Samson Raphael HIRSCH אבינו מלכנו

 

Samson Raphael HIRSCH  

אבינו מלכנו

 

 

Avinu Malkenu English translation of his Commentary

אבינו מלכנו : God is our Father and our King. Fatherlike He never withholds His compassion from us, like a King He commands over our destinies and requires of us that we obey Him. This is the thought which, during the ten days of our “return” to Him, guides us forth again and again from our errors, back to the feet of our God as His servants and as His children.

חטאנו לפניך : Our past errors which have persisted into the present and which we have not managed to overcome are the cause and reason for our persisting exile which is to end in redemption.

אין לנו מלך אלא אתה : And yet,  despite this physical banishment and spiritual estrangement we still have no other than God to guide our lives and to shape our destinies. Therefore, עשה עמנו למען שמך, we also wait on no other but God to shape our future and we appeal to that abundance of loving-kindness which is guaranteed us by His very Name that implies His eternal readiness to grant us a new future.

The term Shana tauvo summarizes all our hopes and inmost yearnings for the future. Now we enumerate them, one by one, the hopes and wishes which we cherish in our hearts  for the year that is to come. Naturally, the first of them is the plea for the removal of גזרות קשות, all those troubles that inhibit the growth of all that is good.  It is most significantly in keeping with our exiled state that this is immediately followed by כלה, הפר, בטל (and in some communities also by) prayers for protection and help in the perils prepared for us by the hostile peoples  in whose midst we live. Unfortunately our sad experiences re ample proof that those pleas are more than justified even today, and that is only the part of our  thoughtlessness to demand the elimination of those verses from the prayer book because “they are no longer timely”. It is only after this that we add מנע, כלה and שלח asking that we may be spared from all physical pain and also from those social evils which are not necessarily the result of hostility directed specifically against the Jewish people (משחית, שבי, חרב). It is significant that the prayers for deliverance from physical suffering and social evils should take precedence over החזירנו בתשובה, the prayer for Divine aid in our efforts at selfcorrection We would have been justified in expecting this last plea to come first, preceding all the others,  for there can be no doubts that the improvement  in our lot is dependent upon the extent to which we better our ways.

Unfortunately, history has shown that ameliorations in our material status frequently resoled in our spiritual regression. It has been proven repeatedly that יאי עניותא לישראל oppression actually benefits the people of Yisroel, and serves as a challenge to our people to muster all its spiritual and moral grandeur. It was in the midst of sufferings of exile that we truly proved our constancy, and it has been  mostly in times of economical disaster and social catastrophe that we have resolved to sin no more. All too frequently prosperity has caused our nation to waver in its loyalty, and any improvement of our  lot, either social or economic, all too often helped relegate to oblivion all our solemn resolves to turn over a new leaf. It may well be that this prayer for perfect teshuva was deliberately put after rather than before the plea for the betterment of our situation, both material and  spiritual, in order to warn us to rid ourselves, at long last,  of the moral weakness which deprived us of the ability to cope with happiness and prosperity and which has been the cause of all our  troubles.

כתבנו בספר : Statements in the Holy Scriptures such as מחני נא מספרך אשר כתבת, מי אשר חטא לי אמחנו מספרי (Exod. 32:32,33) Psalm 69:29, 56:9 and Malachi 3:16 all indicate this thought: Since all there is was brought into being by the “Word” of God, and since all that which is yet to be will come about also only at His “Word”, all the works and ways of His sovereignty together may be construed and taken as the content of one single “Book” of God, and etc. actually means, “Number us among those who through Your Providence, will be allotted a good life.”

נקום לעינינו . Throughout its long existence, the people of Yisroel sorely-tried like no other nation in history, has borne again and again the most outrageous atrocities, maltreatments and cruelties without ever raising an avenging hand against his foes and oppressors and without even attempting to work retribution upon the peoples and rulers who had unleashed upon it their excesses of fanatical inhumanity. The one motive, which, more than anything else, has protected Israel from the base impulses of vengefulness, is represented by the recital of those portions of our prayer book  which teach us that we must commit to no other but God all vengeance and retribution for the hurt we may sustain at the hands of others. Our regular perusal of the statements in our sacred literature  with reference to the promise and reassurance that God sees all that we must bear, and reserves for Himself the right to exact retribution for every hurt that we have suffered at the hands of our foes, has kept us free from the lust of vengeance. It is due only to our trust in the truth of these promises that we have found the strength to submit to murder without ever becoming murders ourselves, to bear strangling without becoming hangmen ourselves, and to tolerate robbery at the hands of our foes without  ever robbing in return. It was only trough these our prayers that, in the midst of a populace that derided, hated and mistreated us we could remain loyal to the rulers of the lands to which we have been dispersed and keep alive within our heart sentiments of human sympathy for their peoples, so that our relationships with the nations in whose midst we have lived have always been marked by kindness and humanity on our part. These appeals to God have helped us remain human und kind  in the midst of all the inhumanity round about us.     

 (Prayer Book pp. 623-627. –Feldheim Ed.1969  - translated from German into English by the Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society )