Did You Have Your Eyes Shut, Then?

Did You Have Your Eyes Shut, Then?
Psalm 37: 21-40

There’s a poem by Jacqueline Osherow in which she imagines a Jewish boy who has learned the Psalms by heart saying them at Auschwitz and puzzling over Psalm 37 (“Psalm 37 at Auschwitz,” in Dead Men’s Praise [New York: Grove Press, 1999], 60–64). How could someone never have seen the faithful begging bread? Is it related to the conviction that they are “nourished by faith” (to adapt her translation of verse 3)? She refers to the way the line is used in the Jewish grace after meals (and thus in the Passover liturgy), and she describes how as a child she would never say it because she knew about Auschwitz and about what had happened to members of her family. Her rabbi told her that the psalm wasn’t to be taken historically; it was to be held onto like a dream. Yet the statement is expressed in the past tense, as if it happened. She does love to sing it now. Perhaps it’s a kind of confession; the hungry were there, but the psalmist didn’t see them. Yet at least it’s possible to imagine someone in the line at Auschwitz being able to repeat verse 10. Just a little longer, and the tormenters will be gone. And they were...