Yom Kippur – Hashem, Hashem

יה-וה יה-וה א-ל רחום וחנון ארך אפים ורב חסד ואמת נצר חסד לאלפים נשא עון ופשע וחטאה ונקה

Every year my mother asks me the same question this time of year. Why do we say the י”ג מידות so many times? Yes, they are special and important but why so much repetition? From when we start saying סליחות until the end of יום כיפור we will say those 18 words literally hundreds of times over and over again. And I would always say it’s because Hashem gave these to Moshe as the way for us to daven when we need to be forgiven. But I am not so happy with that answer, because if in fact when we say these י”ג מידות we will never go unanswered, then wouldn’t it make more sense to say them once with a huge amount of kavana? Make them like the ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו of maariv at night, or like יקוק הוא האלקים and שמע ישראל at the end of neilah. Make them special. Can you imagine the strength of the cries if we only had one shot as neilah is ending to shout these 13 midos to Hashem?

There is a גמרא in מסכת ראש השנה that I think holds an answer to this question. The גמרא there is bothered by why the Torah says יה-וה יה-וה twice. These are supposed to be 13 different characteristics of Hashem so why would we repeat one of them? And the answer there is that the first יה-וה is before a person sins and the second יה-וה is after a person sins and is on the way to do teshuva. A seemingly simple answer but one that I think if we delve into will show us a truth that we have a hard time accepting.

Let’s take a step back and set the stage on which the Jewish people learnt these 13 midos. We arrived at הר סיני, got “married” to Hashem so to speak, the fledgling nation and the Divine Creator of the universe were locked in a loving relationship. Then, tragically 40 days later we built a calf, a demi-god to lead us on our way in place of Moshe the man whom we did not what had happened to him. Hashem tells Moshe “go down the mountain for your people have corrupted themselves”. Moshe sees what they have done and he shatters the לוחות that he has just received. There is a plague and Moshe and the Kohanim kill 3,000 people who were involved, and now what? What will be with the relationship that had just been formed? Betrayal of the highest degree a mere 40 days after the wedding, will Hashem take us back? Moshe says to the people אולי אכפרה בעד חטאתכם. We know that the ending was all fine and well but can you imagine what it was like to hear those words from Moshe’s mouth? No one knew if we would be the same ever again. Perhaps the relationship was severed and damaged beyond repair.

On top of the mountain Moshe deftly manages to coerce Hashem to forgive us, and then he seizes the opportunity and says, this very well may happen again, what can I do to avoid having this nation get destroyed, to which Hashem answers, have the Jews say these 13 midos and they will never go unanswered.

Let’s come back now to the depth behind the double Hashem. Hashem was telling Moshe, My Existence is everything, time, space, physics, humans, animals, psychology, biology, amoeba, and everything else in the entire universe are My creations. I “house” the entire world, and because of that, there is nowhere that I can’t be found. There is no scenario or circumstance, no mindset or spiritual/emotional/mental level that I am not there. Therefore, whether before a Jew sins, or after a Jew sins, as long as he is looking to return I am the same Hashem and will always love them all.

As the Sforno so beautifully writes about the double יה-וה: Hashem sustains everything that exists, and there is nothing that exists that does not depend on the constant flow of His Existence.

This seems simple to understand but at the same time we have something built deep into our psyche that makes us think that in our darkest places we are alone, when we do those עבירות Hashem is not there.

Let me share a story that happened to me. I was 9 years old and I had just gotten a new ball, and like a good 9-year-old I was bouncing the ball in my room. My father saw and said, “don’t bounce the ball inside you’re going to break something”. Like a 9-year-old… I kept bouncing the ball inside, and the ball ended up cracking the globe on the light fixture in my room. As the shards fell to the ground I started bawling. My father had told me not to bounce the ball inside and I didn’t listen. And now I broke the light, I was finished, our relationship would be over as soon as he saw. My 9-year-old brain couldn’t understand what we all know now. No parent-child relationship will get broken over a light fixture, but more importantly, it won’t get broken over the fact that the child disobeyed the parent. Sure, had my father come back upstairs and seen me laughing about the fact that I broke the light he would have been upset but when he saw how sorry I was for not listening he right away comforted me and said don’t worry. The love is there from the parents side, all that is needed is commitment and regret for what was done wrong.

I don’t know why but deep down we don’t have the confidence in our relationships with Hashem that we should, and I think this is the message of the 13 midos. יה-וה יה-וה, He is the same before and the same after any and every sin. The unbelievable love that He has for us can’t be touched by any sin that we do. The Pasuk says at the darkest moment of the תוכחה, ובקשתם משם את יה-וה אלקיך. No matter where you are you can find Hashem, there is no עבירה that will completely sever the natural and organic relationship that we have the Creator of the universe. And I think we need to drill this deep down into the very fibers of our being, and so Chazal set up a system where we say these words hundreds and hundreds of times over a two-week span, to help us get the message that is so important for יום כיפור.

May we all be zoche to find Hashem in every single aspect of our lives, go running back to Him, and shake off the dust of our עבירות and rise up to the new year and make our way back to Eretz Yisrael and the בית המקדש.