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What is the deeper significance of God’s 13 attributes of mercy that play a central role in the High Holiday prayers?
The High Holiday season parallels important events that occurred during the first year of the Jewish people’s history. Fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people received the Torah at Mount Sinai. Forty days later they sinned by creating and worshipping a gold idol in the form of a calf. Moses, the leader and teacher of the Jewish people, descended from Mount Sinai with the two tablets God had given him with the Ten Commandments written on them. As he was about to give the Jews these tablets, Moses observed how the people had violated their relationship with God by paying reverence to a statue, and he smashed the tablets.
A 40-day period of prayer and introspection followed. Finally, on the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, God instructed Moses to carve a second set of tablets and begin the process of rebuilding the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Following a third set of 40 days, God forgave the Jews. This day was the Tenth of the month of Tishrei, also known as Yom Kippur.1
Following this timeline, the Hebrew month of Elul is traditionally observed as a time of preparation for the high holidays with an emphasis on self-improvement for the upcoming Day of Judgment, Rosh Hashanah, and the day of forgiveness, Yom Kippur. Elul is an acronym in Hebrew for “ani ledodi vedodi li2”, or “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me,” indicating that it is an auspicious time for people to lovingly reconnect to God. Many communities blow the shofar every morning in the synagogue during this month to mark this opportune time, and others have the custom to add supplemental prayers as well, called selichot.3
An event that transpired during the first Elul of Jewish history serves as an important guide to one trying to make the most of this important time of the year. After God had commanded Moses to carve a second set of tablets on the first of this month, Moses ascended the mountain and God appeared to him: “God revealed himself in a cloud, and it stood there with Moses. Moses called out in God's name. God passed by before Moses and proclaimed, ‘God, God, omnipotent, merciful, and kind, slow to anger, with tremendous resources of love and truth. He remembers deeds of love for thousands of generations, forgiving sin, rebellion, and error’” (Exodus 34:6-7).
The Talmud elaborates on this passage and explains that God appeared to Moses appearing as a leader of prayer services4 and taught him these verses known as the 13 attributes of God’s mercy. God instructed him that if the Jewish people were to sin, they should recite the attributes of mercy and He would forgive them. The Talmud further quotes from the sage Rav Yehuda that a covenant was established regarding this passage, that one reciting it in prayer would never return emptyhanded from before God.5 It comes as no surprise that this paragraph is recited many times throughout the High Holiday liturgy.
What is the significance of the attributes of mercy, and how can one use it to create meaningful self-improvement specifically at this time of the year? What is the lesson to be drawn from Moses seeing God appear as a leader of prayer services?
Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), an important kabbalist from Tzfat, authored a book titled Tomer Devorah. The subject of this book describes how a person needs to look at every attribute of God’s mercy and kindness as something imitable. One can use a description of the way God interacts with humanity as an aspirational model for their interactions with others and the society they live in.6
Using this model, the focus one should have while reciting these verses during the high holiday prayers becomes clear. We should be “merciful, and kind, slow to anger, with tremendous resources of love and truth,” just as God is with humanity.
This becomes a particularly strong lesson when one considers that this is how God dealt with the Jewish people after an egregious breach of their relationship. The Jewish people had received the Torah, and 40 days later publicly were engaging in pagan festivities. Yet God was still able to be merciful and forgiving when the Jewish people attempted to return to God and repair their relationship. We too can be receptive to overtures of forgiveness, even from those who have harmed us greatly.
This explains the Talmud’s teaching that one reciting this paragraph would never return emptyhanded from before God. If one understands the context of this passage and internalizes its message, they will recognize God’s endless good and attempt to emulate His patience and kindness. This meditation is so powerful that such a prayer will always be effective.7
The description of “He remembers deeds of love for thousands of generations,” however, seems unrelatable. God may be able to take the memory of a good deed through thousands of years of history, yet a mortal cannot. What relevant lesson can a person derive from this attribute?
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) writes:
Divine Providence does not look upon people and nations as individual phenomena, considering each one merely for the duration of his own lifetime, but rather looks upon them in association with all their contemporaries and in connection with all generations. Heaven's blessing on one person or on one nation cannot be measured by the standard of the individual by the standard of the times. The full extent of the love that is showered on good people can be gauged only by one who can calculate all the blessing that God's Providence will bring forth from the lives and endeavors of good people, the blessing that will go to all their contemporaries and especially to their children and children's children, down to the thousandth generation.
Sometimes the seed of the blessing deriving from the life of a righteous person remains hidden in darkness, like a root that is deep in the earth, like a bud that has not yet flowered; but then, in the lifetimes of the children or grandchildren the blessing will spring forth in double strength. What is the enjoyment of an abundance of blessing in one's own life compared to the happiness of knowing that one's life is the root and bud for the future blessing of a line of descendants reaching down to all time? The Hirsch Chumash, volume 2 pages 803-804
To summarize, each one of us is not a self-contained individual with moral responsibilities existing in a vacuum. We all interact with people constantly and affect them through our behavior. The strongest example of this is with one’s children. Someone who sacrifices for their children to provide a better life and greater opportunities for them may affect the course of their descendants for thousands of years. A Jew who provides their child with a robust and relatable Jewish education and value system may affect the religious decisions of many generations.
God is cognizant of this and deals with us accordingly. Our job is to be more aware of the enormous impact all our decisions have on others, particularly those close to us.
Following this understanding, the vision Moses had of God as a leader of prayer service reciting the attributes of His mercy would be as follows.
Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky8 (b. 1924) offered the following explanation for this metaphorical vision. A communal prayer is more than a number of people gathered in the same location simultaneously praying. It is a collection of individuals joining their energy and devotion together to create a total greater than the sum of its parts. A community united in song and prayer is far more powerful than what the individual congregants could achieve in isolation.9
The person responsible for connecting all these individuals is the leader of the service, the chazzan. By keeping track of the pace and needs of the congregants, the Chazzan chooses songs and times the prayers to involve everyone. The Chazzan is the one constantly cognizant of the others in the synagogue and acting to ensure the inclusion of all.
This is the role model of someone looking to be more mindful of the effect they have on those around them. Just as the Chazzan needs to constantly think of those around them or they will cease to carry out their responsibilities properly, we too must be thinking in such terms if we are to maximize our potential. Our responsibilities go far beyond our own actions. Every person we can positively affect can also be viewed as a responsibility. Each one of us is, so to speak, conducting a communal service through the way we influence our family, friends, and colleagues.
In conclusion, God’s attributes of mercy direct our development and improvement during the high holidays. Emulating the attributes teaches us to have a sense of accountability towards the needs of others, which form the pinnacle of kindness and sensitivity. Instead of relating to others in a merely reactionary form, one can proactively seek to further the needs and goals of all those around them. This results in living a life that is as impactful as possible with a multi-generational reach of one’s good deeds and compassion.
Beautiful!