September 22, 2026|י"א תשרי ה' אלפים תשפ"ז Ayeka? Hineni.
Print ArticleThere is an urgent question at the heart of Yom Kippur:
What happens after we admit that we were wrong?
Yom Kippur asks us to say:
Ashamnu.
Bagadnu.
We have sinned.
We have betrayed.
We have failed.
We are supposed to confront what we have done.
But admitting that we were wrong is only the beginning.
What happens next?
Do I become trapped by the person I was?
Or can I become someone different?
That is the question of teshuva.
And I think the answer begins with two words:
Ayeka.
And:
Hineni.
The first Ayeka appears immediately after Adam and Chava eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
They hear God approaching and hide:
Vayitchabeh ha'adam v'ishto mipnei Hashem Elokim.
And God calls:
Ayeka?
Where are you?
God obviously knows where Adam is.
So this isn’t a location question.
It is a question about identity.
Where are you?
What has happened to you?
What have you become?
And Adam responds:
I was afraid, so I hid.
Then he blames Chava.
Chava blames the serpent.
The first human response to failure is:
Hide.
Deflect.
Blame.
Yom Kippur asks us to do the opposite.
We stop hiding.
We stand before God and say:
Ashamnu.
Bagadnu.
I did it.
I was wrong.
I fell short.
That is our answer to Ayeka.
But then comes the harder question:
What happens next?
There is a remarkable story in the Gemara, at the beginning of Masechet Berachot, that helps us answer it.
Rabbi Yosi tells us:
Tanya, amar Rabbi Yosi: pa'am achat hayiti mehalech baderech, v'nichnasti l'chorvah achat mechorvot Yerushalayim l'hitpalel.
“Once, I was walking on the road, and I entered one of the ruins of Jerusalem to pray.”
I want to pause over one word:
Churvah.
A ruin.
Rabbi Yosi doesn’t enter the Beit HaMikdash.
He doesn’t enter a beautiful synagogue.
He enters a ruin, a place that reminds him of something that once stood there, something that was once whole and alive.
And he goes there:
L'hitpalel.
To pray.
Then:
Ba Eliyahu zachur latov v'shamar li al hapetach ad she'siyamti tefilati.
Eliyahu the Prophet comes and waits at the entrance until Rabbi Yosi finishes praying.
Afterward, Eliyahu asks:
Beni, mipnei mah nichnasta l'chorvah zu?
“My son, why did you enter this ruin?”
Rabbi Yosi answers:
L'hitpalel.
“To pray.”
Eliyahu responds:
Hayah lecha l'hitpalel baderech!
“You should have prayed on the road!”
Rabbi Yosi explains that he was afraid people passing by would interrupt him.
Eliyahu says:
Hayah lecha l'hitpalel tefillah ketzarah.
“You should have said a short prayer.”
And Rabbi Yosi concludes:
Ba'otah sha'ah lamadeti mimenu sheloshah devarim.
“At that moment I learned three things from him.”
So far, this sounds like a straightforward halachic conversation.
But then the story changes.
Eliyahu asks:
Beni, mah kol shamata b'chorvah zo?
“My son, what voice did you hear in this ruin?”
And Rabbi Yosi answers:
Shamati bat kol she'menahemet kayonah.
“I heard a heavenly voice, cooing like a dove.”
And what did the voice say?
Oy labanim she'b'avonoteihem hichravti et Beiti, v'sarafti et Heichali, v'higlatim bein ha'umot.
“Woe to My children. Because of their sins I destroyed My house, burned My sanctuary, and exiled them among the nations.”
Imagine the scene.
Rabbi Yosi enters a ruin.
And inside the ruin he hears God mourning what has been lost.
The ruin is not silent.
It has a voice.
A voice of pain.
A voice of longing.
A voice saying:
Something was here.
Something beautiful was here.
Something was lost.
And then Eliyahu tells him:
Chayecha v'chayei roshecha, lo sha'ah zu bilvad omeret kach, ela b'chol yom v'yom shalosh pe'amim omeret kach.
“By your life, it is not only at this moment that the voice says this. It says it three times every day.”
And then he adds:
V'lo zo bilvad, ela b'sha'ah sheYisrael nichnasin l'batei knesiot u'l'batei midrashot v'onin Yehei Shemei rabba mevarach...
“And not only that. When the Jewish people enter synagogues and houses of study and answer, ‘May His great Name be blessed’...”
God says:
Ashrei hamelech she'mekalsin oto b'veito kach.
“Fortunate is the King who is praised in His house in this way.”
But then:
Mah lo l'av she'higlah et banav.
“What is there for a father who has exiled his children?”
And:
V'oy lahem labanim she'galu me'al shulchan avihem.
“And woe to the children who have been exiled from their Father’s table.”
There is something extraordinary happening here.
The Mikdash is gone.
The relationship has been wounded.
There is a ruin.
And yet:
the relationship is not gone.
God still mourns His children.
And His children are still praying.
They are still entering synagogues.
They are still saying:
Yehei Shemei rabba mevarach.
The ruin is real.
But the ruin is not the end.
And perhaps that is one of the deepest messages of Yom Kippur.
Because we all have churvot.
We all have ruins.
A relationship that broke.
A decision we regret.
A word we wish we could take back.
A person we hurt.
A responsibility we neglected.
A part of ourselves that we allowed to deteriorate.
Yom Kippur asks us to enter those places.
We cannot do teshuva without looking honestly at what happened.
But there is a difference between entering a ruin and living in a ruin.
We enter it to tell the truth.
To understand what happened.
To hear what it has to teach us.
But we don’t stay there.
Because there is a point at which regret stops making us better and simply makes us smaller.
There is a point at which saying,
“I made a terrible mistake,”
quietly becomes,
“I am a terrible person.”
That is not teshuva.
That is despair.
The Torah does not ask us to deny our failures.
But neither does it ask us to build a home inside them.
Enter the ruin. Don’t live there.
This is why the Rambam gives us one of the most extraordinary descriptions of teshuva. In Hilchot Teshuva, he writes that the person who does teshuva is meshaneh shmo, he changes his name, meaning:
Ani acher v'eini oto ha'ish she'asah otan hama'asim.
“I am another person. I am not the same person who committed those actions.”
The Rambam does not say:
“I never did it.”
It was me.
I made that choice.
I hurt that person.
I failed.
But:
I am not required to remain that person.
The person who made that choice belongs to my history.
He does not have to determine my future.
The answer to our opening question is therefore radical:
What happens after I admit that I was wrong?
I change.
Not by erasing the past.
Not by excusing the past.
But by refusing to let it dictate what comes next.
The mistake can produce humility.
The failure can produce wisdom.
The relationship I damaged can teach me how to love more carefully.
The sin can become the reason I finally change.
So what does that actually mean for us?
I want to suggest something simple for this coming year.
Choose one absolute.
One commitment that will be a red line for you.
Not ten resolutions.
Not a long list of things we hope to improve.
Just one thing that we are not willing to let slowly disappear from our lives.
It might be something in Shabbat that we want to protect.
It might be setting aside meaningful, protected time for our spouse or children.
It might be committing more consistently to minyan and the power of davening together.
The particular commitment will be different for each of us.
But the question is the same:
What am I not willing to lose?
Because we don’t necessarily wake up one morning and decide to become a different person.
We drift there.
One compromise becomes another, and something that once mattered can slowly become less important.
So perhaps this year we need not only goals that tell us where we want to go.
We need boundaries that protect us from becoming someone we don’t want to be.
And perhaps we can think about that commitment through four simple questions:
What do I need to name?
What have I been avoiding?
What truth do I need to acknowledge?
What do I need to repair?
Whom do I need to call?
What apology do I need to make?
What relationship needs my attention?
What do I need to leave behind?
What have I acknowledged?
What have I learned from?
What can I no longer change?
And finally:
What do I need to protect?
What is one commitment, one red line, that I will protect in the coming year?
Name it.
Repair it.
Leave it.
Protect what matters.
That is teshuva.
And perhaps that is part of what it means to say:
Hineni.
Here I am.
I know where I have been.
I know what matters to me.
And I am ready to take the next step.
And this brings us to Yizkor.
Yizkor asks us to look backward.
We remember the people who shaped us and are no longer here.
Our parents.
Our grandparents.
Our spouses.
Our siblings.
Our teachers.
Our friends.
And memory can be painful.
There are things we cannot change.
No more conversation.
No more phone call.
No more opportunity to say thank you.
Perhaps there are regrets, things we wish we had said or done differently.
But Yizkor does not ask us simply to remain in the past.
It asks:
What will you do with what you remember?
We cannot bring the past back.
But we can bring something from the past forward.
Their kindness can become our kindness.
Their love of Torah can become our love of Torah.
Their generosity can become our generosity.
Their commitment to family can become our commitment to family.
Their memory can become our responsibility.
And that is the same movement as teshuva.
We look backward, not to live there, but to decide what we will carry forward.
One of the most beautiful ways to honor someone who is no longer here is to take something that mattered to them and make it matter again.
Their memory can become our action.
And then, after Yizkor, we will return the Torah to the Aron and begin Musaf.
The chazzan will stand before us and say:
Hineni he'ani mima'as.
“Here I am, poor in deeds.”
And:
Af al pi she'eini kedai v'hagun l'kach.
“Even though I am not worthy or deserving.”
Think about those words.
The chazzan doesn’t say:
“Hineni because I am righteous.”
He says:
“Hineni because I know that I am not.”
He knows his shortcomings.
He knows his failures.
And yet he says:
Hineni.
Here I am.
Perhaps that is the deepest message of Yom Kippur.
God asks:
Ayeka?
Where are you?
And our answer is not:
“I have everything figured out.”
It is not:
“I have fixed everything.”
It is simply:
Hineni.
Here I am.
I am willing to look honestly at who I have been.
I am willing to repair what I can.
I am willing to carry forward what matters.
And I am willing to take the next step.
And perhaps that is enough to begin.
Because the opposite of hiding is not perfection.
It is presence.
The opposite of despair is not certainty.
It is possibility.
And the opposite of being trapped in the past is not forgetting.
It is choosing what comes next.
Ayeka?
Where are you?
Hineni.
Here I am.