I remember, as a boy, standing beside my father in shul during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, listening to him as he recited Avinu Malkeinu. Two words in Hebrew, four in English: Our Father, Our King.
And I remember asking him once, which one is it, Tatty? Is God a king, sitting in judgment on high, weighing every deed on His scales? Or is He a loving father?
My dad smiled the way dads do when a question is bigger than the child asking it.
He told the story of a Jew back in Eastern Europe who made his living as an innkeeper on a crossroads where there was no Jewish community and no school to send his children to. So he became his kids’ teacher. It was home-schooling long before that idea became popular.
But in the place in their home designated as a classroom, he played the role of teacher quite firmly. His children had to raise their hands to ask a question. They needed permission to leave the room. Just like in real school.
One day, he was being particularly strict with the kids and one of his sons was moved to say, “Dad, yes, we know you are our teacher, but please remember that you are also our father.”
And so do we say Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King.” Yes, God, you are our king sitting in judgement. But please never forget that you are also our Father in Heaven, and please have mercy upon Your children.
That conversation has stayed with me my whole life—and never more than in the weeks of Elul, when we start hearing the shofar’s blast every morning. Something in us starts to tremble a little, a tremor down the spine. Rosh Hashanah is coming! The Day of Judgment. Who shall live, who shall die, who by fire and who by water.
It’s serious business, and Judaism never pretends otherwise.
But here’s the question: What is supposed to be driving us through this season? Is it dread? Guilt? A kind of low-grade spiritual depression, ticking down the days until the gavel falls? Or is it something else entirely?
Because there’s a version of religion (and it’s not ours) where God sits somewhere far away on a cloud keeping score, and the best you can hope for is to sneak by without getting hit by lightning. Fear without warmth. Judgment without embrace. And with respect to other paths, that has simply never been the Jewish way, and certainly, not the Chassidic way.
The 16th-century mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the Arizal) writes that in the Hebrew month of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the 13 attributes of God’s mercy are more revealed in the world. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi—the Alter Rebbe and the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—illustrates this with a famous parable of the “King in the Field.”
Picture it: a king who is ordinarily unreachable—surrounded by palace guards, layers of ministers, a formality so thick that an ordinary citizen could go a lifetime without so much as glimpsing his face. But once a year, this king does something extraordinary. He leaves the palace. He travels out to the countryside to see how his subjects are doing. He visits the villages, the open fields and walks among his people. No throne. No entourage. No royal protocol.
And there, in the field, is a farmer—boots caked in mud, overalls stained from a full day’s labor digging ditches and tending the earth. This is not a man dressed for an audience with royalty. And yet, the king approaches him directly and doesn’t scowl at the dirt on the man’s hands. He smiles. He embraces him. He asks about his family, his struggles and his hopes for the harvest. No appointment was necessary. No fine clothing required. The king simply wants to be close to his people as they are, where they are.
This, says the Alter Rebbe, is Elul. This whole month, the king is in the field. God doesn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up, straighten our ties, rehearse the perfect words of teshuvah before He’ll receive us. He comes to us. Wherever we are standing. Whatever mess is on our hands. And He embraces us with a love that doesn’t ask to be earned first.
Now, I’m not telling you fear has no place. Of course, it does. Yiras Shamayim, “Awe of Heaven,” is real and necessary; a Jew without any trembling before God is missing something essential.
But here’s the secret Rabbi Schneur Zalman was teaching: Love and fear are not equal partners. Love must be the dominant note. Fear is the string that keeps the instrument in tune; love is the music itself.
Think of it this way. If you’re trying to clear a dark room, you have two options. You can take a broom and start furiously sweeping at the darkness, swatting and swinging at shadows—and you’ll exhaust yourself and accomplish nothing because darkness isn’t a thing you can chase out.
Or you can light a single candle. And the moment you do, the darkness simply isn’t there anymore. It doesn’t fight back. It doesn’t negotiate. It just recedes, immediately, on its own.
That is teshuvah done right. Not a frantic sweeping at our failures, wallowing in regret and self-recrimination. Rather, we shine a light. We draw close to our Father and contemplate His greatness, His warmth, the sheer privilege of a king who wants to know us. We feel close to him and want to do His will, and the darkness has nowhere left to stand.
So this Elul, as the shofar sounds each morning and that tremor runs down your spine, let it be. Let yourself feel it. But don’t let it be the last word.
Because right behind that tremor is an embrace; the king has left the palace for you. He is not waiting for you to arrive polished and perfect. He’s already walking toward you, right now, in the field, exactly as you are.
Let us reciprocate and walk toward Him, too. Not with our heads down in dread, but with our hearts open in hope. That is how a child approaches a father.
And that, my friends, is how we ought to walk toward the New Year that awaits us—with confidence and warmth in His forever-loving embrace.
Shana Tovah!
