This year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are different — more so than any time in the last 50 years. Almost one year ago, at the culmination of our holiday season – the pinnacle day of joy – we experienced the horrific tragedy of October 7.
Since then, we have mourned those who died on that awful nightmare of a day, we have mourned the hundreds who have died defending the Jewish people, we have mourned those who died in captivity.
We have hoped and prayed for the safe return of the hostages and we have prayed to see those who were evacuated from their homes return safely to their towns. We have experienced unprecedented hatred from the world around us.
Now, we are about to put on our white clothes, walk back into our synagogues and pick up our High Holy Day prayer books. We will spend these days searching our souls, examining our behaviour, regretting the moments when we have not lived up to our full potential.
We will confess, beat our chests and pray to be washed clean of our sins. We will say the familiar Uteshuvah, Utefillah, Utzedakah ma’avirin et roah hagezeriah, “Repentance, Prayer and Charity cause the evil decree to be averted”. Prayer being an essential part of these Days of Awe.
But, this year, there will be a thickness in the room; giant unanswered questions hanging in the air. Hashem, Our God: Is it our sins You wish to hear us confess? What about Yours? Do You regret the awfulness of this past year? Will You stand in judgment before us?
Shocking and perhaps even heretical questions. Yet there are numerous moments in the Torah where God admits to regretting certain choices, the most notable being the act of creating the human being who had proven to be evil.
Of course, the Torah then goes on to tell us that God learns that not all human beings are evil, finding one who is good, Noah, and building an entire world from him and his family.
The rabbis of the Talmud, too, imagine God to be capable of regret. In one of the most moving stories in the Talmud, we are told that Rebbe Yossi, while in transit, stopped into a churvah —a destroyed building — to pray. After he had finished praying, Elijah the Prophet appears to him, admonishing him that he should have prayed on the path, and not in a destroyed building!
Elijah then asks Rebbe Yossi: “What voice did you hear in the destroyed building?” Rebbe Yossi answered him, “I heard the voice of the Divine, cooing like a dove, saying ‘Woe that I destroyed My house, burned My Temple, and exiled my children among the nations.’”
Elijah then responds that this prayer was not only said in the destroyed building but is recited three times a day by God! And further, when the Jewish people enter their synagogues and houses of study to pray, and they praise God’s name, God nods in response, and longs for the time when they said those same words of praise in the Temple.
The story highlights that when we are in pain, we want to believe that God too regrets His behaviour. Professor Yoram Hazony understands this story to mean that “God never ceases to regret the destruction he has inflicted upon Israel.” There is comfort in being together in the pain.
The text notes that this was not any destroyed building, but one of the destroyed buildings of Jerusalem. We are being shown here the mindset of a people, after the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem herself. After trauma, we seek out destroyed places and we bring our prayers there. If we listen carefully, God can be found in these places of destruction.
Yet, that is not the only place we can find God. The story also mentions another set of buildings – that of the synagogue and the house of study. Even after the loss of our most precious possession, the Temple, we responded by creating mini-Temples in the form of synagogues.
The Jewish people, in their pain and trauma, decided that not all was lost. We created a system of prayer that mimics the sacrifices in the Temple. While God cries and regrets His decision to destroy, we have the power to rebuild. We have the power to pray.
This year, as we walk into our synagogues they will hold a dual function for us. On the one hand, they will be churvot – destroyed buildings representing all that we have lost. In these destroyed buildings, we are capable of hearing the Divine voice that shares Hashem’s pain and regret with us.
And they are also mikdashei me’at, mini-Temples. Houses that we built, where when God cries, we respond with praise. Our prayers have the capacity to comfort God and thus to comfort ourselves. We remind God, and we remind ourselves, that we have faith in our relationship.
This year, as we pray, may we hold both the pain and the trauma we have endured, find the strength to forgive God, and praise His name.
Rabba Epstein is senior scholar and educator in residence at the Jewish Education Project, New York. This essay is from a new collection, Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart - Reflections for the Days of Awe, edited by Simon Eder and Adam Zagoria-Moffet, Izzun Books, £15, which is out now
