Hashem Pokeach Ivrim

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Learn to Daven - Day 80.

Today's verse should feel familiar, and I want you to notice why it feels familiar, because that's the whole lesson.

Hashem pokei'ach ivrim - God opens the eyes of the blind. Hashem zokef k'fufim - God straightens the bent.

We said both of those already this morning. Hours ago, davening-wise. Back in Birchos HaShachar - Day 9 and Day 12 of this series - baruch atah Hashem… pokei'ach ivrim, and zokef k'fufim. Same words. And zokef k'fufim we also just hit three days ago, in the missing-nun verse of Ashrei: someich Hashem l'chol hanoflim v'zokef l'chol hak'fufim.

So this is the third time this morning that a Jew has said that God straightens the bent. Third time. In one davening.

Which raises the obvious question, and it's a question worth asking out loud: why does the siddur keep saying the same thing? Isn't once enough? God knows. We know. Move on.

Here's the answer, and it comes straight out of Chassidus, and once you see it you'll see it everywhere in the siddur.

The Alter Rebbe, in Tanya, describes what davening actually is - and it's not what most people assume. Most people assume prayer is a transmission: I have information and requests, I send them upward. But Tanya describes tefillah as a sequence of descent. You start high and abstract, and you walk the idea down, level by level, until it lands somewhere it can actually change you. The Hebrew word for this is hamshachah - drawing something down.

And you can see that architecture in the two places this verse appears.

In Birchos HaShachar, when you said pokei'ach ivrim, what were you talking about? You had literally just opened your eyes. You were standing next to your bed. The blessing was about your body, this morning. Physical eyelids, physical light. It's the most concrete possible version of the idea.

Now you're in Psukei D'Zimrah, and David says it again - but look at the company it's keeping in this psalm. Read the surrounding verses. Oseh mishpat la'ashukim - who does justice for the oppressed. Nosein lechem lare'eivim - who gives bread to the hungry. Hashem matir asurim - who releases the imprisoned. Hashem shomer es geirim, yasom v'almanah y'oded - who guards the stranger, and sustains the orphan and the widow.

That's not a list about waking up. That's a list about the people the world forgets. The oppressed, the hungry, the imprisoned, the immigrant, the orphan, the widow. And sitting right in the middle of that list: the blind and the bent.

Same three words. Completely different altitude.

In Birchos HaShachar, pokei'ach ivrim meant: I couldn't see, and now I can. In Tehillim 146, it means: God is the one who attends to those nobody else attends to. The blind man in this psalm isn't you at 6:40 in the morning. He's the person the society has walked past.

So the repetition isn't repetition. It's the same truth said at two different depths, and the siddur put them in that order on purpose. First you learn it on your own body - that's the only place any of us can learn anything. I was blind and now I see. I was bent over in bed and now I'm standing. And then, an hour later, once the idea is in your muscles, David takes it and widens it: and He does that for everyone. Especially for the ones you don't see.

That's the hamshachah. That's the drawing-down. Except here it moves outward rather than downward - from my eyelids to the world's forgotten.

Now the third clause, which is the one people skip over. Hashem ohev tzaddikim - God loves the righteous.

Notice how the grammar breaks. The first two are actions: He opens, He straightens. Things God does. The third one isn't an action at all. It's an emotion. He loves.

Why put those in the same verse?

I'd suggest this. The first two clauses could leave you with a cold picture of God - a repair service. Something breaks, He fixes it. Blind, opened. Bent, straightened. Efficient, impersonal, like a utility company. And then David adds the third clause to tell you what's actually driving the first two. He doesn't open eyes because eyes are supposed to be open. He does it because of ohev - because there's love in it.

And one more thing about that word tzaddikim, because it can sting a little. God loves the righteous - and you're standing there at 7 in the morning thinking, well, some mornings I'm not sure I qualify.

But look at the sentence you're standing in. The whole verse - the whole psalm - is about God's attention going to the blind, the bent, the hungry, the imprisoned, the widow. Not one of those is a category of achievement. Every one of them is a category of need. So when ohev tzaddikim arrives at the end of that list, it's not a bar you have to clear. It's the last item in a list of people God moves toward. The blind, the bent, the fallen - and the ones who are trying. All of them get His attention. The trying is enough to make the list.

Tomorrow: we move into Psalm 147, and David opens it with a claim about praise itself - that it's pleasant. Not obligatory. Pleasant. We'll ask what that means.