A collection of Rabbi Yehuda Amital's discourses on repentance and the High Holy Days has recently been released by Yeshivat Har Etzion and Maggid Books. Edited by his son, Rabbi Yoel Amital, the Hebrew book is titled "Et ratzon: sichot l'yamim noraim" ("A Time of Favor: Discourses for the High Holy Days").
Yehuda Amital was born in 1924 in Transylvania. He studied Torah in cheder (a traditional Jewish elementary school) and yeshiva, and had virtually no formal secular education. In 1944, with the Nazi invasion of Hungary, he was taken to a forced labor camp, while his entire family -- parents, sister and brother -- were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. At the end of 1944, after his liberation, he moved to Israel, where he continued his studies at the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem and, at the same time, joined the Haganah pre-state Zionist militia.
After the 1967 Six-Day War, Amital was called upon to found a hesder yeshiva, which combines religious studies with military service, in the Etzion settlement bloc. In 1968, the yeshiva opened in Kfar Etzion with 30 students. It has since moved to Alon Shvut and has grown into an institution with hundreds of students from Israel and abroad, a women's division in Migdal Oz, and a renowned teachers' college. Amital died in 2010 at the age of 85, and was mourned by thousands of students and admirers.
The book begins with a quotation from an early Hassidic leader: "In every generation there arises a new understanding of the Torah which is appropriate to that generation." These words are certainly appropriate to Amital's discourses, which speak to the modern ear and are filled with numerous references to current events in Israel and abroad. The book is divided into eight sections: the Hebrew month of Elul; the Selichot penitential prayers; Rosh Hashana; Rosh Hashana that falls on Shabbat; the binding of Isaac; Shabbat Shuvah (the Sabbath of Repentance, which falls between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur); Yom Kippur; and Neila, the concluding service on Yom Kippur.
Amital repeats the same basic message in different guises throughout the book. The most important element of prayer on Rosh Hashana (and the essence of the shofar) is to be found in its simplicity: "A cry that comes from the heart adds an important element to prayer, in the heart is found man's inner truth and that is where prayer should come from." The shofar is blown 100 times on Rosh Hashana because we remember the 100 cries of the mother of Sisera upon hearing of her son's death: "The natural fear of a mother for her children is similar to the cry of the shofar, which comes from the depth of a person's soul."
The shofar is prayer without words because speech can never truly express what is in a person's soul. Again and again, Amital emphasizes the importance of simplicity and honesty in standing before God in prayer. Another important recurrent motif in Amital's thought is that one's prayer on the High Holy Days should focus on the community as opposed to the individual. This is consistent with his oft-repeated message that Torah learning cannot be divorced from one's environment, and his challenge to his students to be leaders of their communities.
Somewhat surprisingly, six essays in the book are devoted to an understanding of the binding of Isaac. The moral and theological challenges of the episode have been addressed by religious scholars of all persuasions throughout the ages. Amital's focus is on the emotional state of Abraham and Isaac.
In an essay titled, "Who answered our father Abraham at Mount Moriah [site of the binding and of the Temple in Jerusalem]-" Amital teaches that according to the rabbinic tradition, Abraham prayed that God would retract His command to sacrifice Isaac. And while outwardly surrendering to the will of his father, Isaac silently prayed that he would be saved.
Amital asks how the rabbinic sages knew that Abraham prayed, as there is no mention of a prayer in the biblical text. He answers that it is self-evident, because Abraham, in addition to being a loyal servant to God, was also a "loving merciful father, who does not hide his feelings but rather prays that his son will be saved." According to Amital, the lesson to be learned from the binding is that religious fervor can never be divorced from normal human emotion.
Perhaps the reason the binding of Isaac is so central to Amital's thought is due to the impact of the Holocaust and the Yom Kippur War on his spiritual and emotional life. He explicitly speaks of the Holocaust in an essay titled, "From fear of punishment to purity before God -- on Jewish belief in the time of the Holocaust." According to Amital, the remarkable religious devotion shown by millions of Jews during the Holocaust was not because of a "fear of punishment" but because of a deep faith in the uniqueness of the Jewish people and their privileged relationship with God even in the darkest moments.
For many, the Neila service that concludes Yom Kippur is the peak of the year's religious experience. During the few moments before Neila, Amital used to give short discourses to his students to help prepare them for the service, and these are included in the book. The theme was always similar: During these last precious moments of Yom Kippur, what God wants from us "is to be allowed to enter the heart of man. We are called to open the gates of our heart to God and allow him to enter." These simple, profound words have inspired thousands of students. God is standing and waiting and all that is required of us is to allow him to enter.
The editor has done a remarkable job in putting together this collection of discourses, originally delivered orally, from various sources, and the work reads coherently. One is also impressed by the number and variety of sources that Amital uses to make a point, but because of this, the book would have benefited from an index.
Notwithstanding the power of the collected essays, something is missing from the collection, and that is Amital's presence. For anyone who had the privilege of hearing him give one of his discourses before Neila in his trademark singsong voice, surrounded by hundreds of his students hanging on to his every word, the book invariably brings about a feeling of longing and an awareness of what once was, and has been lost.
Professor Alan Jotkowitz is director of the Jakobovits Center for Jewish Medical Ethics at Ben-Gurion University and a senior physician at Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba.
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