A Different Song Every Day

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Learn to Daven - Day 298.

Here's a strange thing you may never have noticed. We are 298 days into the siddur, and until this point, almost nothing we've said depends on what day it is. Modeh Ani is Modeh Ani on a Tuesday. The Amidah is the Amidah on a Thursday. You could daven the entire service with no idea what the date is.

And then, near the very end, the siddur suddenly stops and asks you: what day is it today?

Hayom yom rishon b'Shabbos. "Today is the first day of the week." And then a different psalm for each day - Sunday gets Psalm 24, Monday gets 48, Tuesday 82, Wednesday 94, Thursday 81, Friday 93. This is the Shir Shel Yom, the Song of the Day, and this week we're going to walk through all six of them, one morning at a time.

But today I want to answer the first question: why is there a song of the day at all?

The answer starts in the Beis HaMikdash. The Mishnah at the end of Maseches Tamid lists it out plainly: every morning, when the daily offering was brought and the wine was poured, the Leviim stood on their platform - the duchan - with instruments and voices, and they sang. Not a random psalm. A specific psalm, assigned to that day of the week, the same one every Sunday, the same one every Monday, for centuries.

So the first thing to know is this: when you say the shir shel yom, you are not reading a poem. You are singing the Levites' part. The Temple is gone, the instruments are gone, the platform is gone - and this one piece of the Temple's music survived by moving into your siddur. It's the last surviving instrument of that orchestra, and every weekday morning, you're the one holding it.

Now the deeper question: why a different psalm each day? The Gemara in Rosh Hashanah asks exactly this, and Rebbi Yehudah answers in the name of Rebbi Akiva: each day's song corresponds to that day of creation. Sunday's psalm - "the earth is Hashem's" - because on day one, God acquired the world and ruled it alone. Monday's, because He divided the waters. Tuesday's, because He revealed the dry land. And so on through the week. The song of the day is a map. It tells you where you're standing in the week of creation - because in Jewish time, the week isn't a billing cycle. It's creation, replayed, every seven days.

And there's one more thing hiding in the announcement line, and to me it's the most beautiful part. Listen to the phrase again: hayom yom rishon b'Shabbos. Not "Sunday." Not the first day of "the week." The first day of Shabbos - the first day toward Shabbos.

The Ramban, in his commentary on the Aseres HaDibros, points out that this is how Jews count time. The nations gave the days names - names of gods, names of planets. We never did. In Torah Hebrew the days of the week have no names at all; they only have numbers, and the numbers count toward Shabbos. First day toward Shabbos. Second day toward Shabbos. The Ramban says this is itself how we fulfill "Remember the day of Shabbos" - we remember it all week, because every single day is defined by its distance from it.

So the shir shel yom is really a compass. Every morning it tells you two things: where you are, and which way you're facing. You are standing in day three of creation. You are facing Shabbos.

And I'll give you one small Chabad grace note, since we're sitting in a Chabad shul. The little book of daily teachings the Rebbe compiled - the one on the shelf right over there - is called HaYom Yom. "Today is the day." It's the opening phrase of the shir shel yom. A book that gives you one teaching for each day of the year is named after the line in davening that gives you one song for each day of the week. Same idea: no day is generic. Each one has its own music, and part of davening is finding out what today's is.

One last note: the Mishnah in Tamid ends with the seventh song - the psalm for Shabbos, "a song for the day that is entirely Shabbos." We won't cover it in this weekday series, but know that the ladder of six songs you're about to climb has a top rung.

Tomorrow we start climbing: Sunday's psalm, and the boldest opening claim in Tehillim - the earth, all of it, belongs to Someone else.