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סלח לנו אבינו כי חטאנו , מחול לנו מלכנו כי פשענו
“Forgive us, our Father, because we have inadvertently sinned; pardon us, our King, because we have rebelled [against You]”
In the 6th berakha of the Amida we ask HaShem Almighty for forgiveness.
We refer to God with two key words: abinu and malkenu
abinu means “Our father”. As we have previously explained, we Jews believe that God loves us as we love our children. We appeal to HaShem first as our loving father. Confident that no matter how bad we might have behaved, we know He will always take us back. Same as a loving but responsible parent, all God demands from us to forgive our offenses toward Him, is that we take charge and admit our responsibility. When we refer to God as “our father” we describe our sins as “hat aim” or inadvertent wrongdoings. We excuse ourselves saying that our general intention is to do good, but sometimes we make mistakes or we fail to control our impulses…
But we also know that God is malkenu, our King. The King is the ultimate authority. In ancient monarchies, Israel included, the King was also the supreme Judge, and among other things the King had the power to sentence his subjects to death. Every time we say melekh we are stating that our lives are at His mercy. When addressing God as a King we use the word pasha’nu, we rebelled against You. We disobeyed You. We don’t excuse ourselves as before.
abinu and malkneu often come together to express that God is the One who granted us the gift of life (abinu), and He is also the One who can take life away from us (malkenu). The tension between these two words is solved at the end of this berakha: “Barukh Ata haShem, hanun hamarbe lisloah” we say that HaShem is merciful, and that He forgives abundantly. At the end of this prayer we assert, and simultaneously wish for, that God as “our father” prevails over God as “the King”. As a loving parent He will see our sins as mistakes, not rebellion. And He will be waiting for us to come back to Him.
אני שלום וכי אדבר המה למלחמה
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THIS IS MOST YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL AND ITS CURRENT EFFORTS FOR PEACE
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