MUSAF – LEADER’S REPETITION There are two views as to why we repeat each Amida, with the exception of Ma’ariv. The sages held that the primary prayer was the silent Amida said by individuals. In their view, the Amida is repeated for the sake of those who are unable to pray for themselves, whether because they are unable to read, or – a more likely explanation – because in the days before printing, there were relatively few prayer books available and not everyone knew the prayers by heart. According to Rabban Gamliel, the primary prayer is the Repetition said by the Leader on behalf of the whole congregation. We pray privately and silently to give time for the Leader silently to rehearse his prayer (Rosh HaShana 34b). There is a third reason that encompasses the other two. We have two traditions of prayer in Judaism. One dates back to the spontaneous prayers offered by the patriarchs, matriarchs and prophets. The other sees prayer as a substitute for the communal sacrifices offered by the priests in the Temple (Berakhot 26b). When we pray silently we do so in the tradition of the prophets. When the Leader repeats the Amida aloud, he does so as if he were a priest in the Temple, offering words in place of a sacrifice on behalf of the people as a whole. In this striking parallelism we bring the two great spiritual traditions of Judaism together.

אֻפַּד מֵאָז לְשֶֽׁפֶט הַיּוֹם Day girded for judgment since the dawn of time. A poem based on the tradition that the first day of Tishrei is the anniversary of the creation of the first human beings. According to tradition, this was not only the day on which Adam and Eve were formed, but also the day they sinned and were sentenced to exile from Eden. But they were also forgiven. Initially God had said, “Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), yet they ate and did not die. Thus Rosh HaShana has been, since the beginning of the human story, a day of forgiveness. It is the day when God calls to us, as He called to the first humans, “Where are you?” When the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, was imprisoned on false charges laid against him by his opponents, the warden of the prison, a man who often read the Bible, saw that his prisoner was a holy man and took the opportunity to ask him a question that had long puzzled him. “Rabbi,” he said, “why does it say that God called to Adam, ‘Where are you?’ Surely God knows everything. He knew where Adam was.” “Do you believe,” said the rabbi, “that the Bible was given not just for one time but for all time?” “I do,” said the warden. “Well then,” said the rabbi, “God’s question was not for Adam alone but for all of us. You who have lived for forty-eight years – to you, God is calling, ‘Where are you?’” The warden, who had not told the rabbi his age, said, “Bravo!” But inwardly he trembled.

וְכָתְבֵֽנוּ בְּסֵֽפֶר הַחַיִּים And write us in the book of life. Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev never failed to plead the cause of the Jewish people on the High Holy Days. Once, when Rosh HaShana fell on Shabbat, he prayed this prayer: “Master of the Universe, today is the New Year, when the books of life and its opposite lie open before You, and You inscribe the fate of every Jew. But Master of the Universe, today is Shabbat, and on Shabbat it is forbidden to write. There is only one exception: to save a life, for saving life overrides Shabbat. Therefore, Master of the Universe, You have no choice but to write them for life.” מָגֵן אַבְרָהָם Shield of Abraham. Every Amida begins with this prayer which refers back to the patriarchs and especially Abraham. It speaks to the most fundamental question: by what right do we pray? On what basis do we expect the Creator, vaster than the universe, older than time itself, to listen to us, our hopes and fears? The answer is that it was Abraham who first heard the call of God summoning him to a journey and a mission, and it was with Abraham that God made the covenant in virtue of which we exist today as Jews. Abraham loved God; God loved Abraham, promising to be with his children and thus with us. We pray not on the basis of theological abstraction, but out of a sense of history, asking God to remember the lives of our ancestors who despite much suffering and persecution stayed loyal to God.

מְכַלְכֵּל חַיִּים He sustains the living. God cares for humanity. He gives us strength when we are weak, supports us when we fall and heals us when we are sick, giving us freedom and rescuing us from confinement. Most of all He gives us life. Even death is not the final word. There is a life beyond this, not only in heaven but one day on earth also. Those who died will live again. This we believe.

תֵּֽפֶן בְּמָכוֹן O Lord, turn on high. Another powerful poem by Elazar HaKalir, asking God to sit not on the Throne of Judgment but on that of “compassion and pity.” And if, “as humans do,” we sin, then remember the promise You made after the Flood, never again to destroy humankind (Gen. 9:9–17). Remember Isaac who was willing to be bound and sacrificed for Your sake. And since You will one day bring the dead back to life, then grant us, the living, life.

אַף אֹֽרַח מִשְׁפָּטֶֽיךָ Even when You sit in judgment. A complex acrostic by HaKalir. The first letter of the first phrase of each verse proceeds in alphabetical order, while the first letter of the second phrase runs in reverse alphabetical order, the two meeting in the middle in the last verse. Here form mirrors content, since the poem speaks both of the distant past and the distant future, whose memory and anticipation meet in us, here, now. The distant past: God created repentance even before the first humans. The distant future: one day the shofar will sound to gather in the scattered exiles of the Jewish people throughout the world. The reference to the removal of the burden from the shoulder of Joseph reflects the tradition that Joseph was released from prison on Rosh HaShana (Rosh HaShana 11a).

מֶֽלֶךְ עֶלְיוֹן The Supreme King. A glance at the first letter of each verse shows that this poem has been truncated: the verses beginning with even-numbered letters – bet, dalet, vav etc. – have been deleted. Initially each pair of verses contrasted God the sublime King, Melekh elyon, with a human ruler, the destitute king, melekh evyon. Evidently this was considered disrespectful of the rulers of the countries in which Jews lived, and contrary to the principle, “Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for fear of it, people would swallow one another alive” (Avot 3:2). Only the first and last of these verses are usually said, toward the end of the poem. They are said in an undertone with the Ark closed. The poem as a whole has as its theme the central idea of Rosh HaShana itself: that God, Creator of the universe, is its supreme Sovereign. He is King, not only of the Jewish people, but of all humanity, of all that lives.

UNTANEH TOKEF – LET US VOICE THE POWER No prayer more powerfully defines the image of the Days of Awe than does Untaneh Tokef. It is the equivalent in words to one of the great religious paintings by Michelangelo or Rembrandt. The language is simple, the imagery strong, the rhythms insistent and the drama intense. It is structured in four movements. The first sets the scene. The heavenly court is assembled. God sits in the seat of judgment. The angels tremble. Before Him is the book of all our deeds. In it our lives are written, bearing our signature, and we await the verdict. The second defines what is at stake: Who will live, who will die? Who will flourish, who will suffer, who will be at ease, who will be in torment? Between now and Yom Kippur our fate is being decided on high. Then comes the great outburst of faith that defines Judaism as a religion of hope. No fate is final. Repentance, prayer and charity can avert the evil decree. Life is not a script written by Aeschylus or Sophocles in which tragedy is inexorable. God forgives; God pardons; God exercises clemency – if we truly repent and pray and give to others. Finally there is a moving reflection on the fragility of human life and the eternity of God. We are no more than a fragment of pottery, a blade of grass, a flower that fades, a shadow, a cloud, a breath of wind. Dust we are and to dust we return. But God is life forever. By attaching ourselves to Him we may “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour” (William Blake). We do not know exactly who composed Untaneh Tokef or when. A famous tradition dates it to the time when Jews in northern Europe were suffering brutal Christian persecution. It tells of Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, how he was pressured by the bishop, who was also mayor of the town, to convert. Eventually, after repeated prevarication, the bishop subjected him to cruel punishment, inflicting on him wounds from which he would die. On Rosh HaShana, sensing that he was on the verge of death, Rabbi Amnon asked to be carried to the synagogue. As he entered he found the congregation about to say the Kedusha, and asked for permission to say a prayer as his dying words. He then said Untaneh Tokef, and died (Or Zarua 2:276). The discovery of ancient manuscripts in the Cairo Geniza suggests, however, that the prayer may be older than this. This and other factors suggest that, in its original form, it was composed in Israel several centuries before. The story of Rabbi Amnon may explain its adoption and adaptation by the Jewish communities of northern Europe. Whatever its origin, it is one of the masterpieces of Jewish prayer.

וּבְשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל יִתָּקַע וְקוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה יִשָּׁמַע A great shofar sounds, and a still small voice is heard. In a brilliant linking of two famous biblical episodes, the prayer recalls two scenes on Mount Sinai. The first took place when the Torah was given to the Israelites in the days of Moses, when “the sound of the shofar grew louder and louder” (Ex. 19:19) and the people trembled. The second took place several centuries later when the prophet Elijah, after his confrontation with the false prophets of Baal, stood on the same mountain. There was a whirlwind, an earthquake and a fire, but God was not in any of these. Then came the kol demama daka, “a still small voice” (I Kings 19:12). It is not the whirlwind, the earthquake or the fire that are truly terrifying but the still, small voice of God that tells us that we are in the presence of Infinity. כִּבְנֵי מָרוֹן Like sheep. This phrase – in Hebrew,kivnei maron – appears in the Mishna (Rosh HaShana 1:2). The Talmud offers three interpretations. The first: like a flock of sheep being counted by a shepherd. We pass individually, one by one, before God’s scrutiny. There are times when we are one of a crowd, but not today. Today God examines each of us individually. The second: like the approach to Meron or Beit Ḥoron. This was a village approachable only by way of a steep path only wide enough for one person to pass at a time. Here too the idea is as in the previous interpretation: we are judged singly as individuals. But to it is added the idea of a steep ascent. We are climbing. The way is hard. The third: like the army of King David. This reads the text as kivenumeron. Numeron is the Greek word for a host, an army. Here the emphasis is different. God is being crowned as King and we are His legions, His troops, the people who recognize His majesty and do battle on His behalf.

בְּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵֽבוּן On Rosh HaShana it is written. Rabbi Kruspedai said in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: On Rosh HaShana three books lie open in heaven: one for the completely wicked, one for the completely righteous, and one for the intermediate. The completely righteous are immediately inscribed in the book of life; the thoroughly wicked are immediately inscribed in the book of death; the verdict on the intermediate is suspended from New Year till the Day of Atonement. If they deserve well, they are inscribed in the book of life; if they do not deserve well, they are inscribed in the book of death. (Rosh HaShana 16b)

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֹֽעַ הַגְּזֵרָה But repentance, prayer and charity avert the evil of the decree. Judaism lives in cognitive dissonance, believing both sides of what superficially looks like a contradiction. This dissonance is the source of our creative energy, our restless desire to heal a fractured world, as well as our intellectual honesty in refusing to simplify a complex faith. We have just said, “On Rosh HaShana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed...who will live and who will die,” as if the future were determined on these days. Now we say the opposite: “But repentance, prayer and charity avert the evil of the decree.” On this view, the future is not determined. No fate is final. There is always the possibility of an appeal, a plea for clemency, a royal or presidential pardon. There is a classic example of this in Tanakh. In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amotz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.” Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before You faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in Your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of My people: This is what the Lord, God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you.” (II Kings 20:1–5; Isaiah 38:1–5) Isaiah had told Hezekiah he would not recover, but he did. He lived for another fifteen years. God heard his prayer and granted him stay of execution. From this the Talmud infers, “Even if a sharp sword rests upon your neck you should not desist from prayer” (Berakhot 10a). We pray for a good fate but we do not reconcile ourselves to fatalism. וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה Repentance, prayer and charity. Repentance is our relationship to ourselves. Prayer is our relationship to God. Tzedaka, charity, is our relationship to others. We should be honest in our relationship with ourselves, humble in our relationship to God and generous in our relationship to others. REPENTANCE Once, shortly before Rosh HaShana, an itinerant shoemaker passed the house of Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev, crying, “Anything to mend?” When he heard these words the rabbi wept, saying, “Alas for my soul, for the Day of Judgment is almost at hand, and I have not yet mended myself.” Let not a repentant sinner imagine that he is far from the degree of the righteous because of his sins and misdeeds. That is not so, for he is beloved and precious to God as if he had never sinned. Indeed his reward is great, because he has tasted sin and yet separated from it, having conquered his evil inclination. It is written in the Talmud that “In the place where repentant sinners stand even the perfectly righteous cannot stand” (Berakhot 34b). Their degree is higher than those who have never sinned because they have had to struggle more fiercely to subdue their passions. (Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 7:4) Rabbi Ḥayyim of Sanz told his followers this story. Once a man lost his way in a great forest. He searched for a way out, but each path he took only led him deeper into the woods. Eventually he heard the sound of someone approaching. His heart lifted. He waited till the other approached and asked him to show him the way out. “I do not know,” said the other, “for I too am lost. But this I can tell you. Do not take the way I have been taking for it will lead you astray. And now let us search for a new way together.” The rabbi lifted up his eyes to his followers, and they understood. Said Rabbi Abraham Kook: Through penitence, all things are reunited with God; through the fact that penitence is operative in all worlds, all things are returned and reattached to the realm of divine perfection. (The Lights of Penitence, p. 49) R. Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, The Lights of Penitence, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978). Penitence is the healthiest feeling of a person. A healthy soul in a healthy body must necessarily bring about the great happiness afforded by penitence, and the soul experiences therein the greatest natural delight. (Ibid., p. 53) PRAYER There are people who cannot understand prayer and its effect on the soul. The Ba’al Shem Tov explained this by way of a parable. He said: There was once a musician who played so beautifully that those who heard him stopped and began to dance. Once a deaf man came along. He saw all the people dancing but he could not hear the music. He thought they were all mad. Rabbi Naḥman of Kosov taught that we should always have God in our thoughts. “But how,” asked a disciple, “can we think of God while we are engaged in business?” The rabbi replied, “If we can think of business when we are praying, then we can think of praying when we are doing business.” Is prayer answered? If God is changeless, how can we change Him by what we say? Even discounting this, why do we need to articulate our requests? Surely God, who sees the heart, knows our wishes even before we do, without our having to put them into words. What we wish to happen is either right or wrong in the eyes of God. If it is right, God will bring it about even if we do not pray. If it is wrong, God will not bring it about even if we do. So why pray? The classic Jewish answer is simple but profound. Without a vessel to contain a blessing, there can be no blessing. If we have no receptacle to catch the rain, the rain may fall, but we will have none to drink. If we have no radio receiver, the sound-waves will flow, but we will be unable to convert them into sound. God’s blessings flow continuously, but unless we make ourselves into a vessel for them, they will flow elsewhere. Prayer is the act of turning ourselves into a vehicle for the divine. Prayer changes the world because it changes us. CHARITY Our masters taught: it is related of King Monabaz [king of Adiabene in the first century CE who converted to Judaism] that during years of scarcity he spent all his own treasures and the treasures of his fathers on charity. His brothers and other members of his family reproached him: “Your fathers stored away treasures, adding to the treasures of their fathers, and you squander them!” He replied: “My fathers stored away for the world below, while I am storing away for the world above. My fathers stored away in a place where the hand of others can prevail, while I have stored away in a place where the hand of others cannot prevail. My fathers stored away something that produces no fruit, while I have stored away something that does produce fruit. My fathers stored away treasures of money, while I have stored away treasures of souls.” (Bava Batra 11a) Said the Rabbi of Kotzk: Take care of your own soul and another person’s body, not of your own body and another person’s soul. The fifteenth-century Jewish diplomat and scholar Don Isaac Abrabanel (1437–1508), chancellor to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Castile, was once asked by the king how much he owned. He named a certain sum. “But surely,” the king said, “you own much more than that.” “You asked me,” Abrabanel replied, “how much I owned. The property I have, I do not own. Your majesty may seize it from me tomorrow. At best I am its temporary guardian. The sum I mentioned is what I have given away in charity. That merit alone, neither you nor any earthly power can take away from me.” We own what we are willing to share.

אָדָם יְסוֹדוֹ מֵעָפָר וְסוֹפוֹ לֶעָפָר Man is founded in dust and ends in dust. It is said that when Shmuel Yosef Agnon won the Nobel Prize for literature he was besieged by reporters and photographers. One of them asked him to pose for a photograph by writing as if composing one of his novels. Agnon did. The photographer took the shot and left. One of those present, out of curiosity, looked at the piece of paper to see what Agnon had written at this moment of glory. Agnon had written the words, “Man is founded in dust and ends in dust.” (Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen, Prayer and Penitence) Rabbi Jeffrey M. Cohen, Prayer and Penitence: A Commentary on the High Holy Day Machzor (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994), p. 83. Rabbi Bunam of Pzhysha said to his disciples: Everyone should have two pockets, so that he can reach into one or the other according to his needs. In his right pocket he should place the words, “For my sake was the world created.” In his left pocket, he should place the words, “I am dust and ashes.” וְכַחֲלוֹם יָעוּף Like a dream that slips away. The greatest choice we will ever make is how we use the brief time we are given in this life. Shakespeare’s Mark Antony was precisely, deliberately wrong. The good we do lives after us. The rest is oft interred with our bones. Will we, or will we not, discover our purpose in life and thus be etched with eternity? God calls to us, each of us, here where we are, this person, in this situation, at this time, saying: there is an act only you can do, a situation only you can address, a moment that, if not seized, may never come again. God commands in generalities but calls in particulars. He knows our gifts and He knows the needs of the world. That is why we are here. There is an act only we can do, and only at this time, and that is our task. The sum of these tasks is the meaning of our life, the purpose of our existence, the story we are called on to write. God’s call is almost inaudible. It speaks in “a still, small voice,” meaning a voice we can only hear if we are listening. But it is there and if, from time to time throughout our lives, we create a silence in the soul, we will hear it. There is no life without a task, no person without a talent, no place without a fragment of God’s light waiting to be discovered and redeemed, no situation without its possibility of sanctification, no moment without its call. It may take a lifetime to learn how to find these things, but once we learn, we realize in retrospect that all it ever took was the ability to listen. When God calls, He whispers our name – and the greatest reply, the reply of Abraham, is simply Hineni, “Here I am,” ready to heed Your call, to mend a fragment of Your all-too-broken world.

חֲמֹל עַל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ Have mercy on those You have made. A prayer woven out of several fragments from different places and times. Its theme is the mutual relationship between God’s holiness and that of His people Israel. God made them holy; they declare Him holy.

בְּאֵין מֵלִיץ With no one to advocate. The poet, drawing on imagery from the book of Job, imagines a courtroom scene in which the accused has no defending counsel to answer the prosecuting attorney.

וְכֹל מַאֲמִינִים And all believe. A sustained declaration of faith in divine justice and compassion. Rosh HaShana, the Day of Judgment, is the living expression of Judaism’s greatest leap of faith: the belief that the world is ruled by justice. No idea has been more revolutionary, and none more perplexing. There are questions that challenge faith, and there are questions that come from the heart of faith. Those who asked about the apparent injustices of the world were not doubters or sceptics. They were Judaism’s supreme prophets. Moses asked, “O Lord, why have You brought trouble upon this people?” (Ex. 5:22). Jeremiah asked, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (Jer. 12:1). They did not ask because they did not believe. They asked because they did believe. If there were no Judge, there would be no justice and no question. There is a Judge. When then is justice? Above all else, Jewish thought through the centuries has been a sustained meditation on this question, never finding a final answer, realizing that here was a sacred mystery no human mind could penetrate. All other requests Moses made on behalf of the Jewish people, says the Talmud (Berakhot 7a), were granted except this: to understand why the righteous suffer. As tenaciously as they asked, so they held firm to the faith without which there was no question: that there is a moral rule governing the universe and that what happens to us is in some way related to what we do. Good is rewarded and evil has no ultimate dominion. No Jewish belief is more central than this. It forms the core of the Hebrew Bible, the writings of the rabbis and the speculation of the Jewish mystics. Reward and punishment may be individual or collective, immediate or deferred, in this world or the next, apparent or veiled behind a screen of mystery, but they are there. For without them life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The faith of the Bible is neither optimistic nor naive. It contains no theodicies, no systematic answers, no easy consolations. At times, in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes and Lamentations, it comes close to the abyss of pain and despair. “I saw,” says Ecclesiastes, “the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter” (4:1). “The Lord,” says Lamentations, “has become like an enemy” (2:5). But the people of the Book refused to stop wrestling with the question. To believe was painful, but to disbelieve was too easy, too superficial, untrue. The Rabbi of Klausenburg, Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, who survived Auschwitz and lost his wife and eleven children in the Holocaust, once said: “The biggest miracle of all is that we, the survivors of the Holocaust, after all that we witnessed and lived through, still believe and have faith in the Almighty God, may His name be blessed. This, my friends, is the miracle of miracles, the greatest miracle ever to have taken place.” As he said these words, he wept. But still he believed.

וְיֶאֱתָֽיוּ…וְיִתְּנוּ לְךָ כֶּֽתֶר מְלוּכָה And all shall come…to offer You the royal crown. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik used to speak about his childhood in Chaslavitch: Our teacher, who was a Chabad Hasid, said to us: “Do you know what Rosh HaShana is? The Rebbe, the Tzemaḥ Tzedek, would call the night of Rosh HaShana Karanatzia Nacht [Coronation Night].” Then he would ask the children, “Do you know whom we will be crowning?” Once I replied, “Czar Nicholas” [Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia]. The teacher responded: “Nicholas? He was crowned years ago. Why do we need to crown him again? Besides, he is not the real king. No, tonight, my dear children, we crown God. “And do you know who places the crown on his head?” the teacher continued. “Yankel the tailor, Berel the shoemaker, Zalman the water-carrier, Yossel the painter, Dovid the butcher…” Rabbi Soloveitchik concluded: I have given many sermons and written many discourses on the concept of Rosh HaShana, but nothing ever made me feel the true depth and power of the day as those words of my childhood teacher. Every year, when I recite in the Rosh HaShana prayers the words, “Rule over the whole world in Your glory,” I remember my teacher in Chaslavitch. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s “Teshuva Derasha,” lecture given on September 23, 1974 (Yiddish). Summarized and published in Soloveitchik’s Yemei Zikaron [17:6], (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1986), pp. 149–150.

MALKHIYOT: GOD’S KINGSHIP We now begin the central drama of the Musaf Amida: three sections dealing respectively with Malkhiyot, God’s kingship; Zikhronot, God’s acts of remembrance; and Shofarot, verses relating to the shofar. In each case there are ten verses, the first three from the Mosaic books, the second three from Ketuvim, the Writings, and the third triad from the books of the prophets. The last verse in each case is from the Torah. The idea of Divine Kingship has been historically one of Judaism’s greatest contributions to Western civilization, though its implications were not fully understood until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when, under the influence of the Christian Hebraists, the foundations of modern freedom were laid in Europe and America. The idea of God as the Supreme King entails that no human ruler or government has absolute authority. Every nation is “under God,” meaning that God’s command establishes the moral limits of power. Lacking this idea, the first and greatest democracy in ancient times, the Athens of Solon, descended into tyranny. The philosophy that was then in the ascendant taught them [the Athenians] that there is no law superior to that of the State – the lawgiver is above the law. It followed that the sovereign people had a right to do whatever was within its power, and was bound by no rule of right or wrong but its own judgment of expediency… In this way the emancipated people of Athens became a tyrant.” (Lord Acton) Sir John Dalberg-Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity.” An address given to the members of the Bridgnorth Institute on February 26, 1877. As cited in Selected Writings of Lord Acton: Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J. Rufus Fears (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1985), pp. 13–14. Without the constraint of the idea that above all human kings is the Divine King, all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

וּמִפְּנֵי חֲטָאֵֽינוּ גָּלִֽינוּ מֵאַרְצֵֽנוּ But because of our sins we were exiled from our land. This is a distinctively Jewish conception of sin and its consequences. A sin is an act that is not in the right place. The verb ḥ-t-a, “sin,” comes from a verb that means “to miss the mark.” The word avera, like its English translation, “transgression,” means an act that oversteps the boundary. Justice is always “measure for measure.” So the punishment for an act in the wrong place is exile, being in the wrong place. It was so from the beginning. For their sin, Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden. For his sin, Cain was exiled and condemned to be a restless wanderer. The prophets saw Israel’s exile as a national punishment for sin – for failure to stay faithful to God. Equally they saw teshuva as both a physical and spiritual return. Sin is displacement. Teshuva is homecoming.

ALEINU Aleinu (which from the thirteenth century onwards was adopted as part of the daily prayers – it concludes each service) was originally written specifically for Rosh HaShana to serve as a prelude to the verses of Malkhiyot section about the kingship of God. It was edited by Rav, the great third-century rabbi who laid the foundations of Sura, one of the Babylonian academies from which emerged the Babylonian Talmud. Rav was one of the great architects of the Rosh HaShana prayers, he who ruled that instead of ending the third paragraph of the Amida with the phrase “the holy God,” we should say “the holy King.” The prayer in its earliest forms is very ancient. One line from the original prayer – “For they worship vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who cannot save” – aroused controversy. During the Middle Ages, a Jew who had converted to Christianity cited this verse to make the false claim that Jews were criticizing or even ridiculing Christianity. In vain it was pointed out that the offending verse was taken from two verses in the book of Isaiah (30:7; 45:20). Isaiah lived at least seven centuries before the birth of Christianity and therefore could not have possibly had it in mind. Because of the fear of further animosity and persecution, many communities removed it from the prayer book, though some continue to say it.

וַאֲנַֽחְנוּ כּוֹרְעִים וּמִשְׁתַּחֲוִים But we bow in worship. What distinguishes the Days of Awe from all other festivals is that here and only here does the Jew kneel. He does what he refused to do before the King of Persia, and no power on earth can compel him to do, and what he need not do before God on any other day of the year, or in any other situation he may face during his lifetime. And he does not kneel to confess a fault or to pray for forgiveness of sins… He kneels only in beholding the immediate nearness of God, hence on an occasion which transcends the earthly needs of today… The congregation participates directly in the feeling of God’s nearness when it says the prayer that is bound up with the promise of a future time, “when every knee shall bow before God…” On the Days of Awe, this prayer mounts beyond the version of the Concluding Prayer of the everyday service. On these Days of Awe the plea for bringing about such a future is already part of the Central Prayer, which – in solemn words – calls for the day when all creatures will prostrate themselves “that they may all form a single band to do God’s will with a whole heart” […] And what the congregation merely expresses in words in the course of the year, it here expresses in action: it prostrates itself before the King of Kings. (Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption)

הֱיֵה עִם פִּיפִיּוֹת May You stand by the mouths. This and the subsequent prayer, “I shall await the Lord” are reshut prayers, requesting permission to approach God in prayer, said by the Leader during the Repetition, though not by individuals in the silent Amida (Tur, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 591). The difference is explained by a passage in the Talmud. Once it happened that Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa went to study Torah with Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai. The son of Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai fell ill. He said to him: Ḥanina my son, pray for him that he may live. He put his head between his knees and prayed for him and he lived. Said Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai: If Ben Zakkai had put his head between his knees for the whole day, no notice would have been taken of him. Said his wife to him: Is Ḥanina greater than you are? He replied to her: No, but he is like a servant before the king, and I am like a nobleman before a king.” (Berakhot 34b) A servant, explains Rashi, needs no formal permission to enter the presence of a king, but a prince does. When we pray individually and silently we are like servants in God’s presence. When the Leader prays aloud on behalf of the whole congregation, he is like a prince.

SHOFAR The shofar blowing at this point – here and during the next two blessings – is the primary fulfillment of the command. The three variants of the middle notes – shevarim-terua, shevarimandterua – represent the doubt (or some say, the variant customs) as to the nature of a terua, which according to everyone is a form of weeping, but which may be three sighs, nine sobs, or a combination of both. The tekia before and after is a clarion. Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel said that the sound of the shofar is a parable of life. It begins and ends with a tekia, the straightforwardness and simplicity of childhood and old age. Between them, though, life is a terua: complicated, convoluted, and fraught with tears.

ZIKHRONOT: REMEMBRANCES Remembering is usually a past-oriented process. But in Genesis we read three times of God remembering. “God remembered Noah” and brought him out on dry land. “God remembered Lot” and saved him from the destruction of the cities of the plain. “God remembered Rachel” and gave her a child. God remembers for the future. (Lord Jakobovits)

וְזָכַרְתִּי אֶת־בְּרִיתִי יַעֲקוֹב I will remember My covenant with Jacob. Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap, a disciple of Rabbi Kook, explained the unusual sequence of this verse, which mentions the patriarchs in reverse order. God promises to bring redemption for the sake of Jacob, all twelve of whose children remained faithful to Judaism. But perhaps we will not reach that level. So God promises that He will bring redemption for the sake of Isaac, remembering how Isaac was willing to be a sacrifice for the sake of his faith. But perhaps we will not reach that level. So God promises to bring redemption for the sake of Abraham, who was simply full of kindness. But even if we do not reach that level, then God will bring redemption for the sake of those who left exile and traveled to live in the land of Israel.

זָכַֽרְתִּי לָךְ חֶֽסֶד נְעוּרַֽיִךְ I remember of you the kindness of your youth. One of the most moving lines in Tanakh. The Torah portrays the Israelites in the wilderness as querulous, ungrateful, fractious, rebellious, half-hearted and stiff-necked. Yet in a line of the most melting beauty Jeremiah tells the other side of the story. The Israelites were willing to follow God into the desert through an unknown, unsown land, to a destination none of them had seen. Faith is the courage to take a risk and to begin a journey not knowing where it will lead, yet trusting God and following His call. Jews had that courage: it was the legacy of Abraham and Sarah who themselves set out on a journey, having heard the voice of God.

SHOFAROT – REFERENCES TO THE SHOFAR כִּנְשֹׂא־נֵס הָרִים תִּרְאוּ When He lifts up a banner on the mountains. Here the prophet speaks first of a banner and then of the sound of a shofar, whereas in our daily prayers we reverse the order. First we say, “Sound the great shofar for our freedom,” and only then “raise high the banner to gather our exiles.” On this, Rav Kook made a profound comment. The daily prayer, instituted by the sages of the Great Assembly, speaks of the logical sequence of events. The shofar calls those who are near, while a banner is raised for those too far away to hear. Logically, the ingathering of exiles to the land of Israel should first have moved those who were close to Judaism, and only later those who were distant. But the prophet foresaw the actual events as they would transpire. It was those who were distant from Judaism (the secular Zionists) who saw the banner on the mountaintop before those who were close, the religious, heard the call of the shofar. (Rabbi Moshe Zvi Neriah, Celebration of the Soul)

וְתֶעֱרַב עָלֶֽיךָ עֲתִירָתֵֽנוּ May our entreaty be as pleasing to You. This text, said on festivals in one of its two variants, was originally said daily in Israel in Talmudic times (Yerushalmi, Sota 7:6), while the shorter form, “And may our eyes witness,” was said by Babylonian Jewry (Rav Amram Gaon). Because much of the additional poetry said on festivals was composed in Israel, this passage too was added to prayers in the Diaspora.

יִשָּׂא יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶֽיךָ *May the Lord turn His face toward you.*There is a strange and lovely detail in the construction of the Sanctuary. The holiest item of its furniture was the Ark. It contained the holiest of objects, the tablets on which were written God’s word. Above the Ark were two figures, Cherubim. The Torah says that “their faces were turned to one another” (Ex. 25:20). Ostensibly this was a great risk. The Israelites had been told not to make any likeness that might be worshiped as a god, an idol. The Sanctuary itself was constructed in the aftermath of such an episode, the making of the golden calf. Why then were figures introduced into the Holy of Holies? The sages say they were like children (Rashi, based on Sukka 5b), or, in another interpretation, that they were intertwined like lovers (Yoma 54a). It was between the two Cherubs that God spoke to Moses. The message of this symbol was so significant that it was deemed by God Himself to be sufficient to outweigh the risk of misunderstanding. God speaks where two persons turn their face to one another in love, embrace, generosity and care. God’s presence is everywhere. But not everywhere are we ready to receive it. When we open our “I” to another’s “Thou” – that is where God lives. We discover God’s image in ourselves by discerning it in another. God lives in the between that joins self to self through an act of covenantal love.

הַיּוֹם This day. Said the Maggid of Koznitz: The evil urge comes to a person and says: “How can you repent? You are so filled with sins.” This is not the truth. A person who truly wants to repent must say, “It is true that I have sinned, but the past is the past. I will look only toward the future, and from now on I want to repent and return to God with all my heart.” Our sages therefore teach us that the word “Now” – “this day” – alludes to repentance.

הַמְבָרֵךְ אֶת עַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּשָּׁלוֹם who blesses His people Israel with peace. Rabbi Elazar used to pray: May it be Your will, O Lord our God, to cause to dwell in our lot love, fellowship, peace and friendship, to widen our boundaries through disciples, to prosper our goal with hope and with future, to appoint us a share in the garden of Eden, to direct us in Your world through good companions and good impulse, that we may rise in the morning and find our heart awake to fear Your name. (Berakhot 16b)