THOUGHTS REGARDING ASHREI אשרי

The Gemora in Brochos says כל האומר תהלה לדוד ג' פעמים ביום מובטח לו שהוא בן עולם הבא Everybody who says Tehilla L’Dovid (colloquially known as Ashrei) three times a day is assured to be rewarded with a portion in the world to come.I would like to raise various questions.

Firstly, what is so special about this kapital in tehillim that leads to such a great reward.

Secondly, as I mentioned above, it is known colloquially as Ashrei, אשרי because introducing the particular kapital, we say three times אשרי, firstly אשרי יושבי ביתך עוד יהללוך סלה followed by אשרי העם שככה לו אשרי העם שה' אלקיו, Praiseworthy are those who sit in Your House, they will continue to praise You forever. Praiseworthy is the nation that receives good from Hashem, Praiseworthy is the nation that Hashem is their one and only G-d.

Why is there this magnificent introduction, three times quoting Ashrei, אשרי . I could understand why the second two are utilised because in tehillim they appear in the last verse of the kapital before Tehilla L’Dovid and in fact, in the same way, at the end of Tehilla L’Dovid, we find a verse added ואנחנו נברך י-ה etc. Therefore, תהלה לדוד has an introduction and a further verse rounding off this very special praise of Hashem.

Why should אשרי יושבי ביתך be the opening sentence? This appears in Tehillim some sixty chapters earlier on. Furthermore, it is the opening possuk utilised right at the beginning.

I have another question, I would have thought that if one says this three times a day, the reason would be that one utters such praises to Hashem and therefore, connects in a special way and that enables a person to be at one with Hashem at all times of day and night. Accordingly, in the same way as we say our prayers three times a day, Shacharis, Mincha and Maariv, I would have thought that אשרי should have been the introduction to all three, but, in fact, we say אשרי twice in Shacharis, once before Mincha and not at all in Maariv, very strange!!

In order to try and deal with these various points, let us first of all concentrate on the grandeur and richness of the praises of Hashem in this particular kapital, chapter. The words Tehilla L’Dovid of course, mean a Praise to David, namely a series of praises that Dovid Hamelech gave to Hashem and it starts off with a keynote statement.

ארוממך אלקי המלך וכ''ו

I will exalt You, my G-d, the King, and I will bless Your Name forever and ever. (Not only that) Every day I will bless You and I will praise Your Name for ever and ever, (and) how great Hashem is (and) Every generation will do so etc.

If you carry on going through every letter, because each sentence commences with another letter of the Alef Bais, in order, you find extraordinary praises of Hashem in various different ways, but the Kingship of Hashem is not mentioned again after the opening phrase until it is mentioned three times in three verses.

כבוד מלכותך יאמרו, the honour of Your Kingdom they will express.

The next verse ends וכבוד הדר מלכותו, to inform Bnei Odom His mighty deeds and the glorious splendour of His Kingdom.

And the climax of it all is וממשלתך בכל דר ודר מלכותך מלכות כל עולמים, Your Kingdom is a Kingdom over all the worlds and your dominion throughout every generation.

The Mizmor carried on as we know until the famous posek of פותך את ידך ומשביע לכל חי רצון, where we ask Hashem to open His Hand and continue showering us with good things etc.

Going through this posek by posek one begins to get a feel of the tremendous series of praise and exultations made.

However, in order to understand the אשרי introduction, I think we need to go back right to the beginning of Torah.

We are told that all the creation, the בריאה was to enable the first man, Odom Harishon to run the world in a smooth manner. לעבדה ולשמרה. He was the פנימיות, the core reason for the creation of all other items. The sun, the moon, the stars, the lands, the oceans, the animals, the birds, the trees, the plants etc. We are also told that the word בראשית, the first word in Torah is one of the ten מאמרים, utterances with which Hashem created the world. In fact, it was the first one, and therefore, it was the creation of יש מאין, matter from what previously did not exist.

If we look at the word בראשית, the first letter is a ב, the last letter is a ת, in between you have ר א ש י which are the same letters as the word אשרי, that is the פנימיות of בראשית.

We are also told that Odom Harishon should have lived for the whole time that the world was in existence, subject to him not eating the Eitz Hadaas, but he did eat and, therefore, was supposed to die the same day. Hashem mitigated this by stating that 1,000 years was equivalent to one day and, therefore, Odom Harishon was due to live for 1,000 years.

The medrash tells us that Odom Harishon saw that Dovid Hamelech did not have any years and gave him 70 years. Odom Harishon only lived for 930 years, and 70 years were received by Dovid Hamelech.

I suggest that whereas all of us being descendents of Odom Harishon have, in some very, very small manner part of the neshomo, the soul, of Odom Harishon however minute. Dovid Hamelech had the whole neshomo, of Odom Harishon, and his purpose was to be מתקן, to rectify, that which Odom Harishon had spoiled.

If we look at the first posek in the whole of Tehillim, I believe that this is a guide to exactly what Dovid Hamelech was trying to achieve. It reads אשרי האיש אשר לא הלך בעצת רשעים ובדרך חטאים לא עמד ובמושב לצים לא ישב, Praiseworthy is a man who did not follow the advice of wicked people, did not stand in the path of sinners and did not sit with לצים, scorners.

I think that one can say that this alludes to what happened at the time that the forbidden fruit of the Eitz Hadas was eaten, בעצת רשעים refers to the נחש, the serpent who advised Chava to eat and that nothing would happen. After she had eaten, Chava in turn pressed Odom Haroshon to eat, the phrase of ובדרך חטאים לא עמד, refers to the serpent together with Chava. Finally, Odom Harishon, after having eaten, used an expression ואוכל, which the medrash says refers to the fact that he told Hashem I will continue to eat and, that therefore the three became, a מושב לצים. Dovid Hamelech was highlighting that one should not follow such ways but should follow the ways of Torah, enquiring into it day and night. The first word of the whole of Tehillim is, again, אשרי, the פנימיות of the word בראשית, as I mentioned earlier on.

If one looks at the longest of all the kapitalach in tehillim, it starts offתמימי דרך אשרי. אשרי is the first key word, Praiseworthy are the ones whose way is perfect and who walk with the Torah of Hashem.

I suggest that אשרי is used three times before commencing Tehilla L’Dovid to give even more emphasis than usual and it refers back to the word בראשית and the whole concept of Beriyas Haolam, the world having been created by Hashem.

The other two letters in the word בראשית are ב and ת.

I think that the “בית” is represented by the words אשרי יושבי ביתך. The word ביתך alluding to the first ב of בראשית. The first letter of Tehilla L’Dovid is a ת.

We now have the whole package. The אשרי as the exhortation and rectification of what בראשית should be, followed by ביתך being the ב, אשרי again being repeated twice followed by the ת of Tehilla L’Dovid.

Somebody who reads through the mizmor and concentrates and contemplates correctly, is so uplifted and is so connected with Hashem that Chazal can promise that מובטח לו שהוא בן עולם הבא, he will surely become a person who will have עולם הבא.

I would like to add a further thought.

I mentioned that the medrash tells us that Odom Harishon gave 70 years to Dovid Hamelech.

We find another medrash which states that David received his years from Avrohom, Yaakov and Yosef. You will note, not the Ovos as such, Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov but Avrohom, Yaakov and Yosef. I will proceed to explain how this is arrived at.

The medrash says that Avrohom lived for 175 years but he should have lived 180 years, as did Yitzchok and, therefore, ה, five of the years is what he gave to Dovid.

The medrash continues that Yaakov who only lived 147 years should have lived 175 years, like Avrohom. He gave 28 years to Dovid. This together with Avrohom’s 5 years totals 33 years. Finally, Yosef who should have lived as long as his father, Yaakov, namely 147 years, only lived to the age of 110. He gave 37 years to Dovid. All this together totals 70 years.

I find this very strange, firstly, as I mentioned above Yitzchok is not brought into the equation. Secondly, Dovid was already given 70 years by Odom Harishon, why was he given another 70 years and why just by Avrohom, Yaakov and Yosef.

I would like to suggest that while Odom Harishon gave Dovid the actual physical years with which to effect some rectification, תיקין, the spiritual help to enable him to do so, was provided by Avrohom, Yaakov and Yosef.

I mentioned that Avrohom gave 5 years, ה שנים . The Gemora tells us that the letter ה represents somebody who was sitting on top of the roof of the letter, ה, and falls down, spiritually speaking. He has an opportunity to return to his previous high level by climbing on the little leg on the left hand side of the ה, in short, a Baal Teshuva. We find Avrohom Avinu was the first person who developed this derech as it says את הנפש אשר עשו בחרן, the people he influenced to believe in Hashem whilst he was in Choron. (You will also note that the middle word of that phrase is אשר being the first three letters after the ב of בראשית.) In fact, the first posek after Sheni in Bereishis is about the creation of the world and the word בהבראם, the ה of that word significantly is written in a small letter and the Gemora explains that this world is created with a ה (whereas the world to come will be with a י). Furthermore, the letters בהבראם are the same as אברהם who was originally called אברם without a ה but Hashem changed his name to include the ה. I believe that this is all part of the same spiritual input, in this case contributed by Avrohom to Dovid Hamelech.

This was followed by Yaakov giving 28 years to Dovid. We find that the Gemora says that שופריא דיעקב מאין שופריא דאדם, that Yaakov’s beauty was similar to Odom Harishon, this alludes to a spiritual beauty and Yaakov had reached the high level of Odom before he sinned. 28 is כח, Yaakov contributed this koach of spirituality to Dovid.

Finally, Yosef was the first ruler of a whole nation, in Egypt. He contributed that particular aspect to Dovid Hamelech, running mundane affairs of state whilst remaining a Tzaddik.

From the כוחות of the three, Avrohom, Yaakov and Yosef, Dovid was spiritually enabled to rectify the neshomo of Odom Harishon, to utilise the 70 years he had been given originally by Odom Harishon in the correct manner and also to help uplift the whole בריאה.

Why not Yitzchok? Because he represented דין, strict justice and in this particular case the work of Dovid Hamelech was to try and rectify with חסד, kindness and תפארת and יסוד, the qualities of Avrohom, Yaakov and Yosef, and to avoid strict justice.

One final point is that I originally asked why don’t we say Ashrei, אשרי, for Shacharis, Mincha and Maariv, I believe that the answer is simply that Odom Harishon when he saw at the end of the sixth day of creation that it was getting dark, did Teshuva and finally Hashem accepted it after Shabbos itself intervened on Odom Harishon’s behalf. Because of that we start Maariv, which is said at dusk, with the introduction of והוא רחום יכפר עון, namely, that Hashem who is compassionate should wipe away all the sins. Accordingly, the third אשרי recited each day is placed towards the end of Shacharis to reiterate the Praise of Hashem before going out to face the outside world.

The Sefer of Tehillim is a testimony to the greatness of Dovid Hamelech, the trials and tribulations that he encountered and overcame and Dovid Hamelech serves as a shining example of how Yidden should conduct themselves. It is a source of inspiration and hope and we all say Tehillim seeking help and salvation. Dovid Hamelech was given 70 years by Odom Harishon and certainly in his days rectified to some extent the problems caused by Odom Harishon. He has also afforded us the opportunity to continue this rectification so that we should be rewarded with a portion of Olam Haboh and that Moshiach should come speedily במהרה בימינו אמן.

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