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Enveloped in the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy by Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi
BY RABBANIT YEMIMA MIZRACHI
Prayer is a long channel which connects us to the Master of the Universe. But if so, why do so many of our prayers remain unanswered? Generation after generation of rabbis have offered various answers to this question, some of which have become well-worn clichés:
It’s not that G-d doesn’t answer, but rather that sometimes G-d’s answer is no.
G-d doesn’t answer to us.
G-d has heard our prayer, and G-d will answer it at the right time.
G-d knows that answering our prayer now will
ultimately not be for our own benefit.
Our prayer has been answered, but we just don’t know it yet.
Our prayer has been answered, but for someone else’s sake.
There are countless disappointing responses. At the end of the day, it is hard to find comfort when our prayers seem to fall upon deaf ears.
And then, suddenly, on Yom Kippur, G-d reveals that there is one prayer that will not go unanswered: the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy. The Talmud teaches that “a covenant has been made regarding the Thirteen Attributes that they will not return empty” (Rosh HaShana 17a). This prayer will not be returned empty to the sender; it will be filled and fulfilled.
To understand how this prayer works, we must recall that the first Yom Kippur in history fell forty days after the seventeenth of Tammuz and the sin of the Golden Calf. No sooner than the Torah was given to Israel at Sinai, the people began dancing around the Golden Calf in a terrible act of betrayal. Forgiving them would require so much atonement, so much absolution.
Moses once again ascended Mount Sinai, where he pleaded on behalf of his people for forty days.
On the fortieth day, which was the tenth day of Tishrei, G-d bestowed upon Moses a tremendous gift: “G-d passed before him and proclaimed: A G-d compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and truth, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, bearing iniquity, transgression, and sin; cleansing” (Ex. 34:6–7).
These words have become pillars of the Yom Kippur liturgy. We recite them twenty-six times over the course of Yom Kippur – a number corresponding to the numerical equivalent of G-d’s four-letter name. We say these words aloud, reminding G-d that He passed before Moses and allowed compassion to bypass justice. In so doing, we remind ourselves that it is possible to start over again even after a terrible rupture.
These words have tremendous power. Rabbeinu Bachya (1255–1340) writes:
And you need to know that all who understand the Thirteen Attributes and know their meaning and their essence and pray them with intention – their prayers will not return empty. And behold, in our day, when we are in a state of exile and we have no high priest to atone for our sins and no altar to offer sacrifices upon , and no Temple, we will not be left standing before
G-d devoid of our prayers and of the Thirteen
Attributes. (Rabbeinu Bachya on Ex. 34:6)
We return to that wondrous moment in which G-d gave Moses the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy.
R’ Yochanan says, “Were it not explicitly written, it would be impossible to say it.” The Talmud goes on to describe an image quite difficult for the human intellect to comprehend:
The Holy One, blessed be He, wrapped Himself in a prayer shawl like a prayer leader and showed Moses the order of the prayer. He said to him: Whenever the Jewish people sin, let them act before Me in accordance with this order and
I will forgive them. (Rosh HaShana 17a)
After we sinned and transgressed with the Golden Calf, G-d wrapped Himself up like a prayer leader, as it were, and prayed on behalf of all of us.
This is the secret of the Thirteen Attributes, which will not return empty. And this is the secret of how to ensure that our prayers are accepted. If we want G-d to accept our prayers, we have to pray on behalf of others. As we recite in the Selichot service, “G-d, You taught us to speak Thirteen Attributes.” G-d instructs us: “Let them act before Me in accordance with this order.” The Hebrew word for prayer book, siddur, comes from the same word as “order.” When we come before G-d with our ordered prayer book, G-d will forgive us.
The Thirteen Attributes as an Alternative Confession
Rabbi Ben-Tzion Mutzafi writes that the Thirteen Attri butes of Mercy are also a confession of sorts. When we recite them, we lament the fact that we are not guided by these attributes in our relationships with the other people in our lives. After all, we are commanded to walk in G-d’s ways, and the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy are some of these ways. As the midrash teaches, “Just as G-d is merciful – so too should you be merciful. Just as G-d is gracious – so too must you be gracious” (Yalkut Shimoni, Eikev 473). As we recite this part of the liturgy, we must think: If only I were compassionate. If only I were gracious.
“L-rd, L-rd, compassionate G-d” – If we were more compassionate, we would be better at reconciling with others. The Hebrew word for compassion, rachamim, comes from the word for womb, rechem. Compassion is the ability to grow and nurture and make space for others. If we were able to connect to those around us more expansively, everything would look different.
“And gracious” – Graciousness is the ability to stop expect ing a reward for each instance of good behavior. We need to learn to give freely and to stop craving recognition.
“Slow to anger” – We mourn our anger, which destroys all the goodness inside us. Anger burns away
at our relationships with others, especially with our spouse and children.
“Abounding in kindness” – This is one of the most difficult challenges in our interpersonal relationships. We cannot help but lament our own inadequacy. Yes, everyone can rally for the occasional major social justice project, especially when there is a lot of pomp and circumstance involved. But to be abounding in kindness is not about running in a marathon once a year to raise money for those with disabilities. It’s about acting kindly on a regular basis – being patient with the elderly neighbor who always needs our help, smiling at the student who still doesn’t understand. It’s not easy. I wish that I were abounding in kindness.
“And truth” – There are so many times when we fail to act truthfully. If only I had kept my promises….
“Extending kindness to the thousandth generation” – We have a tendency to remember grievances and to bear grudges for years on end, while readily forgetting acts of kindness. By contrast, G-d remembers our good deeds for thousands of years.
“Bearing iniquity, transgression, and sin; cleansing” – We are not expected to say that just as G-d is able to overlook our wrongs and move on, so, too, should we overlook our grievances and move on. Rather, we are supposed to bear one another’s offenses and bear with one another. We must remember that both the new Tablets and the shattered Tablets were placed in the Ark (Brachot 8b). There is no forgetting, but there is forgiveness. We bear our grievances and carry them with us to a place of reconciliation.1
And so the Thirteen Attributes, in which we remind G-d how connected we are to Him, also contain a plea for a deeper connection with our fellow human beings. They reflect the notion that we can achieve connection with G-d only by means of our connections with other people. We must wrap ourselves up like prayer leaders and ask that we, too, be guided by the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.
The covenant made with the Thirteen Attributes is that they will not return empty. When we come before G-d to ask to be judged mercifully, G-d challenges us to judge each other mercifully. G-d wants to see if we are able to ensure that the people around us are not left to return empty-handed.
Yom Kippur is essentially about love – the love for other people and the love for G-d. Each is bound up in the other. Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (1843–1926), known as the Meshech Chochma, offers a beautiful explanation of this notion:
The Sages taught that when one’s love returns to oneself, it emerges out of opposition. For instance, the poor person loves the wealthy person because he benefits from him. And the land loves the sky because it is a source of rain. All of this love returns to oneself. But the love that returns to the beloved emerges out of a sense of equality, resemblance, and parity, like a wise person who loves another wise person.
The Meshech Chochma distinguishes between two types of love. There is the love that is about benefiting from others, and then there is genuine love. He asks whether our love for G-d must necessarily be the first kind of love, since there cannot possibly be any equality with G-d. How can we know that our love for G-d is genuine and that it is not merely an infantile dependence? How can we know that we don’t merely love ourselves and therefore love anyone who responds to our needs?
And so [this higher form of love can exist vis-àvis G-d] only when an individual cleaves to G-d’s ways and genuinely loves G-d. When does this happen? When he recites the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy. When he says, “compassionate and gracious,” he must think to himself, “Just as G-d is gracious, so too must you be gracious.” If so, then he begins to develop a sense of identification with G-d, and he will cleave to G-d’s attributes and long for the divine. And this is genuine love (Meshech Chochma 18–19).
The only way to cleave to G-d is by cleaving to the messengers whom G-d dispersed throughout His world, namely, the other people in our lives. G-d sends us these other people – especially those
who are closest to us – so that we will practice the Thirteen Attributes on them. When we express love for other people, we are cleaving to the Divine Attributes because G-d loves humanity. We are making ourselves like G-d, who loves human beings. Just as G-d is compassionate, so, too, will we act with compassion. Just as G-d is abounding in kindness, so, too, will we perform acts of kindness. Just as G-d is slow to anger, so, too, will we try to restrain our tempers.
Only when we become similar to the object of our love can we love selflessly. Only then can we love our neighbor as ourselves (Deut. 6:5).
During the Yom Kippur prayers, we recite the Thirteen Attributes twenty-six times. The numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word for love is thirteen. Our love for G-d amounts to thirteen, and G-d’s love for us amounts to another thirteen. Together they make twenty-six, which is the perfection of the Thirteen Attributes. Twenty-six symbolizes this doubled, reciprocated kind of love. It is not that we love out of need. Rather, we love in much the same way as we are loved.
A misanthrope cannot love G-d. If we do not love other people, then our relationship with G-d is necessarily needy and selfish. Only when we love others can we genuinely love G-d, because in our love for others we become like G-d.
How Much Do You Weigh?
One of the Thirteen Attributes is “abounding in kindness.” For the most part we are average human beings; very few among us are truly righteous. So, as the Talmud explains, G-d comes and tilts the scales in favor of kindness.2
But how can it be? Doesn’t the Torah teach, “You shall not tilt the scales of justice” (Deut. 16:19)? How can G-d be abounding in kindness? That is, how can G-d make more of our kindness? Is this not a perversion of justice?
The Talmud asks how exactly G-d tilts the scales in favor of kindness:
How does He do this? R’ Eliezer says: He pushes down on the side of the merits, as it is stated, “He will again have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities” (Micah 7:19). R’ Yossi bar Chanina says: He bears [i.e., raises] the side of sin, as it is stated, “He bears sin and forgives transgression” (Micah 7:18) (Rosh HaShana 17a).
Rashi explains that G-d pushes down the side of our merits and outweighs our transgressions. Tosafot add that G-d “bears” iniquity, meaning that G-d raises the side of the scale containing our sins.
Rabbi Ezra Bick, a contemporary rabbi living in Israel, explains that every time we commit an act of kindness, G-d weights it more heavily than a corresponding sin because that act of kindness has repercussions. Someone else invariably observed our behavior and was inspired to emulate it. In the Thirteen Attributes, this is referred to as “extending kindness.” The kindness we perform extends to others, thereby making the world a better place. By acting kindly, we have sown a seed of kindness in the world, and it will multiply. And so G-d weights our single act of kindness more heavily.3
At the same time, we are told that G-d bears iniquity. That is, G-d bears the weight of our sins along with us. G-d is aware that we are all confronted with challenging situations beyond our control: For instance, a man may speak ill of his mother because he is living in close quarters with her, since he cannot afford to provide her with a place to live on her own. These circumstances are not entirely his fault, and so G-d assumes some of the responsibility for his sin.
G-d is abounding in kindness, and G-d bears iniquity. In other words, G-d weights our acts of kindness more heavily while also bearing the burden of our iniquity along with us.
1 Rabbi Ben-Tzion Mutzafi, Kadosh BeTzion, Yom HaKippurim.
