Our Father Our King!

“Angels will be terrified and awe and trembling will grip them” (Unesaneh Tokef)

A person who is being tried for a capital offense lives with such anguish that his life cannot properly be called a life. Certainly he would not derive pleasure from anything in the world; everything sweet would taste bitter to him. (Rabbi Yaakov Neiman Darkei Mussar)

“Wow!” my six-year-old daughter exclaims as I pour a jar full of honey into the mixer bowl. “Look how much honey!”

Her eyes are round and sparkling. How much innocence there is in a six-year-old.

“You’re going to let us eat a lot of this cake right?” she asks establishing the most important point. “That way I will have a very sweet year and all the best gezeiros.”

I suddenly find myself looking at her again. She is just beginning first grade and has already been inundated with the towering waves of new friends new subjects notebooks books and homework.

She needs a generous slice of honey cake. Hashem give her a good year a year of sweetness. Let her be happy and healthy. Let her live!

These are ordinary words regular requests but the thought of the great judgment that will take place in another two days introduces tearsinto the routine.

Just six years old and already there is so much to ask for!

And I have other children big and small and I want all of them to have a good year. All the supplications mingle without any order blurring my eyes with tears. The judgment is in two days. I don’t know how I am managing the mundane actions of baking and cooking. I had planned to put powdered sugar on the cake. I had planned to buy new socks for Yom Tov. But suddenly everything seems empty meaningless and small. The great Judgment is approaching. How is it possible to think about anything else?

On the days of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur logic would dictate that a person who truly has faith should not be able to experience joy on these days. He should be broken and shattered and even his health should be affected. After all a person who believes in Hashem will view the Heavenly judgment as even more frightening than the judgment of an earthly court.

Yet we see that a man of faith does not desist from festivity on Rosh HaShanah. He derives pleasure and joy from the davening and the mitzvos of the day. The question then is: what is the reason for this phenomenon that one’s spiritual ecstasy overrides the natural fear of the judgment?” (ibid.)

The aroma of the freshly baked cake fills the entire house and the taste of honey penetrates my stormy heart: “Child how have you forgotten that you are in the home of the Judge? A true daughter can always come and say ‘But Abba it’s me — Your daughter!' "

our King. If Hashem had been only our King there certainly would have been no place for physical enjoyment on this awesome day. But since our King is also our Father we are able to feel joy knowing that nothing bad can happen to us. (ibid.)

We can always cry to our Father: “I have made so many mistakes and I know I am undeserving. But I am sorry and I want to come back to You. Father please give me a good year.”

I heard a beautiful parable in the name of Rav Yitzchak Blazer ztz”l. A father and son were walking together in the forest when the son got distracted and was separated from his father. He searched for him crying. Suddenly his father found him and slapped him on the cheek shouting  “Naughty child! What were you thinking?”

The child feeling his father’s hand on his cheek burst out in a joyful shout: “Abba!” In his great joy over finding his father he simply did not feel the pain of the slap.

The fear of the judgment hasn’t gone away. It’s still here soaked into the walls of the kitchen. My tears have not dried; they still hover at the corners of my eyes waiting. Waiting for the prayers the supplications.

Only my faith and bitachon my knowledge that my Father is here along with me envelops me in tremendous joy.

Now I can sprinkle powdered sugar on top of the cake — and onto my heart.

“Child how have you forgotten that you are in the home of the Judge?”