Rab. Kogan - Our Father - Our King

Just before the High Holy days, my email starts multiplying and it keeps growing and growing until the High Holy Days are over. First, I receive countless virtual Rosh Hashanah cards from relatives, friends and acquaintances, from whom I haven’t heard in a year. Then I receive ideas for sermons for the High Holy Days, past years’ High Holy Days sermons, and “please read my great High Holy Day sermon”, from American and Argentinean colleagues, who seem to keep as busy as I do before these special days. Finally, I receive countless jokes from relatives and friends, attachments and links, which are somehow, but not necessarily, related to the High Holy Days.

If you are smiling right now, it is because you probably have access to the Internet and you use this wonderful resource called email to communicate with your friends and relatives. And, like me, you also receive tons of jokes, attachments and links, not only around the High Holy days, but especially around the High Holy Days.

If someone were to make a study on the matter, he or she would be able to determine that at least 30% of the material sent over the email around this time of the year was already sent to us (by the same person or by someone else) during the previous years. But I guess, since human beings are forgetful by nature (which sometimes can be a blessing) we keep enjoying what people send to us, over and over again.

Contained among the 7868 emails I received since last September 1 was an email that included an attachment of Barbara Streisand’s beautiful rendition of Avinu Malkeinu.

I was familiar with Streisand’s Avinu Malkeinu and certainly with the prayer itself. However, I enjoyed listening to the song –should I say prayer?- over and over again.

Now, as you know, Barbara Streisand is Jewish (many people will say that she looks Jewish too, and even though she may not go to Shul every Shabbat, it shouldn’t surprise us that she decided to make a new rendition of an old Jewish prayer.

What prompted additional thought, however, was Streisand’s choice of Avinu Malkeinu. Certainly my friend, who sent me the attachment, was touched by it and thought I would be too. My friend was right. I was indeed touched. And when I started giving the matter additional thought, I realized that more than being touched by the song, I was touched by the prayer. Moreover, I would like to suggest that beyond Barbara Streisand’s choice of Avinu Malkeinu is the immense power of the liturgical composition itself.

But what is so special about Avinu Malkeinu?

A former student of mine and current Rabbi of Costa Rica, Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky, has a theory on why it is that Avinu Malkeinu is such a beloved and powerful prayer.

According to Rabbi Pavolotzky there are three main reasons why people relate specially to Avinu Malkeinu. The first one is the particular melody of the Prayer (Rabbi Pavolotzky didn’t have in mind Barbara Streisand’s rendition but the traditional tune, the one we sing here, and in Argentina, and in Israel and probably throughout the Jewish world.) The melody of Avinu Malkeinu, in particular the melody that closes the prayer, is both a happy and a somber one, like a cry from the depths of the heart, transformed into song

The second reason –according to Rabbi Pavolotzky- for the special place Avinu Malkeinu occupies in the High Holy days liturgy, should be found in the repetition of the phrase “Avinu Malkeinu” itself. Forty four times we repeat the opening words of each verse: Avinu Malkeinu we have sinned before you, Avinu Malkeinu inscribe us in the book of prosperity, Avinu Malkeinu bless our storehouses with abundance… Avinu Malkeinu, Avinu Malkeinu, Avinu Malkeinu… By the end of the prayer, the words “Avinu Malkeinu” have set in our memory.

The third reason has to do not with technical or secondary aspects of Avinu Malkeinu –the melody or the repetition of the opening words- but with the content of this ancient prayer and its particular origin.

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Avinu malkeinu (Our Father, our King) is a penitential prayer that originated, strange as it sounds, on fast days as a plea for rain. It has been included in an expanded version in the services during the period from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur with the exception of the Sabbath, when such penitential prayers are never recited. It is recited standing, before the open Ark, following the repetition of the Amidah. (1)

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The Talmud ascribes the origin of this prayer to Rabbi Akiba:

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"Once Rabbi Eliezer came before the Ark and recited the 24 blessings (said on fast days), but his prayer was not answered. Rabbi Akiba then came before the Ark and exclaimed, "Our Father, our King, we have no king but you; our Father, our King, have mercy upon us for Your own sake!" whereupon the rain fell" (Talmud Bavli, Taanit 25b).

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The Talmud ascribes the efficacy of the prayer to the forgiving nature of Rabbi Akiba. The formula is a unique one, combining what are usually seen as two contradictory features, that of a parent, who is loving and accepting, and that of a sovereign who is usually seen as stern and demanding. God, however, is both. God is our ruler, but also our parent. Therefore we can appeal to Him for love, understanding, and forgiveness. It is as if we say to God, "We acknowledge You as sovereign, as all powerful, but we also know that we are Your children and can depend upon Your love and forgiveness."

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The specific list of prayers that now appears has undergone many changes over the centuries, but it retains the core, the beautiful formula devised by Rabbi Akiba for addressing God. (2)

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But what is so special about this formula? Why is it so unique? Why is that this prayer, that reflects a delicate equilibrium between God as a father and God as a ruler, touched the lives of millions of Jews throughout the last two thousand years? What was Rabbi Akkiba’s main contribution?

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Rabbi Akkiba was a great Sage and a great mystic. As a scholar, Rabbi Akiva understood that this universe, this beautiful but precarious world we live in, has a Master. God is in charge and He has a plan, even though we cannot fathom it. He is our King.

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As a mystic, he felt that this Master, this King, was so close to him, that he called him “Father” and since he was speaking on behalf of the entire Jewish people, he called him “our father.”

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Walking in the footsteps of Rabbi Akiva, I would like to suggest that it is time for each of us to recover, to rediscover, this especial dual relationship with our “King” and our “Father” in our own lives.

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I believe that possibly as a reaction to the influence of Christianity, we, thinking liberal Jews, started referring to God in intellectual metaphorical terms. God became an idea, an ethereal force, a divine energy. The 21st century imperative to be “politically correct” removed us even further from our “King” and our “Father.” The liturgical expressions “Master”, “King”, “father”, were substituted by more “innocuous” ones, or deleted from our prayers books, or at least from our modern translations.

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Within liberal Jewish circles fewer and fewer Jews today believe in miracles, in the immortality of the soul, or for that matter in the existence of a soul at all. We allow God to enter our prayer books, with the condition that He remains there, that His presence doesn’t challenge our complacent modern lives.

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And yet, we feel lonely and perplexed. We are very modern, indeed, but we feel like orphans. We are sophisticated, but we cannot grasp the joy and meaning in our lives. We know more than our grandparents, but we care less.

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And with the Psalmist we cry: “from where will my help come?” (Psalms 121:1)

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Our sophisticated minds can’t remember the answer, but our souls know better, and we dare one more time to borrow the words of Rabbi Akiva: “Avinu Malkeinu Al teshiveinu reikam milfanecha” – “our King, our Father, do not turn us away empty-handed from Your presence”.

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It is time to reclaim this unique relationship with God. It is time to regain confidence in our ability to connect with our Creator. It is time to talk to God as a subject talks to his master, as a child talks to his father. It is time to liberate God from school curricula and prayer books, where He has been locked for the last fifty or sixty or seventy years, and bring Him home, to our table, to our business, to our family life, to our daily conversation.

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We can do it, and we must do it!

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We are the ones who gave to the world this unique relationship with God. It was our Rabbi Akiva in the land of Israel two thousand years ago, who taught us the power of the words “Avinu Malkeinu.”

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I know you love stories. We all love them. You may not remember my words today, but hopefully you will remember this story I am going to tell you.

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I heard the story one month ago from Rabbi Michael Graetz, who heard it from one of his congregants, Yechiel Shetler, an Auschwitz survivor.

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Yechiel Shetler was already in his eighties when he came to live in Omer, a suburb of Beer Sheva, where Rabbi Graetz served as a Rabbi for almost 33 years at Magen Avraham congregation. Yechiel Shetler was the father of a younger congregant of Rabbi Graetz, and he moved to Omer to be close to his son and grandchildren. Rabbi Graetz noticed, that Yechiel Shetler, who attended High Holy Days’ services with his family for the first time at Magen Avraham congregation, was crying profusely during Avinu Malkeinu. A few days after the Holy Days, Yechiel Shetler came to see the Rabbi.

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You probably would like to know why was I crying during Avinu Malkeinu – said Yechiel Shetler to Rabbi Graetz. Let me tell you a story…

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And this is the story that Yechiel Shetler told Rabbi Graetz, who in turn related it to me, one month ago.

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Yechiel Shetler was in Auschwitz and with him was a young Jewish prisoner, who had a beautiful voice and used to be a Chazan, a Cantor, in his little Shtetl, in his little village. One of the Nazi guards, who enjoyed teasing the Jews, found about Yechiel Shetler’s friend and forced the young Cantor to sing for him. Yechiel Shetler not knowing secular songs, sang for the Nazi guard the old prayers he learned in his childhood, among them Avinu Malkeinu. The Nazi guard enjoyed listening to the Jew’s songs, and especially he loved the melancholically tune of Avinu Malkeinu, which he forced the Jew to repeat over and over again.

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It was during one Yom Kippur in Auschwitz that Yechiel Shetler and his friend the Cantor decided to fast (it is a fact that even in Auschwitz, most Jews fasted on Yom Kippur) and they took their daily ration of bread and hid it until the holiest day of the Jewish calendar was over.

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However, at night, when they went to retrieve the daily ration of bread they had hid, the Nazi guard caught them and was ready to shoot them. Yechiel Shetler was paralyzed. Suddenly, his friend, the young Cantor, turned to the Nazi guard and told him: “Please, don’t kill us, I will sing Avinu Malkeinu to you.” And so he did, and the Nazi guard spared their lives.

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This is a true story, one that I heard from Rabbi Graetz, who heard it from Yechiel Shetler, who was there, when the story happened.

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Now, if the words, and the melody of Avinu Malkeinu, had the power to soften, at least once, the heart of a cruel Nazi guard, imagine what these holy words, sanctified with thousand of years of suffering and tears, can do to our Father in heaven, to our “King”, to our “Father?” Imagine how much can we achieve with our own Avinu Malkeinu, when we address God truly as a “Father”, truly as a “King!”

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“Avinu Malkeinu Choneinu va’aneinu,ki ein banu ma’asim” - Our Father, our King, be gracious to us and answer to us.

“Hashivenu Hashem Eilecha Venashuva” – “Bring us back to you Hashem, and we shall return.” (Lamentations 5:22)

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We are not in Auschwitz, we are not in the Crusades, we are not in the Czarist Russia, but we need You more than ever. “Bring us back to you Hashem, and we shall return.”

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And please our “King”, please our “Father, bless us and our families with a good, healthy, meaningful and sweet year.

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(1) Reuven Hammer: Entering the High Holy Days: A Guide to Origins, Themes, and Prayers. Jewish Publication Society / July 2005 / 0827608217
(2) ibid.