Within Our Reach: A Yom Kippur Message

By Moshe Feiglin

May You be King, Hashem, our G-d, over all of Your creations, speedily, on Mount Zion, the dwelling place of Your glory and in Jerusalem, the city of Your Temple. (From the Yom Kippur prayers).                                                                                               

One of the climaxes of the Rosh Hashanah prayers is when we fully prostrate ourselves before the Creator in the Aleinu prayer. This year I also put my towel on the floor and when we got to the words of the prayer I bowed down as did all the others around me. But the prostration left me empty. I was anticipating the sense of exaltation that is borne of feeling as nothing before G-d. But all that I could think of was the feeling that encompassed me when I prostrated myself in G-d’s courtyard, on the Temple Mount just a few years ago. There, with nothing between me and the Creator, in the royal palace. 

And suddenly, the prostration that had always been a climax, tasted bland. A faint reminder of the genuine experience that we can already touch. If we choose to.  
                                                           
I wish all of our friends, readers and supporters a gmar chatimah tovah. 


May our deeds and prayers find favor in G-d’s eyes. 

May we merit to sanctify His Name and to make our will His will. 

May we restore the honor of Israel this year by actualizing our sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and by making Israel a moral lighthouse for all the peoples of the world.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah,
Shabbat Shalom.