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From the Rabbi:
This Saturday night we Ashkenazim begin saying our Slichot Prayers. These prayers are masterworks of liturgical poetry, rich in allusions to scripture midrash and Jewish history. They are saturated with feeling and we say them annually to set the emotional tone of the High Holidays. They are also incredibly difficult to understand. The grammar and vocabulary are highly irregular, Aramaic is sprinkled in liberally, comprehensibility of sentence structure is a distant second to stylistic choices like rhyme, meter and acrostic, and even native born Israelis have an incredibly difficult time finding meaningful connection in the dense jungle of these linguistic tapestries. It's like watching a award winning movie, but in Japanese and without subtitles. Oh, we have translations, but they hardly do justice to the genius of these compositions, and the poetry is often entirely lost.
Consequently we tend to read through themyup
very fast. For most of us, the real act of connection is just that we show up. We recognize that this ritual is about reconciling with God before Rosh Hashanah, and that reconciliation is something we want. So we come participate. Anyone who gets somethings substantive from the liturgy, more power to you! But even if you don' just being there - just showing up on relationship is the biggest part of being in relationship. In a certain way, that's really the essence of Slichot. No matter what we've been through, no matter what we've done, Hashem, we're still here and You're still here. Let's be together.
But it's not all gobbledygook. The central refrain of the Slichot prayers is something many of us know and could sing along without even looking in the Siddur. The "thirteen attributes of mercy". (Ex 34:5-7)
וַיֵּרֶד ה' בֶּעָנָן וַיִּתְיַצֵּב עִמּוֹ שָׁם וַיִּקְרָא בְשֵׁם ה'׃
וַיַּעֲבֹר ה' עַל־פָּנָיו וַיִּקְרָא ה' ה' אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב־חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת׃
נֹצֵר חֶסֶד לָאֲלָפִים נֹשֵׂא עָוֺן וָפֶשַׁע וְחַטָּאָה
YHWH 'showed up' in the cloud;
He stationed himself with him there
and called out the name of YHWH.
And YHWH passed before his face and called out:
YHWH. YHWH! Omnipotent, Merciful and Kind; slow to anger with tremendous resources of Love and Truth.
Ensuring His Love for thousands of generations,
forgiving sin, rebellion and error.
What a perfect reflection of the Slichot experience! (Although really our experience at Slichot is the reflection). The murky liturgy is a cloud, yet here we are, taking up our position 'with Him', and calling out to Hashem, summoning forth within ourselves the Divine love, patience kindness, truth to maintain the priority this relationship over any other considerations. No matter how bad our actions or how bad the suffering we may have, and even continue to endure. This moment, this connection, these attributes. This is what connects us to God. Eternal, unconditional Love. From him To Us, By Us, Through Us and As.
Speaking of enduring Suffering, this week's Parsha has within it the longest Aliyah in the Torah, even when parshiot are combined, and it isn't pleasant. 54 of the 69 verses are description of literally unspeakable (we change some words because what's written is too vulgar to say in Shul) horrors. From bedsores that won't heal to cannibalism out of desperation by starvation, every imaginable suffering is present in this aliyah. And we read this every year just as we begin Slichot. It's as if Hashem is saying "no matter what you're going through, I've already predicted it and promised I'd be beside you through it. NO MATTER WHAT!! So too, the Slichot prayers are really about that. No matter what, we'll always be with You Hashem. Just as you are Loving, so will we be. Just as you are patient, so will we be.
While we sometimes think of Slichot as a one way street, us begging Hashem for clemency as we approach the Day of Judgement, when we look at it this way, it's really a mutual process. Both of us coming together in forgiveness to celebrate that our relationship is the most important aspect of who We are.Perhaps that's why it's called 'slichot', 'forgivings'. Not one forgiving, but a mutual forgiving, a mutual resolution that no matter how hard life gets, we'll always go through it together.
Shabbat Shalom,
Reb Shlomo
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