בָּרוּךְ Blessed. It is not we who bless God but God who blesses us. The meaning of “blessed” here is: We acknowledge You as the source of all our blessings. אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ Our God and God of our fathers. The order here is derived from the song the Israelites sang at the Sea of Reeds: “This is my God and I will glorify Him, my father’s God and I will exalt Him” (Ex. 15:2). Our parents teach us how to worship God, but we must make that faith our own if we are fully to honor and renew their heritage. Faith is more than deference to the past. It must live in the present, in us, if it is to change us and through us change the world. אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם, אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק, וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob. God is always and everywhere the same God, the One God, but for each of us there is a way of serving Him that is unique to us, for we are each in God’s image, but we are all different. The three patriarchs each walked with God in his own way. The radiance of faith is the result of the Oneness of God refracted through the diversity of humankind.

מִסּוֹד Drawing from the counsel. A brief prayer of the form known as reshut: a request, by the leader of prayer, for permission to pray on behalf of the congregation. It is based on the fact that the Leader’s Repetition contains not only the words of statutory prayer but also additional piyutim, poetic insertions and elaborations. Since there were those who had reservations about these additions, the leader emphasizes that they are not merely his own thoughts. They are carefully based on and reflect the traditions of the sages.

שׁוֹשַׁן עֵֽמֶק The Israel, lily of the valley. A phrase from the Song of Songs (2:1) describing the congregation of Israel. This is the first of a highly structured series of four poems by the master of liturgical poetry, Rabbi Elazar HaKalir. HaKalir was one of the greatest virtuosi of piyut, and his compositions are marked by extreme dexterity and density, mastery of the rabbinic literature, and complex webs of association and allusion. Little is known for certain about when and where he lived. Some have placed him as early as the Mishnaic era in the second century, others as late as the tenth, but the likelihood is that he lived in the late sixth or early seventh century, and in Israel. He was immensely prolific, and many of his poems remained unpublished until relatively recently. His vocabulary was enormous; he had a fondness for rare words, as well as words he coined himself, and to understand the full meaning of a Kalir poem needs vast scholarship, suggesting that the communities for which he was writing were deeply literate. Each of the first three poems uses an acrostic device – the first letter of each of the four phrases in each verse – to spell out the three names of the festival: Shabbat Shabbaton, “the Sabbath of utter rest” (the description given of Yom Kippur in Leviticus 16:31); Yom Kippurim, “the Day of Atonements” (Lev. 23:27, 28; 25:9) and Tzom HeAsor, “the Fast of the Tenth” of Tishrei (Sofrim 19:4). Each also makes special reference to the patriarch associated with the specific blessing: the first is about Abraham; the second, Isaac; and the third, Jacob. The fourth poem begins by summarizing the themes of the previous three and then develops its own large-scale theme – the compositional technique later used by Beethoven in the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony.

בָּם תָּקְעָה יְתֵדוֹתֶֽיהָ Forefathers upon whose merit she depends. Since there is no Temple, no High Priest and no sacrifice, we must rely on the merits of the fathers and mothers of our people, the pairs (excluding Rachel) buried in the Cave of Machpelah.

שְׁתִילֵי גְבָעוֹת אַרְבַּע The offspring of the four matriarchs. The four services of today – Shaḥarit, Musaf, Minḥa and Ne’ila – correspond to the four matriarchs: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

בְּמִתְהַלֵּךְ תָּמִים Who walked with You in innocence. God commanded Abraham, “Walk before Me and be perfect” (Gen. 17:1). The poet invokes Abraham in this poem set within the first blessing of the Amida which ends with “Shield of Abraham.”

יוֹם מִיָּמִים הוּחָס The most eminent of days. The second poem by HaKalir, its acrostic spells out Yom Kippurim, the biblical name for the Day of Atonement. Literally it means “Day of Atonements” in the plural, a reference to the several atonements made by the High Priest that day: for himself and his family, his tribe, and the entire people. It also signifies the dual character of the day with its atonement for individuals as individuals as well as for the people as a whole. יוֹם כִּפּוּר הַמְיֻחָס The distinguished Day of Atonement. On the verse, “All the days ordained for me were written in Your book, and one of them was His” (Ps. 139:16), the sages said: “This is the Day of Atonement” (Rashi ad loc., based on Tanna DeVei Eliyahu 1), meaning this is the day of the year supremely devoted to God.

עוֹקֵד וְעָקוּד [Abraham] the one who bound and [Isaac] the bound one. At the binding, Isaac had his life restored to him at the last moment. Hence the connection with the second paragraph of the Amida which speaks about God restoring the dead to life.

כְּהַבְטָחַת סְבִיכַת אַֽיִל Like the promise of the ram entangled in the brush. According to the sages, as the trial of the binding of Isaac came to an end, Abraham asked God to promise that should the children of Israel sin in the future, He would remember the binding to their merit and forgive them because of it (Bereshit Raba 56:10).

אֱנוֹשׁ אֵיךְ יִצְדַּק How can a person justify himself. Not said in all rites, this is not part of HaKalir’s extended poem; its author is unknown. It testifies to one of the fundamental features of Jewish ethics, namely that we stand always in the presence of God who knows us better than we know ourselves, to whom it is impossible to dissimulate, and from whom it is impossible to hide. Interestingly, the Hebrew language has no word that precisely corresponds to the English “person,” since the word derives from the Latin persona, which originally meant the mask an actor wore on the stage. Shame-and-honor cultures see the moral life as a drama in which we each play our part on the stage. Guilt-and-righteousness cultures, of which Judaism is the supreme example, do not attach primary significance to how we appear to others, for the only relevant observer is God Himself, and God knows us from the inside: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (I Samuel 16:7). Hence, nothing less than total honesty will do. Indeed it is the forgiveness of God that makes honesty with ourselves possible, for were it not for that forgiveness, the search for self-respect would lead us endlessly to rationalize or otherwise make excuses for our moral failures.

צְפֵה בְּבַת תְּמוּתָה Behold Your mortal children. The third of HaKalir’s poems has an acrostic that spells out Tzom HeAsor, “the Fast of the Tenth [of Tishrei].” Its central theme is Jacob, traditionally associated with the third paragraph of the Amida.

חֲקַקְתּוֹ בְּרִשּׁוּמֶֽךָ You engraved the image. According to tradition, the image of Jacob is engraved on God’s throne of glory (Bereshit Raba 68:12).

הַמַּאֲבֵק Who struggled. A reference to Jacob’s wrestling with an angel, alone at night until daybreak (Gen. 32).

וְאִם הֵֽמָּה כְּאָדָם If they transgress…as did Adam. To err is human, to forgive, divine. You, God, made the first man, and indeed all human beings, knowing that we would sin. Therefore, in Your mercy, pardon us.

נֵחָשֵׁב May we be considered. At this, the beginning of the fourth of HaKalir’s poems, he sets out three verses, each of which contains a reference to the words spelled out by the previous three: Shabbat Shabbaton, Yom HaKippurim and Tzom HeAsor, the three names of the Day of Atonement. They then serve as refrains to the verses of the fourth poem which spells out the name of the composer, Elazar bei-Rabbi Kalir. Each of the three refrains ends with the word Kadosh, “Holy,” since that is the motif of the third paragraph of the Amida and the threefold Kedusha (“Holy, holy, holy”) we are about to say.

זְכָר לִי רוֹעִי Recall [Moses] my shepherd. Having invoked the merits of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the poet now brings other historic figures to tilt the balance of the scales of justice in Israel’s favor.

בְּזֹאת יָבֹא אַהֲרֹן So that Aaron may come forth. Aaron, the High Priest who officiated on Yom Kippur during the years of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness.

לִפְלוּסִים כְּכוֹכְבֵי מִסְפָּר For the people measured as the unnumbered stars. God blessed Israel, promising they would be as innumerable as the stars (Gen. 15:5, 22:17), as abundant and enduring as the dust of the earth (Gen. 13:16, 28:14). Our sins, however, have cost us these blessings. Where once we shone like the stars; now we lie humiliated like the dust.

וְיוּשְׁבוּ לְתַעֲרָם שְׁנוּנִים May the polished swords be returned to their sheaths. A metaphor for God’s attribute of justice before whose judgment we stand on this holy day.

אֶת לַחֲשִׁי עֲנֵה נָא *Please answer my whispered plea.*The poet has woven his name, Elazar, into the initial letters of the words of both lines of the refrain. As we come closer to the Kedusha, the poet turns his attention to the angels who sing God’s praises and to whose voices we join our own.

אִמְרוּ לֵאלֹהִים Say of God. This poem, attributed by some to Rabbi Elazar HaKalir, by others to Rabbi Meshullam ben Kalonymus, is similar to the composition with the same refrain in Shaḥarit (). Each verse ends with a phrase from I Chronicles 16, the psalm of thanksgiving King David sang when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Jerusalem. Although the poem is an acrostic with a verse for every letter of the alphabet, most congregations say an abbreviated form.

סוֹלֵֽחַ לְעַם זוּ בְּזוֹ He forgives this [His chosen] nation on this [day]. Am zu, “this nation,” is how the Jewish people is described in the Song at the Sea (Ex. 15:16). “On this” is interpreted by some as a reference to “this day,” the Day of Atonement, by others to the phrase of Isaiah (43:21), “This people I formed for Myself that they may proclaim My praise.”

בִּדְבַר סוֹדוֹ His mystic scriptures. An alternative description of the Torah as God’s revealed utterance to Israel.

מַעֲשֵׂה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ The work of our God. A poem contrasting the works of God with those of humankind, attributed by some to Yannai, one of the earliest of the liturgical poets known to us by name (Israel, sixth or seventh century CE), and by others to Rabbi Meshullam ben Kalonymus. Found in its original form in the Maḥzor according to the rites of the Jewish community of Rome, it was constructed in the form of a counterpoint, with each verse that spoke of “the work of God” contrasted by another describing the evil that is “the deeds of man.” Most rites, however, delete all these contrasting verses except one. During this verse, expressive of the shamefulness of the human condition when set against the infinite radiance and grace of God, the Ark is briefly closed.

אֲשֶׁר אֵימָתֶֽךָ Even though Your dread. Having contrasted the perfection of God and the imperfection of humanity, the poet brings these themes together in the paradox that frames the religious life: Even though God is praised in heaven by the angelic hosts, it is the praise of frail, finite, fallible human beings such as we are, that gives God delight. In the spirit of Psalm 8: “What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? Yet You made him little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor” (verses 5–6). The verses alternate; one speaks about the heavenly realms filled with the awe of God, the next about humanity. We are poor creatures who strive and fail, whose intelligence is limited, whose life is short and whose light soon fades, yet it is from us that “You desire praise,” as we reach out toward the Unknowable, our smallness transfigured by our intimations of Infinity. And “this is Your praise,” that You care about us and hear our voice.

UNTANEH TOKEF – LET US VOICE THE POWER One of the greatest poems in the literature of Jewish prayer, Untaneh Tokef paints the great themes of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur in a series of unforgettable vignettes. In the first, we see the heavenly court with God sitting on the throne of judgment. Before Him is the book of all our deeds. Everyone’s life is there, and everyone’s signature. The shofar sounds. The court is in session. Even the angels tremble. The trial is about to begin. The next movement tells us what is at stake. The fate of each of us will be decided today: who will live, who will die, who will prosper, who will suffer, who will be at ease, who will face strife, who will fall and who will rise. Then, just as we seem to be embracing a kind of fatalism, the poem sets up a counterpoint with the cry: But repentance, prayer and charity avert the evil of the decree. No fate is final. Life is not a script written by Aeschylus or Sophocles in which the decree cannot be rescinded and tragedy is inexorable. That is not our God, our faith, our world. God forgives; God pardons; God exercises clemency – if we truly repent and pray and give to others. The verdict may have been written, but it is not yet sealed, and God is still open to appeal. We may pray for a good fate but we do not reconcile ourselves to fatalism. Next comes a moving reflection on the fragility of human life when set against the backdrop of 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: holding fast to Him we defeat death. “We are children of this world,” wrote Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra, “but God has set eternity in our hearts.” Untaneh Tokef was long believed to have been written in the eleventh century by Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, who died a martyr’s death after refusing to convert to Christianity. The discovery of the prayer in ancient manuscripts in the Cairo Geniza suggests, however, that the prayer is older than this. Almost certainly it was composed in Israel, possibly as early as the sixth or seventh century, and possibly by Yannai, the first great composer of liturgical poetry known to us by name. The story of Rabbi Amnon is less about the composition of the prayer than about its adoption by the Jewish communities of northern Europe.

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה – REPENTANCE, PRAYER AND CHARITY Repentance is our relationship to ourselves. Prayer is our relationship to God. Charity is our relationship to others. In repentance we look inward. In prayer we look upward. In charity we look outward. We should be honest in our relationship with ourselves, humble in our relationship to God and generous in our relationship to others. REPENTANCE We can change. That is the radical proposition at the heart of teshuva. It has been denied in many ages in many ways. People have said our fate is in our stars; or we are predestined to become what we are; or our lives are determined by Marxist, Freudian or Darwinian causes; or our character is written in our genes. At best these are half-truths, because by effort, discipline and will, sometimes even through a single transformative moment, we can cease to be the person we were and become the person we are called on to be. Judah, Jacob’s son, who proposed selling his brother Joseph as a slave, later became the man willing to spend the rest of his life as a slave so that his brother Benjamin could go free. Moses, the tongue-tied stammerer, became the most eloquent of Israel’s prophets. Hillel, the poor Babylonian, eventually became Nasi, Prince of the Jewish people. Akiva, illiterate until he was forty, became the greatest rabbi of his time. There is nothing pre-scripted about our fate. Repentance is God’s call to freedom: to be what we choose to be, what we could be, what God wants us to be, a blessing to humanity and a reflection, however pale, of His light. At first, I wanted to change the world. I tried, but the world did not change. Then I tried to change my town, but the town did not change. Then I tried to change my family, but my family did not change. Then I realized: first, I must change myself. (Rabbi Israel Salanter) Better is the sinner who knows he is a sinner than the saint who believes he is a saint. (Hasidic saying) We are afraid of things that cannot harm us, and we know it, and we crave things that cannot help us, and we know it. But in truth the one thing we are afraid of is within us, and the one thing we crave is within us also. (Rabbi Naḥman of Bratslav) Rabbi Nathan of Nemerov said, “Rabbi Naḥman (of Bratslav) once told me, ‘You have faith, but you have no faith in yourself.’ He meant you must believe that you are precious in God’s eyes. The fact that every single individual is important to Him is a measure of God’s goodness.” Once when Rabbi Pineḥas of Koretz entered the house of study, he found his disciples deep in conversation. “What are you talking about?” he asked. They replied, “We were saying how afraid we are that the evil urge will pursue us.” “Don’t worry,” said the rabbi. “You have not climbed high enough for it to pursue you. For the time being, you are pursuing it.” Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev was known for his daring prayers in defense of the Jewish people. Once he prayed, “Master of the universe, we have many sins. You have much forgiveness. I propose a deal: our sins for Your forgiveness. And should You say, That is not a fair deal, I would reply, Without our sins, of what use would Your forgiveness be?” PRAYER Prayer is the language of the soul in conversation with God. It is the most intimate gesture of the religious life and the most transformative. The very fact that we can pray testifies to the deepest elements of Jewish faith: that the universe did not come into existence accidentally, nor are our lives bereft of meaning. The universe exists, and we exist, because someone – the One God, Author of all – brought us into being with love. We are not alone. It is this belief more than any other that redeems life from solitude and fate from tragedy. In prayer we speak to a presence vaster than the unfathomable universe yet closer to us than we are to ourselves: the God who listens and cares, loves and forgives. At its height, prayer is a profoundly transformative experience. Through it we learn that, “Though my father and mother may reject me, God will gather me in” (Ps. 27:10). God never rejects us or loses faith in us. Because He is with us in our efforts, we do not labor in vain. When we stumble, He lifts us; when we are at the edge of despair He gives us strength. However far we feel from God, He is behind us, and all we have to do is turn to face Him. When we do so, we are brushed by the wings of eternity. Prayer changes the world because it changes us. Of course, we do not always feel this. Yet regular daily prayer works on us in ways not immediately apparent. As the sea smoothes the stone, as the repeated hammer-blows of the sculptor shape the marble, so prayer – repeated, cyclical, tracking the rhythms of time itself – gradually wears away the jagged edges of our character, turning it into a work of devotional art. We begin to see the beauty of the created world. We locate ourselves as part of the story of our people. We come to think less of the “I,” more of the “We”; less of what we lack than of what we have; less of what we need from the world, more of what the world needs from us. Slowly we achieve the deep happiness that comes from learning to give praise and thanks. Prayer is less about getting what we want than about learning what to want. Through it we align ourselves with the moral energies of the universe. Our spiritual horizons expand. Singing the song of our people, we grow. The world we build tomorrow is born in the prayers we say today. Prayer is the act of listening to God listening to us. It is phatic communion, the touch of two selves. Yes, there are words, many of them. There is a text, a liturgy, a siddur, a proper “order” of prayer, the libretto constructed by generation after generation of men and women of faith as they searched for the words that would best express their collective thanks to Heaven and their hopes for Heaven’s grace. But there is also a listening beyond words, a silence that gives meaning to speech. In that silence, we know and are known by God. The Maggid of Mezeritch said: “Every lock has a key which fits it and opens it. But there are strong thieves who know how to open a lock without a key. They simply break the lock. So, every mystery in the world can be unlocked by a specific meditation. But God loves the thief who breaks the lock open: I mean the person who breaks his heart for God.” It is written, “Water wears away stone” (Job 14:9). It may seem that water dripping on a stone cannot make any impression. Nevertheless, after many years it can actually make a hole in the stone. Your heart may seem like stone. It may seem that your words of prayer make no impression on it at all. Still, as the days and years pass, your heart of stone will also be penetrated. (Rabbi Naḥman of Bratslav) CHARITY Every Friday morning before dawn, during the time of Seliḥot, the Rebbe of Nemirov would disappear. He could be found in none of the town’s synagogues or houses of study. The doors of his house were open but he was not there. Once, a Lithuanian scholar came to Nemirov. Puzzled by the regular disappearance he asked the Rebbe’s followers, “Where is he?” “Where is the Rebbe?“ they replied. “Where else but in heaven? The people of the town need peace, sustenance, health. The Rebbe is a holy man and therefore he is surely in heaven, pleading our cause.” The Lithuanian, amused by their credulity, determined to find out for himself. One Thursday night he hid himself in the Rebbe’s house. The next morning before dawn he heard the Rebbe weep and sigh. Then he saw him go to the cupboard, take out a parcel of clothes and begin to put them on. They were the clothes, not of a holy man, but of a peasant. The Rebbe then reached into a drawer, pulled out an axe, and went out into the still dark night. Stealthily, the Lithuanian followed him as he walked through the town and beyond, into the forest. There he began chopping down a tree, hewing it into logs, and splitting it into firewood. These he gathered into a bundle and walked back into the town. In one of the back streets, he stopped outside a run-down cottage and knocked on the door. An old woman, poor and ill, opened the door. “Who are you?” she said. “I am Vasil,” the Rebbe replied. “I have wood to sell, very cheap, next to nothing.” “I have no money,” replied the woman. “I will give it to you on credit,” he said. “How will I be able to pay you?” she said. “I trust you – and do you not trust God? He will find a way of seeing that I am repaid.” “But who will light the fire? I am too ill.” “I will light the fire,” the Rebbe replied, and he did so, reciting under his breath the penitential prayers. Then he returned home. The Lithuanian scholar, seeing this, stayed on in the town and became one of the Rebbe’s disciples. After that day, when he heard the people of the town tell visitors that the Rebbe ascended to heaven, he no longer laughed, but added: “If not higher.” (Y. L. Peretz) There is a strange feature of the geography of the Holy Land. Israel contains two seas: the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. The latter is full of life: fish, birds, vegetation. The former, as its name suggests, contains no life at all. Yet they are both fed by the same river, the Jordan. The difference is that the Sea of Galilee receives water at one end and gives out water at the other. The Dead Sea receives but does not give. The Jordan ends there. To receive without reciprocating is a kind of death. To live is to give. Sir Moses Montefiore, one of the great Jews of Victorian Britain, was a very wealthy man. Someone once asked him how much he was worth. Sir Moses quoted a figure in the tens of thousands. The man said, “But Sir Moses, surely you own millions!” Sir Moses replied, “You did not ask me how much I own. You asked me what I was worth. So I told you how much I have given to charity this year, because we are worth what we are willing to share with others.”

אָדָם יְסוֹדוֹ מֵעָפָר וְסוֹפוֹ לֶעָפָר *Man is founded in dust and ends in dust.*Life is God’s question. We are His answer. It may be a good answer or a bad one, but it is the only answer there is. God does not need to know, or be assured by us, that He is God. He needs to know that we hear His call, that we are ready to rise to His challenge, and that we are willing to take into our own hands the responsibility with which He has entrusted us, empowered and given strength by that very trust itself. We have only one life, and however long it is, it is a mere microsecond in the history of the universe. The greatest decision we will ever make is how to use our time, how to create something of beauty and meaning and love that was not there before. We find meaning through a life well lived, in pursuit of the good for its own sake. Neither pleasure nor desire, success nor fame, wealth nor power, can remotely rival it as a source of satisfaction or self-respect. The paradox of altruism is that the hope we give others, returns to us undiminished and enlarged. Something momentous is born every time a human being takes the decision not to rail against the evils of the world but instead to do something to alleviate them. This ethic of responsibility is Judaism’s great contribution to the world. No faith has asked more of its followers. None has taken so high a view of human possibility. We may be mortal but we are God’s partners in the work of creation, and that is as close to immortality as we will ever come. To know that God empowers us to take risks for His sake, that He forgives our failings, lifts us when we fall, and believes in us more than we believe in ourselves – that is all we need to have the courage not to accept the world but to attempt to heal it, one fracture at a time, one day at a time, one act at a time. Every good act, every healing gesture, lights a candle of hope in a dark world. What would humanity be after the Holocaust were it not for the memory of those courageous few who saved lives, hid children, rescued those they could? There were times when the gift of a crust of bread – even a smile – gave a prisoner the will to live. A single message of support can tell threatened populations that they are not alone. One act of hospitality can redeem a lonely life on the brink of despair. A word of praise can give strength to someone losing the will to carry on. We never know, at the time, the ripple of consequences set in motion by the slightest act of kindness. “A little light,” said the Jewish mystics, “drives away much darkness.” And when light is joined to light, mine to yours and yours to others, the dance of flames, each so small, yet together so intricately beautiful, begins to show that hope is not an illusion. Evil, injustice, oppression, cruelty, do not have the final word. Perhaps it is true that “from the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” But we do not need to be straight to point upward, nor do we need to be perfect to be good. Every generous or gentle or courageous deed begets others, inspires others, initiating a wave of transformation whose end we cannot see. A single act, performed for its own sake out of love, gives us – wrote Maimonides – a share in the World to Come (Commentary to Mishna, Makkot 3:17). A single act may redeem a life and grant us our share in immortality.

KEDUSHA Kedusha is the highest peak of prayer. While saying it, it is as if we have left behind the gravitational pull of earth and we are in heaven, part of the angelic choir singing God’s praises. Based on the mystical visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, we say the words they heard the angels sing.

בָּרוּךְ כְּבוֹד־יהוה מִמְּקוֹמוֹ Blessed is the Lord’s glory from His place. Though Isaiah and Ezekiel both saw visions of God enthroned in heaven, what they heard the angels sing was profoundly different. Isaiah heard them singing, “The whole world is filled with His glory.” Ezekiel heard them sing, “Blessed is the Lord’s glory from His place.” The reason for the difference is that Isaiah prophesied when Israel was in its land, the Temple stood, the priests performed their service and the Levites sang their song, whereas Ezekiel prophesied from Babylon in exile. Isaiah saw God’s glory filling the world. Ezekiel saw it confined, as it were, to heaven. In exile there is hester panim, as if God were “hiding His face.” (Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik)

אַדִּיר אַדִּירֵֽנוּ Glorious is our Glorious One. An addition to the Kedusha said only on festivals and High Holy Days, reflecting the fact that these are times when we have a heightened consciousness of God’s glory through His role in Israel’s history.

לְדוֹר וָדוֹר From generation to generation. The greatest thing we receive from our parents and give to our children is our Jewish heritage. There are no gifts greater than these: an identity, a history, a destiny, rules to live by and ideals to which to strive. Jews and Judaism exist today because, for two-thirds of the history of humanity, Jews set it as their highest priority to hand on their faith to the next generation.

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 יֹֽשֶׁר With no one to advocate for us. 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.

הָאוֹחֵז בְּיָד *The One who holds in His hand.*A poem listing the attributes of God, author unknown. Each verse begins by recapitulating the description of God in the previous verse, then moving on alphabetically to a new attribute, creating a step-like effect.

וְכֹל מַאֲמִינִים And all believe. According to the sages, when Moses was summoned by God to lead the Israelites to freedom, he said, “They will not believe in me” (Ex. 4:1). God replied, “They are believers, the children of believers, but in the end you will not believe” – a reference to the lapse in which Moses struck the rock and forfeited his chance to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land (Shabbat 97a). The sages were here giving expression to one of the most striking facts of Jewish history, that by and large Jews did not lose faith in God, even in the longest exile ever endured by a people. They were the God-intoxicated people, the people who said, “I believe, therefore I am.”

אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה I will ever be what I am now. The words God spoke to Moses when he asked Him how he should refer to God when speaking to the Israelites (Ex. 3:14). Literally, the phrase means, “I will be what I will be,” signaling that God cannot be predicted or fully known and that the fullest disclosure of His presence is in the future.

וְכוֹלְלָם יָֽחַד And all of them together. A reference to the systemic nature of God’s creation. Each force that shapes the cosmos, and each life-form that exists, is part of the total ecology of the universe and its delicate balance. Of each individual creation, the Torah uses the word “good,” but of the totality it uses the phrase “very good” (Gen. 1:31), meaning “good in its totality” (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch). God’s creativity is manifest not just in what exists but in the precisely calibrated interrelationship between all that exists.

בְּסֵֽתֶר בְּצֵל שַׁדָּי Concealed in His holy shade. The concealment of God is as important as His revelation, for if the radiance of God were fully visible, neither we nor the universe could exist. God’s infinity would destroy our finitude. Thus the physical universe is possible only because of tzimtzum, divine “self-limitation” (Rabbi Isaac Luria).

וּמַשְׁוֶה קָטֹן וְגָדוֹל Who considers great and small equally. Because God has set His image on each of us, He is concerned for the powerless as much as for the powerful, and for the weak no less than the strong. God’s justice is impartial.

וְיֶאֱתָֽיוּ כֹל And all shall come forth. A poetic expression of the prophetic faith that one day all nations will recognize the sovereignty of God and “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).

KEDUSHAT HAYOM – HOLINESS OF THE DAY With the exception of Rosh HaShana, the Musaf Amida always consists of seven blessings. The first three (expressions of praise) and the last three (expressions of thanks) are as for all Amida prayers, while the central one is about the day and its sanctity, and constitutes the verbal counterpart of the sacrifice offered in the Temple at that time. Seven is the number that represents holiness. Special sanctity attached to the seventh day, the seventh month (Tishrei), the seventh year (Shemitta, the year of release), and Yovel, the Jubilee year after seven cycles of seven. So this middle blessing speaks of holiness while completing the holiness represented by the seven blessings of the Amida.

וּמִפְּנֵי חֲטָאֵֽינוּ גָּלִֽינוּ מֵאַרְצֵֽנוּ But because of our sins we were exiled from our land. A sin is an act in the wrong place. Ḥet, “sin,” comes from a verb meaning “to miss the target.” Avera, like its English translation, “transgression,” means crossing a boundary and entering forbidden territory. Since punishment is “measure for measure,” an act in the wrong place leads to its perpetrator being in the wrong place, that is, in exile. For their sin, Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden. Cain was condemned to a life of exile, “a restless wanderer on earth” (Gen. 4:12). Exile is the inevitable consequence of sin, and geographical exile is the physical counterpart of spiritual alienation, the exile of the soul. Sin estranges us from God and thus from the deepest part of ourselves. The sign of a guilty conscience is restlessness – sometimes, as in the case of Macbeth, sleeplessness – and a lack of inner peace. Because the punishment for sin is exile, the antidote to sin is teshuva, “return.” And since the estranged soul longs to return home, teshuva (as Rabbi Kook wrote) is the deepest instinct of a healthy soul.

וּבֶעָשׂוֹר On the tenth day. The middle blessing of the Musaf Amida on Shabbat and festivals always contains the Torah passage relating to the special additional sacrifice of the day. Now that we have no Temple, we ask God to accept our reading of the passage about the sacrifice as if it were the sacrifice itself. Prayer is sacrificial in nature. The Hebrew word for sacrifice, korban, comes from the root k-r-v which means to bring, or come close to God. Yet the very ideas of closeness and distance seem inappropriate when speaking of God, who does not occupy physical space. The explanation is that the barrier between us and God is not physical; it is metaphysical, psychological. It comes from our sense that we are self-sufficient. We overcome this tragic loneliness by giving something of ourselves away. That is one reason why, under the wedding canopy, the groom gives the bride a ring. A gift bespeaks love, and love – the space we make for the Other – is the redemption of our solitude. In ancient times, when flocks and herds were the measure of a person’s wealth, our ancestors brought sacrificial animals as their gift of love. Even then, though, they were no more than the outer form, the ma’aseh mitzva, of the essential act, which is coming close in love through giving up something of ourselves to the Beloved. Those who cannot sacrifice, cannot love. At the beginning of the laws of sacrifice we read, “When one of you brings an offering to the Lord” (Lev. 1:2). The word-order in the Hebrew text is unusual, though, and read literally the text says, “When you bring an offering of yourself to the Lord,” suggesting that the real sacrifice, even in Temple times, was not the animal as such but the fact that the worshiper, or the people as a whole, were willing to give up something precious for the sake of God. Love, loyalty, sacrifice: these are what bind us to the Other, defeating the solipsism and narcissism that leave us small and alone.

עָלֵֽינוּ It is our duty. An ancient prayer, edited by the third-century Talmudist Rav, proclaiming God’s sovereignty. Since the Middle Ages, Aleinu has formed the conclusion of each of the daily prayers, but its original context was here in the prayers for the Days of Awe that emphasize God’s role as “Supreme King of kings” above all earthly powers. On other days of the year we merely bow in the middle of the paragraph, but on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur we kneel, for on these days the sovereignty of God is no mere item of faith. It is a felt, palpable reality. God is here, now, and we are in His presence. Our body-language bespeaks the immediacy of the Divine.

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, OḤ 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, says 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.