrical when they describe the Psalter. Roland E. Prothero calls it the whole music of the heart of man. Solomon B. Freehoff's view is, the Psalms embody the highest ideas of biblical literature with a uniqueness of mood and expression. W.O.E. Osterly calls the Psalms poetry and religion, hand in hand. Over and above Psalms that seem to make music, there are, scattered through the books of Psalms, wisdom poems which neither praise, celebrate, nor even complain, but reflect on the meaning of life. There are themes, righteousness, Reflection and resolution are typical of wisdom literature as a whole. We recognize wisdom psalms by their vocabulary, such as wise, happy, blessed, and good. By their contrasts and comparisons, especially the wicked are as against the righteous. and by their themes, for example, the benefits of practical morality. Their authors are philosophers as well as poets. They weave together the spiritual quest and the search for moral foundations. These psalms join the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes as examples of wisdom literature in the Bible. So seeing this is the month of happiness in the Jewish calendar, we are talking about Ashrei, which I just shared earlier. Ashrei, it means joyful or happiness, some people think. There may have been a feeling that the book of Psalms should begin with an Aleph. That's the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, which would be a letter A in English. The Midrash states that the Torah itself would have begun with an Aleph, had bet the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which would be B in English, not been preferred for theological reasons that we won't get into today. Later, the Decalogue in Exodus 20 verse 2 and Deuteronomy 5 verse 6 does open with the Aleph of Anuchi. meaning I. In Hebrew, I = Anokhi. Retelling the history of mankind from the beginning, Chronicles starts with a large Aleph. Even if it was considered significant that the Psalter begins with the letter Aleph, this does not explain why the specific word was chosen Ashrei, which Ashrei is Hebrew for happiness or joyous. According to Yehud Shemoni on the first verse of this psalm, verse Psalm 1, David, the traditional author of psalms, wanted to begin his book where Moshe Rabbeinu had left off in the Torah. Moses said, Ashrecha Yisrael. In Deuteronomy 33, verse 29, that means, Fortunate are you, O Israel. Here David begins, with the words, Ashrei Ha'ish, or if you're a woman, Ashrei Ha'isha. However, it seems that there is a more fundamental reason to begin Psalms with this particular word, Ashrei. This psalm is a wisdom poem, and beginning the book of Psalms in this way, prioritizing a wisdom poem, bolsters the case for the chacham, meaning wisdom, the sage and scholar, as against the chesed, the holy pious, placing study and contemplation above cultic and private devotions. It may have been part of an ancient struggle to define the ideal Jewish type. This is not necessarily a revolt against religion, but a debate within it. Wisdom and piety are both important, and the question is which has priority. The rabbis assert, according to the book of Pirkei Avot, chapter 2, verse 8, quote, an ignorant person cannot be pious. Wisdom is the path to piety. The happy man of Psalm 1 or happy woman of Psalm 1 chooses a life in the Torah, as it is written in verse 2, studying it in both their active and restful hours. He contemplates his law day and night. Now I'm using the pronoun he because that's the way the poem is written, but it also includes women. According to Rashi's commentary, the his refers in the first instance to God, but once the happy man engages with the Torah, it becomes his own. We presume he prays and follows regular pietistic practices, but his real priority is his study of God's Word. So the question you would ask at this point in the teaching is, does that describe you? Does that describe me? The meaning of Ashrei Ha'ish or Ashrei Ha'isha. Happy is the man is probably the most English rendering of "Ashrei Ha'ish". Ashrei appears to denote the contended state of being that comes from the directed life. The root of Ashrei is the letters in Hebrew Aleph, Shin, Reish, which opens up an array of possible connections with words featuring the same root. Now, if you're listening as a Christian, you might get a little bit, well, I don't want to say lost, but you don't understand it because you don't read Hebrew, then just kind of hang in there. Ash-re-shin-resh, which opens up an array of possible connections with words featuring the same root letters. Rashi supports the linking of aleph-shin-resh with esher, meaning a step. S-T-E-P. He notes that Psalm 1, verse 1, uses a series of verbs connecting with stepping or moving. Walk, stand, sit. Complementing but complicating this approach with questionable etymology, Aleph-Shin-Resh thus connotes action, not a mere state of being. This approach is found elsewhere in the Bible. For example, Walk not in the way of evil men, according to Proverbs 4, verse 14. Yishru b'derech bina, walk in the way of understanding. Proverbs 9 verse 6, In asheru chamotz, straighten the oppressed. In Isaiah chapter 1 verse 17. This would indicate that the happy man of this psalm is a man or woe man of action. What sort of activities are we engaged in? We ask ourselves, some psalms are more emotional and spiritual, with heroes or sheroes, who throb with emotion, with ecstasy, as well as agony. Psalm 16:11, for one, speaks of sova semachot et panecha, fullness of joy in your presence, and ne'imot be'yimenecha. netzach, bliss at your right hand forever. But it does not use the word ashram. Psalm 1 does not rule out a happy man bounding with delight, but the more probable picture is of a man who is calm and at ease, content with values that have brought Him, stability and well-being, a state of mind, not an excited high. Not H-I, like hello, but H-I-G-H, like the most high. It is not his heart which rejoices as much as his mind and soul. He has chosen the path of wisdom. His happiness is a state of being. Isidore Epstein explains that the happiness in this psalm is not ecstatic, but rather indicates a life of inspiration and consecration, a call to service and action, the doing of righteousness. For Martin Buber, Psalm 1 is the paradigm of the man who often delineated in wisdom literature. Buber's notion of Ha'ish, the man, or Ha'isha, the woman, more active than Epstein's vague characterization of the doing of righteousness. For him the message of Psalm 1 is the happy man has a way, a direction, which brings him benefit. All that he does shall prosper, are the words in Psalm 1, while the way of the wicked peters out. Happiness is the reward given for attaining righteousness. In most cases, righteousness is understood as a set of values chosen by the recipient. So, in other words, do you choose to be happy? Generally, an individual, but sometimes the people as a whole. Again, which is why in the month of Adar, March, Jewish people understand there is increasing joy if we choose to embrace it. Happiness. Some values are ethical, such as charity and justice. Others are spiritual, atonement and piety. Like the happy man of Psalm 1, the recipients of divine blessing keep away from evil and contemplate the divine law, the Torah. The common thread is, in Buber's terms, that they lead directed lives. What is their happiness? Not singing and dancing, not ecstasy nor excitement, but contentment and satisfaction. So I will stop there and share my recording of Psalm 1. Think about this teaching as you listen to the words, and by all means, share my music. which you can find at DeborahCohenMusic.com. So think about this month of happiness. In Judaism, it's called Adar. Think about the wisdom in this teaching from King David, Psalm 1, and ask yourself, do I choose to be happy? Am I joyous by choice? Or do I let the world weigh me down? If you are weighed down and you can't feel happiness or joy, then find the answers to happiness in the lyrics of this song: (Psalm 1 by Debra Cohen)

• Speaker #1

  Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the wicked , nor stands in the conduct of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scoffers. But his deLight is in the Torah of Adonai, and in his Torah does he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. His leaves shall also not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. shall prosper... see all of the lyrics and get the song here: https://debracohenmusic.bandcamp.com/track/psalm-1