The righteous - forsaken?

ADDeRabbi has an interesting post on lying in the liturgy. His third example (I hope to return to the first two) refers to the line from Tehillim that we say at the end of Bentching

"I was young and now I am old,
yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
or his children begging for bread."

I commented on this post with reference to a beautiful thought found in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Chief Rabbi's Haggadah, pages 66-67. I feel the thought is worth repeating here (not least so I can find it again when necessary):

This line, from Psalm 37:25 has often raised questions. Surely throughout history there were times when the righteous were forsaken? Indeed this is one of the questions that, according to the Talmud, Moses asked God: “Why do the righteous suffer?” The English writer Edmond Blunden wrote a poem, Report on Experience, on this theme:

I have been young, and now I am not so old;
And I have seen the righteous forsaken,
His health, his honour and his quality taken.
This is not what we were formerly told.

I once heard a beautiful explanation from R. Moses Feuerstein of Boston. The key phrase of the verse is lo ra’iti, standardly translated as ‘I have not seen’. The verb ra’iti, though, occurs twice in the Book of Esther with a quite different meaning. ‘How can I bear to watch (eichachah uchal vera’iti) the disaster which will befall my people? And how can I bear to watch the destruction of my family?’ (Esther 8:6). The verb does not mean ‘to see’. It means ‘to stand by and watch, to be a passive witness, a disengaged spectator’. Ra’iti in this sense means to stand by and do nothing to help. That, for Esther as for the Psalmist, is a moral impossibility. We may not ‘stand idly by the blood of our neighbour’. We are our brother’s keeper.

Translated thus, the verse states: ‘I was young, and now I am old, and I have not merely stood still and watched when the righteous was forsaken and his children forced to beg for bread.’ Read this way, not only does it make sense, it also emerges from the core of Jewish sensibility. It ends the grace after meals with a moral commitment. Yes, we have eaten and are satisfied. But that has not made us indifferent to the needs of others.