June 27, 2025 • 12 mins
We couldn’t let this historic moment pass without pausing—to thank God, reflect, and of course turn to the words of Tehillim.
In this special bonus mini-episode, we’re joined by Lazar Berman, diplomatic reporter for The Times of Israel, to help us unpack the broader meaning of the war we just lived through. Together, we explore how Tehillim 117 can help frame our understanding of this moment, and what it reveals about Israel’s spiritual mission in the years to come.
We want to hear from YOU at TehillimUnveiled@gmail.com.
Please consider supporting us at tehillimunveiled.com/support.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to Tahlem Unveiled. This is Ari Levisan and I'm here
with diplomatic reporter from the Times of Israel, Laser
Berman for a special bonus emergency mini episode given
everything that's going on. Laser.
Welcome to the podcast. Hi, Ari.
Great to be here. Where is here laser?
We are. Actually, as we usually do,
(00:23):
actually on Friday mornings, we've gone.
On a hike. In addition to being an intrepid
reporter, Laser's also my hikingbuddy.
We are actually outside of Jerusalem, in the hills West of
Jerusalem. We're at a a spring called Anti
Asim. It's beautiful trees, birds all
around us. We're in the shade, we have a
little bit of water actually at our feet.
So perfect place to talk about Tilim.
(00:43):
As we were on a hike this morning, we were reflecting on
the situation going on. We're reflecting on Tahilim and
felt we couldn't let the opportunity pass to put
something out. You know, when amazing,
incredible historic things happen, it is incumbent upon us
to recognize them with prayer, to recognize them at the words
of Tahilim. There's a famous story in the
(01:05):
Nach about Hizkiahua Malach at the time when Sanharev, the
Assyrian king came in and wiped out the northern Kingdom of
Israel and he was on his way to Jerusalem to to finish off the
entire Jewish people. But a miracle happened and God
basically confused their army and the Kingdom of Judah was
(01:27):
saved. And the Gomorrah says that at
that moment God thought maybe Hizki Ahmad is going to be
Messiah. He's going to be the Messiah.
That's going to be it. This is going to be the end of
history and he is going to lead us into a messianic age.
But that didn't happen. And the question is, why didn't
that happen? And the Gemara says it's because
he didn't sing Shira, he didn't praise God with song.
(01:51):
At that moment, if he had stopped and praised God with
song, if he had praised God withthe words of Dahilam, then in
that moment that would have beenthe beginning of the messianic
era. So I think it's it's a really
important moment to capture withthe words of Dehillim and the
words that have been on my mind have particularly been a line
from halal. It's actually the shortest
chapter in all of Dehillim. It's chapter Kufjord Zion 117.
(02:15):
Hallelujah Tashem ko goyim Shabhu Shabhu.
Hallelujah. Praise the Lord all the nations,
Lord Him, all the peoples, for His mercy is great toward us,
and the truth of the Lord endures forever.
Hallelujah. So a few things to piece apart
here. The first thing is obviously
(02:35):
we're talking about all of the nations, but now not just us
praising God, but everyone's going to praise God.
And why are we praising God Ki Gavar Alenu Kasto?
So first of all, that the language of Gavar Alenu Kasto,
his kindness has overpowered us.It's contrasting actually 2
opposite words there, the language of Kassad of kindness
(02:57):
and Kvura of strength. There's a you know, and
kabbalistically there was a polar opposites.
So what does that mean? That God's kindness has
overpowered us? Before us, of course, but even
before that, the question is whois US?
Right. Yeah.
So I mean, just the basic reading and I think we can dig
into this a little bit more. It'll get a little bit more
complex. Is that us as the Jewish people?
(03:19):
And it is the Jewish people talking, and we are calling
toward the nations. And we're saying the nations are
now praising God because they have seen something new.
And that's, you know, the core reading.
But it gets more interesting when you start to kind of think
about what else this could mean.Right.
You know, for me, that reading, and that's the way that, you
know, 99% of the commentators understand this.
(03:40):
It always bothered me a little bit like who are we to think
that like, Oh yeah, one day the nations will love us so much
that they're just going to they're going to praise God just
for what he does to us. It feels a little like self
obsessed maybe is the right. Word for sure.
It always bothered me. I looked and looked and looked
for anyone who would say otherwise.
(04:01):
I mean, finally I found two people of Hirsch and the Ibn
Ezra who both understand us not as us to do his people, but us
as the same subject as we talkedabout in the beginning.
All of the nations, all of the peoples, the entire world.
In other words, everyone should praise God not just for what he
does to the Jewish people, but for what he does to the entire
world, right? Which means that not just are
(04:22):
they seeing this localized kindness, but we're also
recognizing that God cares aboutall of his children, all of his
people. And there'll be a day when all
of us will together praise God for His kindness to humanity as
a whole. Right now, I think this gets
interesting when we can try to synthesize the two different
readings that the nations and the Jewish people could be
(04:45):
saying the same words, but couldactually be meaning two
different things. So the Jewish people are reading
this and talking about what God has done for us, the Jewish
people, and therefore the peopleof the world recognize what
God's role is on the world and how he's acting through history,
through the Jewish people and using the same words.
The nations are talking about something more general that he
(05:07):
has shown his presence in the entire world.
So I think there could even be, and it's it's the art of the
writing, the prose that it couldbe two different people saying
similar, overlapping but different things at the same
time. And it works.
You know a couple weeks ago I would have seen this as maybe 2
parallel paths, right? Two parallel interpretations, 2
parallel things. Going on Did something happen in
(05:29):
the last couple weeks? I don't know, if only there was
a reporter to tell us about what's happened in the last
couple weeks that that maybe cangive us a new perspective on
this. Yeah.
So we'll come out of this 12 daywar with Iran.
This is obviously something thatthe world paid a lot of
attention to. This is obviously Israel and the
Jews, big enemy now. And listen, there's questions
(05:51):
about how effective it was, how badly damaged the nuclear
program was. What happens now?
But there's no question that this is well beyond our wildest
imagination, that fact that we were able on day one to take out
their military command, their nuclear scientists, to hit their
three main sites. Listen, we lost 28 people.
That's very painful. That's a serious loss.
(06:12):
But the estimates were hundreds of people, right?
And we didn't pay a price for itamongst the nations of the
world. You even had the Germans, you
know, of all people, they said they're doing The Dirty work for
the world. And then you had President Trump
could be unpredictable, but ultimately, he stood with us and
then he actually got involved. This is the first time in
history that the US was fightingin an offensive operation
(06:35):
alongside Israel. So this was absolutely something
incredible. And there's no question that
Israel is seen in a different light.
And even countries like Russia, actually Russia, obviously not
friendly to us, right? And supportive of Iran, right?
Supportive. Of Iran, I think they're going
to realize that Iran's a losing bet.
Why do you want to bet on that losing horse?
Even heard Putin during the lastcouple of weeks say publicly
(06:57):
that Israel has 2 million Russian speakers.
We need to keep that into account and kind of justifying
the fact that I think we're going to see little bit of
warming up over there as well. So I think the big picture here
is that because of what Israel did, right, the whole world is
looking at us differently. And when the world looks at us
differently, a lot of people aregoing to understand the way God
works in the world differently. As well.
(07:19):
And you know, we were talking about these two ways of reading
it. Is it that they are all happy
about what God did for us? Or is it that they were all
happy about what God did for them for the whole world?
And I guess what we're seeing isthat maybe those are the same
thing, right? What we're seeing is that what
is good for us is good for the world.
Yeah. God saved us from Iran.
God saved us from our enemies. But really, this was a good
(07:40):
thing for the entire world. And I think the nations are
really warming up to that idea that the success of Israel is
the success of the world. Yeah, and I think that's the
argument we're trying to make. And you heard Netanyahu and
other ministers making that argument that we're fighting for
Western civilization or civilization general against
barbarity. Sometimes people roll their eyes
(08:00):
on it. But now you really see it.
And we have taken the number onesponsor of terror.
We've knocked them back years. We've, you know, defamed the
most powerful terrorist group inthe world in Hezbollah,
hopefully going to finish the job against Hamas.
The evil Assad regime has gone. And we might be on a new era of
peace between peoples in the Middle East, all because we have
(08:21):
to defend our own core interests.
And look, now the region could be entering an age of prosperity
and, and hopefully peace. And that's the argument we've
made. We also have to be active about
that as well. We have to realize that we have
this responsibility toward making the world a better place.
It's not only passively just doing our little thing in our
community, but we have to understand how we're taking our
(08:42):
values and, and, and what we cangive to the world and actively
pushing that out. Not trying to convert people or
anything like that, but trying to bring blessings that we might
have to the world. And after these victories that
hopefully we can, you know, liftup our vision and say, OK, we've
passed the last couple of years,let's see how we can make the
region better and how we can make the world a better place.
Wow. What an incredibly important
(09:05):
point to stop and reflect on. We've accomplished this on, you
know, a defensive level, right? We've done The Dirty work of
fighting. Now we've the opportunity to do
the same thing on a diplomatic level, right?
You just put out her report yesterday about the possible
peace deals with the Saudis, with the Syrians.
(09:26):
And I guess ultimately the question is, can we rise to the
occasion and do this on a moral level too, to be leading the
fight for justice, for morality across the globe?
Now's the time to really to really step up.
Now's the time to rise to the occasion.
We've accidentally stumbled intowhat has always been our grand
(09:47):
mission. That right like we, we were just
trying to defend ourselves. But what we've ended up doing is
being a leader in the entire Western world.
One final note, we mentioned before this contrast between
asset and kura, between strength, tough justice, and
kindness, the things that we don't usually see together.
(10:09):
But here it says God's kindness has overpowered us with
strength, and you're offering a really fascinating
interpretation of that. Yeah, My idea was that, you
know, there's this overpowering thing that something overpowered
us. And it seems like God had this
plan for us and this path for us.
And with our own bullheadedness and our blindness and our
stubbornness, we have gotten offthe path, right?
(10:31):
And we paid the price for it. We're blind to what happened in
Gaza. We're blind to some tensions
within our community, within thesociety.
We were threatening to tear ourselves apart.
Two years. Ago, absolutely, but it was
God's. Somehow.
His kindness ultimately won out in the end, overpowered our own
stupidness, and now we're getting to a place where we're
getting praised by the nation. Right.
And what you see is that it was kindness cloaked in Gura, in
(10:56):
strength. Right on.
On the one hand, October 7th washorrible, right?
That's the definition of of Gura.
It's the things that you don't want to see.
But at the same time, first of all, it stopped us from tearing
ourselves in half, which we're about to do.
I mean, we're right on the edge of a Cliff.
But also the aftermath of that has LED us to completely
obliterate Hezbollah in in Lebanon.
(11:16):
It led to the downfall of the Syrian regime and now to the
collapse of any strength of Iran.
Also, this one thing that seems like the worst thing that could
possibly happen. And again, it it, it was
terrible. Perhaps it really was kindness
cloaked in in strength and gura and and we're looking at it now
and you know, we're just going to say Hallelujah.
(11:38):
Yeah, I think that's the only thing we can do.
We can recognize, you know, the tragedy of what was and try to
understand how we can get hesed out of that.
And you know, we can't just sit back passively and and say it's
going to come from God. We have to do the work.
We did the work fighting and nowwe have to do the work and
repairing our society and reallythinking about how we make sure
that we are leading to a more hesed future and the future
(12:02):
where other nations feel comfortable coming here and feel
comfortable given the example that we are providing and
understand what the proper way is to thank God and recognize
that. Laser, thank you for coming off
this emergency bonus Off the Cutpodcast.
You can follow Laser Berman at Times of Israel and on Twitter
(12:24):
at. Laser.
Berman, LAZARBERMAN. And we will be back with our
regularly scheduled program. In a few weeks, we'll have Yael
Ziegler coming for a special Preeti Shabbaav episode.
Don't want to miss that. And until then, take care.
Welcome to Tahlem Unveiled. This is Ari Levisan and I'm here
with diplomatic reporter from the Times of Israel, Laser
Berman for a special bonus emergency mini episode given
everything that's going on. Laser.
Welcome to the podcast. Hi, Ari.
Great to be here. Where is here laser?
We are. Actually, as we usually do,
(00:23):
actually on Friday mornings, we've gone.
On a hike. In addition to being an intrepid
reporter, Laser's also my hikingbuddy.
We are actually outside of Jerusalem, in the hills West of
Jerusalem. We're at a a spring called Anti
Asim. It's beautiful trees, birds all
around us. We're in the shade, we have a
little bit of water actually at our feet.
So perfect place to talk about Tilim.
(00:43):
As we were on a hike this morning, we were reflecting on
the situation going on. We're reflecting on Tahilim and
felt we couldn't let the opportunity pass to put
something out. You know, when amazing,
incredible historic things happen, it is incumbent upon us
to recognize them with prayer, to recognize them at the words
of Tahilim. There's a famous story in the
(01:05):
Nach about Hizkiahua Malach at the time when Sanharev, the
Assyrian king came in and wiped out the northern Kingdom of
Israel and he was on his way to Jerusalem to to finish off the
entire Jewish people. But a miracle happened and God
basically confused their army and the Kingdom of Judah was
(01:27):
saved. And the Gomorrah says that at
that moment God thought maybe Hizki Ahmad is going to be
Messiah. He's going to be the Messiah.
That's going to be it. This is going to be the end of
history and he is going to lead us into a messianic age.
But that didn't happen. And the question is, why didn't
that happen? And the Gemara says it's because
he didn't sing Shira, he didn't praise God with song.
(01:51):
At that moment, if he had stopped and praised God with
song, if he had praised God withthe words of Dahilam, then in
that moment that would have beenthe beginning of the messianic
era. So I think it's it's a really
important moment to capture withthe words of Dehillim and the
words that have been on my mind have particularly been a line
from halal. It's actually the shortest
chapter in all of Dehillim. It's chapter Kufjord Zion 117.
(02:15):
Hallelujah Tashem ko goyim Shabhu Shabhu.
Hallelujah. Praise the Lord all the nations,
Lord Him, all the peoples, for His mercy is great toward us,
and the truth of the Lord endures forever.
Hallelujah. So a few things to piece apart
here. The first thing is obviously
(02:35):
we're talking about all of the nations, but now not just us
praising God, but everyone's going to praise God.
And why are we praising God Ki Gavar Alenu Kasto?
So first of all, that the language of Gavar Alenu Kasto,
his kindness has overpowered us.It's contrasting actually 2
opposite words there, the language of Kassad of kindness
(02:57):
and Kvura of strength. There's a you know, and
kabbalistically there was a polar opposites.
So what does that mean? That God's kindness has
overpowered us? Before us, of course, but even
before that, the question is whois US?
Right. Yeah.
So I mean, just the basic reading and I think we can dig
into this a little bit more. It'll get a little bit more
complex. Is that us as the Jewish people?
(03:19):
And it is the Jewish people talking, and we are calling
toward the nations. And we're saying the nations are
now praising God because they have seen something new.
And that's, you know, the core reading.
But it gets more interesting when you start to kind of think
about what else this could mean.Right.
You know, for me, that reading, and that's the way that, you
know, 99% of the commentators understand this.
(03:40):
It always bothered me a little bit like who are we to think
that like, Oh yeah, one day the nations will love us so much
that they're just going to they're going to praise God just
for what he does to us. It feels a little like self
obsessed maybe is the right. Word for sure.
It always bothered me. I looked and looked and looked
for anyone who would say otherwise.
(04:01):
I mean, finally I found two people of Hirsch and the Ibn
Ezra who both understand us not as us to do his people, but us
as the same subject as we talkedabout in the beginning.
All of the nations, all of the peoples, the entire world.
In other words, everyone should praise God not just for what he
does to the Jewish people, but for what he does to the entire
world, right? Which means that not just are
(04:22):
they seeing this localized kindness, but we're also
recognizing that God cares aboutall of his children, all of his
people. And there'll be a day when all
of us will together praise God for His kindness to humanity as
a whole. Right now, I think this gets
interesting when we can try to synthesize the two different
readings that the nations and the Jewish people could be
(04:45):
saying the same words, but couldactually be meaning two
different things. So the Jewish people are reading
this and talking about what God has done for us, the Jewish
people, and therefore the peopleof the world recognize what
God's role is on the world and how he's acting through history,
through the Jewish people and using the same words.
The nations are talking about something more general that he
(05:07):
has shown his presence in the entire world.
So I think there could even be, and it's it's the art of the
writing, the prose that it couldbe two different people saying
similar, overlapping but different things at the same
time. And it works.
You know a couple weeks ago I would have seen this as maybe 2
parallel paths, right? Two parallel interpretations, 2
parallel things. Going on Did something happen in
(05:29):
the last couple weeks? I don't know, if only there was
a reporter to tell us about what's happened in the last
couple weeks that that maybe cangive us a new perspective on
this. Yeah.
So we'll come out of this 12 daywar with Iran.
This is obviously something thatthe world paid a lot of
attention to. This is obviously Israel and the
Jews, big enemy now. And listen, there's questions
(05:51):
about how effective it was, how badly damaged the nuclear
program was. What happens now?
But there's no question that this is well beyond our wildest
imagination, that fact that we were able on day one to take out
their military command, their nuclear scientists, to hit their
three main sites. Listen, we lost 28 people.
That's very painful. That's a serious loss.
(06:12):
But the estimates were hundreds of people, right?
And we didn't pay a price for itamongst the nations of the
world. You even had the Germans, you
know, of all people, they said they're doing The Dirty work for
the world. And then you had President Trump
could be unpredictable, but ultimately, he stood with us and
then he actually got involved. This is the first time in
history that the US was fightingin an offensive operation
(06:35):
alongside Israel. So this was absolutely something
incredible. And there's no question that
Israel is seen in a different light.
And even countries like Russia, actually Russia, obviously not
friendly to us, right? And supportive of Iran, right?
Supportive. Of Iran, I think they're going
to realize that Iran's a losing bet.
Why do you want to bet on that losing horse?
Even heard Putin during the lastcouple of weeks say publicly
(06:57):
that Israel has 2 million Russian speakers.
We need to keep that into account and kind of justifying
the fact that I think we're going to see little bit of
warming up over there as well. So I think the big picture here
is that because of what Israel did, right, the whole world is
looking at us differently. And when the world looks at us
differently, a lot of people aregoing to understand the way God
works in the world differently. As well.
(07:19):
And you know, we were talking about these two ways of reading
it. Is it that they are all happy
about what God did for us? Or is it that they were all
happy about what God did for them for the whole world?
And I guess what we're seeing isthat maybe those are the same
thing, right? What we're seeing is that what
is good for us is good for the world.
Yeah. God saved us from Iran.
God saved us from our enemies. But really, this was a good
(07:40):
thing for the entire world. And I think the nations are
really warming up to that idea that the success of Israel is
the success of the world. Yeah, and I think that's the
argument we're trying to make. And you heard Netanyahu and
other ministers making that argument that we're fighting for
Western civilization or civilization general against
barbarity. Sometimes people roll their eyes
(08:00):
on it. But now you really see it.
And we have taken the number onesponsor of terror.
We've knocked them back years. We've, you know, defamed the
most powerful terrorist group inthe world in Hezbollah,
hopefully going to finish the job against Hamas.
The evil Assad regime has gone. And we might be on a new era of
peace between peoples in the Middle East, all because we have
(08:21):
to defend our own core interests.
And look, now the region could be entering an age of prosperity
and, and hopefully peace. And that's the argument we've
made. We also have to be active about
that as well. We have to realize that we have
this responsibility toward making the world a better place.
It's not only passively just doing our little thing in our
community, but we have to understand how we're taking our
(08:42):
values and, and, and what we cangive to the world and actively
pushing that out. Not trying to convert people or
anything like that, but trying to bring blessings that we might
have to the world. And after these victories that
hopefully we can, you know, liftup our vision and say, OK, we've
passed the last couple of years,let's see how we can make the
region better and how we can make the world a better place.
Wow. What an incredibly important
(09:05):
point to stop and reflect on. We've accomplished this on, you
know, a defensive level, right? We've done The Dirty work of
fighting. Now we've the opportunity to do
the same thing on a diplomatic level, right?
You just put out her report yesterday about the possible
peace deals with the Saudis, with the Syrians.
(09:26):
And I guess ultimately the question is, can we rise to the
occasion and do this on a moral level too, to be leading the
fight for justice, for morality across the globe?
Now's the time to really to really step up.
Now's the time to rise to the occasion.
We've accidentally stumbled intowhat has always been our grand
(09:47):
mission. That right like we, we were just
trying to defend ourselves. But what we've ended up doing is
being a leader in the entire Western world.
One final note, we mentioned before this contrast between
asset and kura, between strength, tough justice, and
kindness, the things that we don't usually see together.
(10:09):
But here it says God's kindness has overpowered us with
strength, and you're offering a really fascinating
interpretation of that. Yeah, My idea was that, you
know, there's this overpowering thing that something overpowered
us. And it seems like God had this
plan for us and this path for us.
And with our own bullheadedness and our blindness and our
stubbornness, we have gotten offthe path, right?
(10:31):
And we paid the price for it. We're blind to what happened in
Gaza. We're blind to some tensions
within our community, within thesociety.
We were threatening to tear ourselves apart.
Two years. Ago, absolutely, but it was
God's. Somehow.
His kindness ultimately won out in the end, overpowered our own
stupidness, and now we're getting to a place where we're
getting praised by the nation. Right.
And what you see is that it was kindness cloaked in Gura, in
(10:56):
strength. Right on.
On the one hand, October 7th washorrible, right?
That's the definition of of Gura.
It's the things that you don't want to see.
But at the same time, first of all, it stopped us from tearing
ourselves in half, which we're about to do.
I mean, we're right on the edge of a Cliff.
But also the aftermath of that has LED us to completely
obliterate Hezbollah in in Lebanon.
(11:16):
It led to the downfall of the Syrian regime and now to the
collapse of any strength of Iran.
Also, this one thing that seems like the worst thing that could
possibly happen. And again, it it, it was
terrible. Perhaps it really was kindness
cloaked in in strength and gura and and we're looking at it now
and you know, we're just going to say Hallelujah.
(11:38):
Yeah, I think that's the only thing we can do.
We can recognize, you know, the tragedy of what was and try to
understand how we can get hesed out of that.
And you know, we can't just sit back passively and and say it's
going to come from God. We have to do the work.
We did the work fighting and nowwe have to do the work and
repairing our society and reallythinking about how we make sure
that we are leading to a more hesed future and the future
(12:02):
where other nations feel comfortable coming here and feel
comfortable given the example that we are providing and
understand what the proper way is to thank God and recognize
that. Laser, thank you for coming off
this emergency bonus Off the Cutpodcast.
You can follow Laser Berman at Times of Israel and on Twitter
(12:24):
at. Laser.
Berman, LAZARBERMAN. And we will be back with our
regularly scheduled program. In a few weeks, we'll have Yael
Ziegler coming for a special Preeti Shabbaav episode.
Don't want to miss that. And until then, take care.
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