Tehillim or Psalms? The Subtle Power of Assimilation
- WireNews
- Sep 10
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 11
by Ram ben Ze'ev
Language is never neutral. Words carry worlds within them, and when those words are altered, so too is the reality they shape. A perfect example lies in the way Jews and non-Jews refer to one of our most beloved sefarim: תהלים (Tehillim—Praises).
Open nearly any English edition, even on Sefaria, which claims fidelity to Jewish texts, and you will find Psalms. Not only the book, but even within each chapter, where the Hebrew reads mizmor (מזמור—song, melody), the translation quietly transforms it into “psalm.” To most, this seems harmless. To the discerning, it is assimilation in action.
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Tehillim means Praises—songs of the soul directed to G-D. But “Psalms” comes from the Greek psalmos, later Latin psalmi, meaning songs accompanied by plucked strings. It is a Greek label applied by the nations, and it has stuck for centuries. When we adopt it, we let their framework overwrite our own.
Even more confusing is when Sefaria itself tries to have it both ways. On its site, the English title reads “Psalms,” while the description in parentheses says “Tehillim.” This is nonsense.
Tehillim is not a parenthetical aside to Psalms—it is the actual name of the sefer. By presenting the Christian-Greek term as the main heading and relegating the Hebrew to a footnote, Sefaria ends up reinforcing the very assimilation it claims to resist. This subtle inversion teaches Jews to think of Tehillim as merely the “Jewish word” for Psalms, rather than the other way around.
The difference is not trivial. A mizmor is not a “psalm.” A mizmor carries the intent of David HaMelech, a song cut and refined for holy expression. To call it a “psalm” is to replace the uniquely Jewish sound with a borrowed word. This is the same distortion we see in other familiar examples: “Old Testament” instead of Torah or Tanakh; “Passover” instead of Pesach; “Yom Kippur” instead of Yom HaKipurim; “Ten Commandments” instead of Aseret HaDibrot. Each one erodes our language, our categories, and our consciousness.
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Assimilation does not always arrive through ideology or persecution. Sometimes it comes quietly, through translation choices that seem convenient but carry a hidden cost. They reshape how Jews think and speak, until our own sacred words sound foreign, and foreign words feel natural.
If we are to resist assimilation, we must reclaim our language. We must call our sefarim by their names: Tehillim, not Psalms; mizmor, not “psalm.” Only then do we honour the words as David HaMelech gave them, and as Am Yisrael has always sung them: praises, not psalms.
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Bill White (Ram ben Ze'ev) is CEO of WireNews Limited, Mayside Partners Limited, MEADHANAN Agency, Kestrel Assets Limited, SpudsToGo Limited and Executive Director of Hebrew Synagogue
