There are two concepts that make prayer hard for me, especially around Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur.
- Melech HaOlam: King, Queen, Monarch, Ruler. No matter if you feminize it or neutralize it, this is a tough concept for me. And we say it a lot over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. GD as King feels foreign to me, not a model to which I easily relate. Maybe if I lived in a different time or era, where earthly monarchs played an important role in people’s lives, it would be more relatable. Today, it feels like a vestige from the past, a relic of remembering other people’s ways of relating to GD.
- Like Korbanot, animal sacrifices. Korban is from the Hebrew root to bring near, to approach Gd. Jewish liturgy and the Torah text are full of references to these sacrifices. Do I skip it? See it as a metaphor? A remembrance of things past?
For me, korbanot and king are a matched pair that serve the opposite effect: they distance me from GD. But those two concepts are the core of Jewish prayer.
So how do I approach GD in a meaningful way—and especially in Elul?
A friend of mine addresses her prayers to LOU—short for “Lord Of the Universe” (aka Adon Olam). I used to joke that LOU was her superhero—a few words whispered to LOU could help solve the world’s problems.
What was once a joke now rings a bit truer in my ears. Not that LOU will show up in a cape and solve the problem before the next commerical. But the value of personal prayer. Personal prayer is my heartfelt hope in that moment. My words, my hopes, my images. I am not relying on the scripted text (siddur) of someone else. Speaking my own words helps me clarify my thoughts, process what I’m experiencing, and understand myself better. It can act as a form of self-reflection and emotional healing. And sometimes, my prayers are wordless in my mind—just a longing or a hope.
For me the High Holidays are about balancing the personal and public prayer. I need the energy of the congregation around me, to sustain me through the difficult words of the Machzor. But I need my private prayer moments to help me put it in perspective, to balance the we and the me. I take a few minutes at the end of each silent Amidah, standing in mountain pose and let the prayers rush over me.
My Elul prayer is that we each are able to call out to GD—and that Gd is near (karov) to all who cry out to Her.
קָר֣וֹב יְ֭הֹוָה לְכׇל־קֹרְאָ֑יו
Psalm 145
