AVINU MALKENU – OUR FATHER, OUR KING Once a great naval ship sailed into the port. On the hillside overlooking the sea a crowd had gathered to watch it enter. Among them was a small child, who waved to the ship. An adult asked the child to whom he was waving. The child replied, “I am waving to the captain of the ship.” The man asked, “Do you think the captain of such a great ship would notice a small child like you?” “I am sure of it,” said the child. “Why?” said the adult. “You see,” answered the child, “the captain of the ship is my father.” On the one hand God is our King and we are His servants. But on the other, He is our Father and we are His children. When God told Moses to lead the Israelites to freedom, He told him to say to Pharaoh: “My child, My firstborn, Israel” (Ex. 4:22). When Moses commanded the Israelites not to lacerate themselves nor divide themselves into factions, he said: “You are the children of the Lord your God” (Deut. 14:1). So we experience God in two ways: in awe and in love. In awe, for He is our Sovereign, the supreme power of the universe. But also in love, for He brought us into being. He is to us as a parent. Between a servant and a king there can be estrangement. A king can send a servant into exile. But between a father and a child there can be no estrangement. However far removed they are from one another, the bond between parent and child still holds. The beauty of Rabbi Akiva’s prayer is the way he orders the words Avinu Malkenu. God is our King, and a king rules by justice. But before God is a king He is a parent. A parent loves. A parent lets love override strict justice. A parent forgives. In the words “Our Father, our King,” Rabbi Akiva was saying: Yes, You are our King but remember that You are also our Parent. Therefore, though we have sinned, forgive us. If our words are honest and penetrate to our heart, they penetrate to God’s heart also, and God forgives. There is a beauty and simplicity in this idea. The scientist Stephen Hawking once wrote that if we discovered a unified field theory that would explain the entire structure of the physical universe, we would “know the mind of God.” Judaism holds that to know the mind of God as much as a finite being can ever understand the Infinite, we do not need cosmology and theoretical physics. We need to understand what it is to be a parent. A parent cannot forsake his or her child, whatever wrong they may have done. God’s love for us is like that but deeper: “Were my father and mother to forsake me, the Lord would take me in” (Psalms 27:10).

חָנֵּֽנוּ וַעֲנֵֽנוּ, כִּי אֵין בָּֽנוּ מַעֲשִׂים Be gracious to us and answer us, though we have no worthy deeds. Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev (c. 1740–1810), one of the third generation of Hasidic leaders, was legendary for his daring prayers on behalf of the Jewish people on the Days of Awe. Elie Wiesel writes of him, “As a child, I visualized him as a powerful, invincible defender of the weak, a dispenser of mercy ready to risk all and lose all in the pursuit of truth and justice. He was my hero then, he still is.”* With love, audacity, humor and compassion, he spoke to God in the intimate grammar and conversational closeness that has made Jewish prayer distinctive since the days of Abraham. *Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (New York: Summit Books, 1982), p. 90. One year, he presented this claim to God: “Master of the Universe, there was a time when You offered Your Law to every nation. Each in turn declined it. Only we, the children of Israel, accepted it. Therefore I have a proposal to make. We have many sins. You have much forgiveness. Let us exchange our sins for Your forgiveness. And should You say that is not a fair exchange, I ask: Without our sins, of what use would Your forgiveness be?” Once on his way to the synagogue on Shabbat he met an “enlightened” young man who, in defiance, was smoking in the street. “Surely you have forgotten it is Shabbat,” he said. “No,” said the young man, “I haven’t forgotten.” “Then surely you have forgotten that on Shabbat you may not smoke.” “No, I know the law.” The rabbi paused for a while, then turned to heaven and said, “Master of the Universe, admit this about Your people. They may sin, but they cannot tell a lie.”