Aveinu Malkeinu (2020)
Matthew L. Schwartz
Liturgist
Holy, Holy, Holy!! Holy is the Great Mystery that surrounds us and calls us to atone…Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh!! Holy are the Hosts of Heaven that set and maintain the Planets and Stars, their course and movement at His holy command…balance and order, night and day.
Aveinu Malkeinu – our Father, our King – we have sinned against you: your children are hurting and screaming and we reach out to the void, the Psalmist David called to you “from the depths of my soul” but what soul have we left for you? We have provided but wickedness. What redemption can possibly come for us? Each day a new plague, a new horror, at the hands of man.
We have sinned…
We have transgressed…
We have sinned…
We have transgressed…
A thousand beats upon my chest, my rib cage bruised, and yet it would never be enough to admit my sins for myself alone…what hope is there then for the world? We have taken your gifts and the beauty that you bestowed upon us at Eden and the knowledge to us at Mt. Sinai and like dust in the wind we have allowed them to blow through our fingers.
It is written that you keep faith with those who sleep in the dust, we have left so much of it across the world that would any sack cloth be enough? Have we done anything, at all pleasing to You, in this year that could garner us favor or attention? No…I can’t see how…not this year.
Repentance, Prayer, and Charity – these are what is said to temper your severe decree! Yet year after year after year we stand before you, and here we are again, wicked in front of your presence, and even if your decree is tempered, still would I fear to feel it.
What have we done to deserve any temperence in your judgement? Does your patience with us wear thin? It must. You have made so many covenants with us, and what have we done to be worthy of them, or to keep them. After Noah you made a new one, so each of us to be judged by our individual actions…but we have failed to stop so much…and whom among us can say that we tried enough, or even tried at all this year?
On Rosh HaShanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed…and I fear the wax being placed next to my name.
What of this year, as we move ever closer to midnight? Will we even have a next year to be in Jersualem or will we end with mutually assured destruction?
There are a thousand fears that keep me awake now, in the middle of the night…and yet, in the stillness and quietness of the evening hour, as I stand before you naked yet fully clothed, you who can hear and see the innermost workings of my mind:soul:heart, I hear a voice echo back to me, a disappointed Parent…not one filled with rage, or anger…but with sadness…which is worse in a way…because here we are, You and I, here again this year, as you assure me that we’ll be together again next year, and the year after that, as you remind and correct me that plagues are never an end, but merely a beginning into Exodus.
Tear gas can be breathed in the air across the country tonight.