Excavations of the Psalms with Rabbi Baruch HaLevi

Baruch HaLevi is in the excavation business. In mid-September, he encouraged Gordon College students to search for “what’s beyond the text” of the Bible. The most challenging part of his call? It came from someone not typically embraced by those of the proverbial Gordon Bubble.

HaLevi is a rabbi at Swampscott’s Congregation Shirat Hayam. He was the first of a series of rabbis and Jewish scholars invited to explore the Psalms with the Christian students of Gordon. Even though the audience’s beliefs didn’t match HaLevi’s Jewish perception of Jesus, he boldly proclaimed his message.

“The Psalms are alive,” he said. They are truths that, laid bare to the ravages of time, have come out victorious. The rabbi was a portrait of Jewish openness to ambiguity in holy texts. “We are not turning there for historical truths, but for human truths,” he said. God always chose unlikely candidates to do his work. HaLevi highlighted the truth in this theme.

“God wants an individual who… is going to define himself by his deeds,” he said. God needs us to be people who will stand up for those made in His image and say, “Yes, I am my brother’s keeper.” HaLevi said the patriarchs and matriarchs were imperfect just like us, so we should follow their lead and act as the messiah in his absence.

Though his truth and ours were far from identical, HaLevi’s challenge is worth remembering: “Speak up and speak out, act up and act out – for goodness.”