Ponovezher Rov, Rav Yosef Ber Soloveichik, and Tehillim

One day, in shul before davenning, I said the following vort that I heard in the name of the Ponevezher Rov.

Chazal say (Yalkut Breishis #41) that when Odom Horishon looked at the future of his descendants, he saw that Dovid Hamelech was fated to be born without a life span. Realizing what a tragedy it would be if this great soul would not be given the chance to achieve its potential, he gave him seventy years from his own life. (“ayin shonim mishnosai yihiyu limazol zeh”)

Why did Dovid Hamelech have to get his years from Odom Horishon? Why did Hashem make it that Dovid was fated to die at birth and would have to get a neshomo from someone else? And in all of history from Odom until Dovid, weren’t there any other sources of years that he could have taken from other people?

Sefer Tehillim is unique in Tanach. It accompanies a person his whole life. When a boy and girl get involved in shidduchim, they say tehillim. When they get married, they say tehillim. When they hope to have a child, they say tehillim. When a woman is pregnant and hopes to have an easy childbirth, she says tehillim. While she is in labor, she and her family say tehillim. As the child grows, and they hope that he follows the derech of torah and mussar, they say tehillim. When he is sick, he and others say tehillim. When he is happy and wants to express his thanks to Hashem, he says tehillim. When a man dies, at the leviah and at the bais olam they say tehillim. When his children go to visit his kever, they say tehillim. Tehillim is said in joy, in tears, in victory, in defeat, in hope, in despair, for teshuva, for chizuk. A regular neshomo cannot possibly write a sefer like that. Only a man whose neshomo, whose ruach memalelo, was vayipach be’apov directly from Hashem, can write Tehillim.

A visitor from out of town was in the shul when I said this, and he said, and I quote, “My Rosh Yeshiva never said Tehillim.” I asked him where he learned, and he said he learned in YU, and his Rosh Yeshiva was Rav Yosef Ber Soloveichik. I suppose his point was that Talmidei Chachomim, Halakhic Men, Rationalists, have better things to do with their time. Sort of like “Real men don’t say Tehillim.”

The funny and sad thing is that anyone who knew the Soloveichiks, both Rav Yosef Ber and Rav Aharon, knew how far from the truth that statement was. They not only did say Tehillim, but they rarely stopped saying Tehillim. How sad and superficial it must be to have a Rosh Yeshiva and absorb so little of what he is in his heart.