...it takes more than people to fill. It is to sense that something is missing which you cannot name. "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion," sings the Psalmist (137:1). Maybe in the end it is Zion that we're lonely for, the place we know best...

...fate of the wasted instrument of the desolate psalmist who refused to sing hymns in an unclean land: By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept,...remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. (Ps. 137:1-2) Petrarch hung his laurel on an abandoned altar. The See of Peter was vacant, its pope...

...captured by the poignant language of Ps. 137. By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing...

...years, before saying grace after meals on weekdays, Jews in the exile chanted Psalm 137: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. . . . How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" But on Shabbat, as the sun set and the power...

...and similarly with the blind and those who see. I say all this because the psalm says, "On the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion." Babylon means "confusion" [Gen. 1 1:9]: therefore Babylon is this world. Therefore the sinner who has...

...exiled or "thrown" into Babylon. The words of the Psalmist express this feeling in poetic simplicity: By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept,...remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our [harps]. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, "Sing us one...

..."harbinger flowers" would be in scale, such as near the book of the elect. The Lenten Veil By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and wept when we...remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing us one...

...137. The psalm opens with the moving lament: By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing...

...his throat and begins reciting Psalm 137. By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing...

...Babylon. It is this long period of exile which lies behind the deep sense of nostalgia found in Psalm 37: "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept,...lyres. For there our captors required of us songs . . . saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"...