The Book of Psalms (Sefer Tehillim) stands at the center of Jewish devotional life, shaping religious
psychology, liturgy, and spiritual imagination for over two millennia. Psalms are simultaneously literary,
musical, therapeutic, communal, mystical, and theological. This essay argues that Psalms constitute a
uniquely Jewish mode of prayer that transforms emotional life into sacred language, enacting a process
of tikkun—repair or restoration—on the psychic, communal, and cosmic planes. Drawing on biblical
scholarship, rabbinic theology, medieval and kabbalistic traditions, and modern psychology, this work
examines the Psalms as a technology of meaning-making, identity formation, trauma recovery, and
divine encounter. Particular attention is given to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's Tikkun HaKlali—the ten
psalms he designated as a comprehensive remedy—and its relationship to contemporary therapeutic
practice. The paper integrates concepts of therapeutic tzimtzum, Shekhinah consciousness, and
hermeneutic medicine to propose that Psalmic prayer functions as a form of what might be termed
'linguistic surgery'—operating on consciousness through sacred language to restore wholeness where
fragmentation has occurred. The analysis concludes by exploring how the Psalms create a grammar
of hope that sustains the Jewish imagination through exile and rupture, proposing that Psalmic prayer
remains one of Judaism's most enduring engines of spiritual resilience.
