סְלַח לָנוּ אָבִינוּ כִּי חָטָאנוּ. מְחַל לָנוּ מַלְכֵּנוּ כִּי פָשָׁעְנוּ. כִּי מוחֵל וְסולֵחַ אָתָּה (ספרד: כִּי קל .טוֹב וְסַלָח אָתָּה:). בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’, חַנּוּן הַמַּרְבֶּה לִסְלחַ – Pardon us, our Father, for we have sinned, forgive us, our King, for we have transgressed; for you are a good and forgiving almighty. Blessed are You, Hashem, Gracious One, Who pardons abundantly.
The link between repentance and forgiveness
In the previous blessing, we prayed for repentance. We follow it up with a request for forgiveness.
Although they are thematically linked and echo similar themes, they are distinct phases on the path of spirituality, each with its own unique features and requests.
In the prayer for repentance, we acknowledged the distance from where we could be and asked for help finding our way. We requested divine assistance through the Torah, the road to repentance, emphasizing the process over the destination.
It is possible to do teshuva and for God to reject it – there are times in the prophets when it is too little, or too late – navi quote about ignoring korbanos – Chazon?
When you hurt somebody you love, you feel bad for hurting them. You would apologize and try to make amends, but it doesn’t follow that the person has to accept your apology or that the relationship can be fixed. A good apology represents the first step: admitting wrongdoing and acknowledging fault for the hurt caused. It is a necessary act of vulnerability and humility, reflecting a desire to mend what you broke. But it is the leap of faith that we take when we have a relationship with another, and part of the apology must affirm the space for the other to respond how they choose.
The apology is distinct from forgiveness. The response is not guaranteed; repentance and forgiveness require separate prayers for Divine assistance.
Importance of forgiveness
(!ed cut this?)
Our prayers are structured in a hierarchy – we don’t just show up and freestyle with everything we want and need. The opening prayers affirm the destination of our prayers, the Almighty Creator. The following prayer is for holiness and separation, sacred distinction, which orients and designates our lives with purpose and imbues them with meaning. The following blessing is about wisdom and understanding, expanding our consciousness; everything that follows is what you want, but your consciousness is fundamentally your essential self and what you are.
Still abstracted from our daily wants and needs, we ask for teshuva and forgiveness. It’s the sixth Bracha, six corresponding to the letter ו. The letter is shaped as a straight line with a hook on the top, and the word literally means hook. The letter is used as a hook, the conjunctive “and,” and links things that might otherwise drift apart. The concepts of repentance and forgiveness are the hooks that stop us from drifting too far for too long.
Keeping teshuva in mind
We believe in our ability to make amends because the Torah consistently emphasizes that God is not impartial but biased in favor of creation – וּבְטוֹב הָעוֹלָם נִדּוֹן / עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה.
Our sages anticipated that someone might exploit this perspective, sinning with the intent of later repenting because there’s no downside to doing whatever you please if God is forgiving – Echteh vashuv CITE
This mindset, which exploits God’s compassionate and forgiving nature as a pretext for wrongful behavior, challenges the essence and integrity of the repentance process and brings to light a profound ethical and spiritual dilemma within the framework of repentance.
Repentance is a sacred mechanism that enables growth, healing, and renewal, facilitating genuine return and transformation. However, our sages warn that this mentality is doomed to fail; when premeditated as part of the sin itself, it loses all its transformative power, not as a punishment, but as a natural consequence of its misuse. That’s just not how it works. One of the critical elements of the process of repentance is sincerity, a genuine reckoning with one’s actions, and a heartfelt desire to change, without which repentance is an empty and hollow gesture.
If humans could theoretically exploit repentance as a mechanism for sin, it would undermine the fabric of ethical living. It would suggest that you can always avoid consequences and that actions do not truly matter, eroding personal responsibility and the sanctity of moral choice.
Repentance holds a place of immense honor and importance because it embodies the possibility of redemption and the belief in the capacity for change. It is a gift, not a loophole.
And yet, in asking for repentance and forgiveness every time we pray, don’t we open ourselves up to this accusation, effectively making our entire lives consciously aware that God forgives our sins and going about with our lives anyway, counting on that forgiveness, undermining the effectiveness of repentance?
Ultimate echteh vashuv
Our sages teach that a select few things predate Creation, one of which is the abstracted ideal of repentance.
The notion of something pre-existing Creation challenges our understanding of time and causality.
If repentance predates Creation, it is not part of Creation and, therefore, not subject to the space and time of our universe or its constraints, including entropy and decay. If repentance predates Creation, it also suggests that the capacity for repentance is not merely a response to human sinfulness but a fundamental aspect of the divine plan woven into the very fabric of existence. Repentance is not an after-the-fact solution; it’s baked into the fabric of the creation process, so redemption is structurally possible from the outset. Creation without repentance could not recover from failure or setbacks; there is no growth and, therefore, no life; it is static and stagnant. Repentance predates existence because the Creator anticipated it was the only way life could emerge, change, and become.
Complex things emerge from the simple things that precede them. Similarly, repentance as an abstract conceptual category had to predate Creation because there would otherwise be a filter that stops the complexity of Creation from emerging.
As a counterexample, splitting the Red Sea was miraculous but part of Creation, deeply rooted in the preexisting conditions, such as water and wind, that made such an act possible.
Repentance is like air and sunlight, essential elements for life that predate their utilization by living beings. Humans cannot exist without air and sunlight and cannot exist without the preexistent phenomenon of repentance. Repentance doesn’t exist in time, so it can unwind the effect of time and entropy; we can repair our mistakes, leaving only the lesson we have learned.
What if we didn’t need teshuva
God created the universe with the predominant attribute of kindness, with the attribute of justice featuring intermittently.
Who needs justice at all? What if we lived in a utopian universe of endless love and forgiveness?
On deeper reflection, such a world paradoxically negates the very essence of kindness. Without the counterbalance of justice and severity, unconditional kindness loses its meaning. In such a world, human actions would bear no consequence, leading to a reality where moral choices have no significance and individual existence lacks autonomy and purpose.
Morality rises from the framework of justice; the absence of judgment renders human deeds meaningless, as there is nothing to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong. The moral equivalence of all actions, regardless of intent or impact, would dissolve the foundation of ethical living; kindergarten teacher or serial killer, it’s all the same.
Judgment makes the things we do matter and makes humans responsible, and that’s why we need repentance.
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as much as the books of life and death are open in judgment and fate hangs in the balance, we say the blessing, thanking the Creator for bringing us to this moment, joyful affirmation that our deeds matter. Our actions matter; our existence has meaning and purpose. Judgment affirms that we are beings capable of moral choice, entrusted with the responsibility to justify our existence and earn our place in the world.
One of the most well-established psychological pathologies is when a parent over-sheltered and overprotected their children, undermining and crippling their development. Instead of encountering the world and being strengthened by it, they’re weakened by the suffocating protection, and when they eventually do go out into the terrible world, they cannot function as adults; they are only adult children.
Sheltering people from all their issues and never teaching boundaries or consequences is catastrophic for healthy development. It’s not kindness at all. In part, because the child never learns, but more fundamentally, because the child never really exists, they never have an identity or existence independent of the parent. Nothing they do has any meaning because they can’t really do anything; it’s all a reflection of the parents.
A similar pathology can be seen in the phenomenon of addiction when the person with an addiction is entirely dependent on an external substance and loses their identity, becomes incredibly destructive, and ignores all consequences.
Judgment matters. It adds a moral dimension to our existence, that we are either worthy or unworthy, ascribing meaning and value to what we do, whether positive or negative. It’s what lets us stand for ourselves.
Justice justifies our place in the world, so by necessity, God must sit in judgment. Yet, a world governed solely by strict judgment would be equally untenable, an existence so rigorous and unforgiving that no human could endure. Did you waste a few minutes of your day? Did you take your vision for granted for a moment? Who could stand up to that kind of scrutiny? What could be good enough for absolute justice? No one and nothing is perfect; perfect is impossible.
Because of this dynamic, justice is configured to be subordinate to and wrapped in kindness, and repentance is there from before the beginning that allows for human fallibility. It is a testament to the Creator’s foresight and mercy, ensuring that even when we stray, the path back to alignment with divine purpose is always open. Before we could fail, the bridge to reconciliation and redemption was lovingly laid.
The universe is designed for us to learn from our mistakes.
What is sin?
Sin is a Christian idea – see Bashevkin Sinagogue
סְלַח לָנוּ אָבִינוּ כִּי חָטָאנוּ
In Jewish thought, the approach to sin is nuanced and diverges significantly from the Christian concept of sin.
R’ Avraham ben haGra illuminates this distinction by explaining that the word means something like missing the mark or what we would call a mistake. In fact, in modern Hebrew today, that’s how sports commentators describe when a player misses a shot – חָטָא.
This interpretation shifts the focus from an inherent moral failing to an error in aim or execution, underscoring the human propensity for mistakes rather than an intrinsic wickedness.
When you walk through the crowded streets in Israel and brush past someone, you would say excuse me. And if you speak Hebrew or understand polite Hebrew speakers, that’s what you say – Slicha. It’s mild and respectful, not too heavy-handed, casual, albeit sincere, apology for a minor, unintended transgression.
We do plenty of things wrong that, while mistaken, were not born of malice or deliberate intent to harm; we can take a milder, gentler approach to those human moments of error through the lens of a child’s relationship with a forgiving parent.
Father, we’ve made some mistakes, please excuse us – סְלַח לָנוּ אָבִינוּ כִּי חָטָאנוּ.
מְחַל לָנוּ מַלְכֵּנוּ כִּי פָשָׁעְנוּ
In contrast, some of our misdeeds are willful or negligent, carrying a higher degree of culpability. When disregarding the consequences or where the outcome was quite foreseeable if we’d given it a little more thought, a more formal request for forgiveness is appropriate, and familiarity isn’t enough to lean on.
As one of the prophets asks, If I am Father, where is My honor?
When a parent forbids their son from driving their car, but he takes it one night against explicit instructions and crashes it, there is a lot to fix.
The first aspect of the apology must address the tangible damage, the act of smashing the car, acknowledging the physical and material harm caused, and admitting the direct consequences of the violation.
However, the second, deeper aspect would speak to disrespect and violation of trust inherent in the act of disobedience. By disregarding the father’s rule, the child disrespects the father’s authority in the particular instruction and disrupts the hierarchy that defines their relationship in general.
Seeking forgiveness for our transgressions, we approach God apologizing for our misdeeds and for the underlying disrespect towards the Divine. Recognizing God as our Father and King in our plea for forgiveness reaffirms the proper dynamics and acknowledges the sovereignty and authority of the Divine. Pardon us, our King, for we have transgressed – מְחַל לָנוּ מַלְכֵּנוּ כִּי פָשָׁעְנוּ.
I remember someone in yeshiva telling the rabbi he didn’t feel like praying, and the rabbi told him he had to anyway.
There will be days when you are not in the mood, but part of having responsibilities is showing up anyway. Commitment and discipline are essential, even in the absence of immediate desire or motivation. Look past temporary feelings of reluctance or hardship and recognize your agency in shaping your life.
Sometimes, life can be a car crash. It’s easy but lazy to say that life is hard. But every person who wants something different from their performance than what they’re getting is doing something to perpetuate poor outcomes. It’s much harder to take extreme ownership, look in the mirror, ask yourself what you could be doing better, and do those things, but we will ultimately have to answer for how we devote our time and attention.
Better to give it some thought sooner rather than later – מְחַל לָנוּ מַלְכֵּנוּ כִּי פָשָׁעְנוּ.
כִּי קל טוֹב וְסַלָח אָֽתָּה
Bad things happen. Bad things happen frequently. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen for what appears to be no reason at all.
Our sages teach that when bad things happen, they can serve as a form of cleansing, rectification, or micro-punishment for wrongdoing. The Yom Kippur prayers acknowledge that adversity and suffering can be corrective – V’lo Al Yidei Yissurim V’Chalayim Ra’im CITE.
However, it is critical not to take this teaching too far or in the wrong way.
This only works when directed inward with introspection; the Rambam’s universal guidance on how to respond to bad things is to search our ways and repent because bad things happen in a climate and environment, and perhaps we can identify the factors that make them more likely to occur in a given context and change them.
This doesn’t work when directed towards others; the opposite of introspection is critical judgment. Our sages textbook example of hurtful speech is telling someone that their pain and suffering is a result of their sin.
(!ed Shlomo – linearity discussion)
If there is one counterexample, a single data point, and one good person that didn’t deserve their suffering, then the conclusion that people get what they deserve cannot be correct. You don’t have to look too hard. In a world of pediatric cancer wards, earthquakes, and special needs summer camps, it’s transparent nonsense that people deserve their suffering. Worst of all, this absurd perspective blames people for their own suffering, as though it’s their fault. It is one of the greatest comforts to hear that they don’t deserve it.
We live in a world where bad things happen for reasons we cannot understand. After the fact that we live in a world like that, the best thing you can do is take our sage’s view and do what you can with our challenges; see them as a growth opportunity, to introspect and use them as growth opportunities.
While we live in a world where bad things happen, we affirm that the nature of the Divine is rooted in forgiveness, goodness, and kindness – כִּי קל טוֹב וְסַלָח אָתָּה.
Beyond exemption from consequences, our ultimate hope and prayer are for a form of forgiveness imbued with kindness and compassion rather than being mediated through corrective measures.
We request forgiveness as an expression of the Creator’s goodness, yearning for a spiritual and moral correction that is positive, uplifting, and healing rather than a negative one that is painful and diminishes the human spirit – כִּי קל טוֹב וְסַלָח אָתָּה.
This perspective does not negate the reality or necessity of consequences; rather, it is a prayer for our mistakes and the divine response to them to be opportunities for genuine improvement and enlightenment, guided by a benevolent hand rather than through hardship. It reflects a trust in the Creator’s profound capacity for forgiveness, guided by infinite goodness – כִּי קל טוֹב וְסַלָח אָתָּה.
Empowering
In asking for forgiveness, the request acknowledges and affirms that God alone has the power of forgiveness and that you are accountable to and responsible to God. Relating to God as a sovereign, we ask for a pardon, accepting God’s authority.
When you want someone to feel smart, you can tell them they are smart. But far better than that, you can present them with a question or problem that they solve, and the result of how they feel means far more than a simple statement.
In asking for forgiveness, we inherently acknowledge that the power to forgive rests with God. This is a declaration of God’s ultimate authority over moral and spiritual realms, recognizing His sovereignty as the judge and benevolent ruler of the universe. It’s an acceptance that our actions are subject to divine scrutiny.
Owning it
Our sages regularly used metaphors to explain abstract concepts in language and imagery we would recognize as familiar.
When life on earth ends, our sages imagine the soul summoned to something equivalent to a heavenly tribunal with prosecution, defense, and final verdict. The prosecuting angel, whose job is to scrutinize human action and draw attention where necessary, is called Satan or Sanegor. It is not malicious or vindictive; it is a divine entity in good standing, fulfilling its core protocol in the same way as the sun shines.
Part of the power of this imagery is that it is accessible. Everybody understands that there are things we’d rather keep concealed or hidden from our friends, and the prospect of our embarrassing and shameful secrets being exposed is terrifying.
And yet, sunlight is the best disinfectant. When we confess our actions, apologizing and asking forgiveness from God directly with a personal appeal, the prosecution is preempted, and there are no secrets to reveal. We bypass the whole theatre and spectacle of a heavenly tribunal, asking for clemency, a pardon straight from the Source of the law.
Our daily prayer is part of our daily check-in with our Father in Heaven, and it is far less formal than the ceremonies of Rosh Hashahan and Yom Kippur.
The preemptive appeal of our prayers reflects the divine nature and the dynamics of judgment and mercy. It acknowledges that while there is a structured process for evaluating human actions, the ultimate source of law and justice is the Creator, and like a monarch or president, possesses ultimate discretion to grant clemency, to forgive, and to grant mercy beyond the confines of any structured process.
Reward and punishment
(!ed Shlomo – cut this section? Off-topic and too abstract. I also don’t think the conclusion is good enough. Or it needs a much deeper treatment on non-linearity and complexity.)
One of the thirteen principles of faith put forward by the Rambam and broadly accepted as mainstream is the belief in reward and punishment, which is that God rewards good people and punishes bad people.
There isn’t any discussion about whether the sky is blue or fire is hot; it speaks for itself. The fact that there is an article of faith that we must take on belief suggests that the belief does not speak for itself and is not self-evident. We believe it, but we live in a world that doesn’t look like it.
One might argue that a linear universe governed by straightforward principles and predictable outcomes reflects Divine wisdom and control. In a linear world, moral choices are clear; if we make amends and do better, everything will be okay. Many people believe this, and we should let them!
But for everyone else, this is an age-old problem thinkers have engaged with and been troubled by – theodicy, the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people?
Or, to frame it differently, why don’t bad things happen to bad people? After all, it’s the central premise of the High Holy Days.
The question is far too good; it has stood the test of time.
Our sages teach us that while troubles and ordeals compensate for misdeeds and wrongdoing, we should not expect a reward for our achievements in our lifetimes – schar mitzvah bhai alma leka.
Although the commandment itself has no reward in this plane of existence, there is a present reward for effort and the tangible effect that good deeds have in the external world. But the principal reward for the root of the Torah’s commandments transcends our worldly existence and underscores a fundamental belief in the inherent value of these commandments as sacred actions that align us with divine will, contributing to the fabric of the universe in ways that our current state of existence cannot fully comprehend.
Ultimately, the universe is much more complex than we can grasp.
חַנּוּן הַמַּרְבֶּה לִסְלחַ – God forgives us abundantly.
R’ Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev told a parable about a child who asked his father for a sweet, and his father gently replied that it wasn’t time for a treat. Undeterred, the child loudly recited the blessing anyway; not wanting the child’s blessing to go to waste, the father yielded and gave him the snack – Bracha lvatala.
The child is not cheating or compelling his father; the child cannot force or coerce the father, who does not have to say yes. He didn’t want to give his son a snack, but then he changed his mind.
In the dynamic between Creator and Creation, we affirm that the Creator abundantly forgives; it’s a feature, not an exploit. Repentance and forgiveness are not manipulative; they provide a theological insight into how God encourages us to approach and engage with the hope and expectation of forgiveness. This doesn’t diminish the sincerity or the necessity of genuine repentance but highlights the overwhelming nature of divine mercy and the lengths to which God will go to facilitate our return to Him.
After the debacle with the Golden Calf, our Sages imagine God putting on a tallis like a prayer leader, teaching Moshe how to make amends, teaching him the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy by which God governs the world, word by word, to be invoked when in need of forgiveness, modeling, leading, and facilitating the attitude of seeking reconciliation and the prioritization of forgiveness and mercy.
Repentance isn’t cheating the system; it’s not a hack. Repentance is not a loophole to be exploited but a fundamental characteristic of divine love and justice, the system working as intended. Our world is designed with the explicit purpose of maximizing our opportunities for growth and making amends with grace and abundance – חַנּוּן הַמַּרְבֶּה לִסְלחַ
Ordeals and obstacles aren’t there to hurt or trip us up; they are catalysts and stimuli to respond. Mountains are there to be climbed; within every challenge lies an invitation to ascend, to reach new heights of understanding, compassion, and resilience.
Abundance
When children play, they sometimes hurt each other or fight. But they make up and are best of friends again moments later, and all is forgotten. When grown-ups fight, it’s much uglier. Hopefully, the wrongdoer apologizes, and hopefully, the receiving party accepts the apology, forgives, and lets go of their anger. But humans can be resentful; they don’t always forget, and they might not be friends again.
God’s forgiveness isn’t like that.
It’s abundant and gracious.
With repentance, transgressions aren’t just erased. They can also be recategorized based on motivation. When motivated by fear, intentional sins are downgraded to accidents and oversights; when motivated by love, sins can become merits. It’s intuitive; how a person adapts past mistakes materially affects how you incorporate the lessons learned to be a better person.
It’s not magic; it’s common sense. When you hurt a loved one, you are afraid of damaging the relationship and double your efforts. When you confront grief and pain in a relationship in a healthy and constructive manner, it can propel you to a new place that you weren’t previously able to access, and you can directly say that what brought you closer was the mistake: you have made order out of chaos.
It’s a bit like learning to ride a bicycle. The first time you lose your balance, you fall and hurt yourself. Maybe next time, you wear a helmet and pads and slowly learn how to keep your balance. If you focus on how bad falling hurts, you’ll never learn to ride the bike. But once you learn to keep your balance, you forget about falling, and maybe you don’t need the pads anymore. You now know how to ride a bicycle.
R’ Meir Shapiro teaches that this is why honey, not sugar, is the centerpiece of the holiday imagery. Honey is kosher despite being a product of non-kosher origins, and maybe you get stung. It’s complex, not simple. But doesn’t that sound a lot like repentance? You made mistakes that weren’t so kosher; maybe they stung a little and weren’t so simple, but you can learn and grow from them all the same – you’ve made something kosher from something that’s not.
This sheds deeper light on the previous blessing, which affirmed that God desires our repentance. Our sages teach that the repentant soul reaches spheres beyond even the truly righteous; they have a deeper expression of spirituality, having tasted the darkness and emerged with more authenticity and a richer human experience. They reveal a light from within darkness that is incomprehensible to someone who has never known darkness.
Don’t forget
Humans need forgiveness.
If you’ve made the mistakes everyone has and you have a conscience, you cannot walk around carrying the heavy burden of guilt forever. So we need forgiveness, and we can be cleansed and relieved, becoming finer and greater for it.
But we must remember that forgiveness is ultimately God’s domain; we believe in personal accountability. We don’t get to forgive ourselves cheaply and move on, absolving ourselves of doing the word of making amends.
It’s too easy to justify and excuse ourselves. One of the common pitfalls is judging others freely but being the greatest lawyers for our own mistakes. While toxic guilt and shame are wrong, it’s also not your place to forgive yourself freely; our world has a moral or spiritual dimension that we are not the master of.
After the Golden Calf, Moshe prayed for forgiveness for the people on the very first Yom Kippur, earning forgiveness, which God reveals in a way that suggests that Divine forgiveness is responsive, initiated by human seekers, and mirrors the degree of input – Vayomer Hashem salachti kidvarecha.
This reinforces the dynamic relationship between humanity and the Divine, emphasizing that forgiveness is not automatic but must be sought with sincerity and humility. There is no forgiveness unless we ask, and there is no forgiveness unless we mean it, recognizing our wrongdoing and wanting to mend our ways.
When people aren’t sorry for disregarding you, it makes a relationship pretty much impossible. To whatever extent we seek forgiveness, we need to match it with depth and sincerity in our words, the thoughts and intentions behind them, and the actions we take to manifest our repentance as well.
Repentance predates everything, repentance enables thing. The universe is ordered for repentance; it would be the silliest thing for God to make excuses and forgive people who aren’t repentant, granting cheap grace to all. It would erode the foundations of justice and morality entirely, core functions of existence, and that’s why we need forgiveness.
Collective Responsibility
Our sages teach that the Jewish People are responsible for each other and that any prayer not said in the name of all the Jewish People is not a prayer.
The legendary prophet Shmuel taught the power and necessity of communal repentance, the collective ownership of misdeeds, and a communal approach to seeking forgiveness – Vayomer chatanu lifanecha.
Taking responsibility alone transforms how a slight is observed. If you go to a shopping center with piles of rubble, you won’t go back, but you’d feel differently if the store hung signs asking you to excuse their appearance while they undergo renovations scheduled for completion by April. The acknowledgment makes you more patient and forgiving that the experience was below expectations.
Although Shmuel was speaking to a generation that had strayed far from the ways of their ancestors, Shmuel understood that God primarily judges those who refuse to acknowledge their sins, not just for our actions but also for how we relate to and feel about them.
If whatever is wrong isn’t your fault, then you can’t do anything differently next time, and nothing can change; it would be impossible to move on and heal from anything wrong with you. You can only do better next time if you can take responsibility.
The concept of seeking forgiveness for everyone, collectively rather than individually, brings to light the communal dimension of sin and forgiveness. It’s not about apologizing to others but with them because we are deeply interconnected.
Final thought
In the era of redemption, of Mashiach and the Third Beis HaMikdash, it is conceivable that the most righteous saint of the era might be a wicked person who has undergone profound repentance,