Chavurat Lamdeinu
Prayer - Study - Community
Zochreinu L'Chayim
Erev Kol Nidre
Chavurat Lamdeinu
10 Tishrei 5767
October 1, 2006
Rabbi Ruth Gais                Zochreinu L’Chayyim

In Germany in the late 10th Century, the leading halachic authority was Rabbeinu
Gershom, also known as Me’or Ha’Golah, the Light of the Diaspora, because of his
great knowledge and his ability to resolve disputes within his own community of
Mainz and those in the greater world of Ashkenazic Jewry. Once he was asked this
question: In the liturgy of Rosh HaShanah and of Yom Kippur, we insert an special,
additional prayer in the Avot, the first blessing of the Amidah, zochreinu l’chayyim,
melech hofetz ba-chayyim; v’chotveinu b’sefer ha’chayyim, l’mancha elohim chayyim
– remember us for life, King desiring life, and inscribe us in the book of life, for your
sake, God of life ( p. 425 pm, p. 496 am- you know this. It even has a special tune; just
hear it and you know that you’re in the High Holidays), but why do we add this? The
question came up because we learn in the Talmudic tractate Berachot (34a) that
Rav Yehudah declared that a person should not petition God in the first three
blessings of Amidah or the last three, which are reserved for praise and thanks, but
only in the middle blessings.
The Amidah, the standing prayer, is also called Ha Tefillah, THE prayer. This is the
moment in our service that we and God have been waiting for. The first part of the
liturgy is meant to position us spiritually to be able to encounter God one on one.
When we enter a sacred space, first we need to separate ourselves from our
ordinary life, and allow the otherness of this time and space to take hold. We
achieve this separation by songs, prayer, and silence that allow us to remember
who we are and who God is and why we need each other. By the time this part of the
service is finished, we’re ready first to say the Sh’ma – which is at one level our way
of introducing ourselves as believers to God – and then we can go on to have our
closest encounter with God: Ha Tefillah, The prayer.
The model of our liturgy is that of a humble petitioner at the court of God, the
supreme ruler, Adonai Tzvaot, the Lord of hosts, God the merciful judge. So as we
begin THE prayer, we take three steps back, three forward, stand with our feet
together, and bow to the sovereign. In the first blessing, the Avot, we remind God of
God’s special favor towards our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah,
Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, and hope that God will continue to extend God’s grace to
us. But in this blessing and in the two that follow, the Gevurot that affirms God’s
unique power, and the Kiddushah,  the affirmation of God’s holiness, we do not
ordinarily ask for anything. That would seem very out of place. So why, back to the
question asked Rabbeinu Gershom,, do we ask God, zochreinu ,  to remember us, l’
chayyim, for life? Isn’t that a request, and a really big one at that?
Rabbeinu Gershom acknowledged the problem and the inconsistency but came up
with an answer. He said that while yes indeed, praying “zochhreinu L’chayyim” was
a petitionary prayer, it was different from the kind of petitionary prayers that could
be said in the middle blessings – prayer for health, wealth, justice, - because those
were individual requests- but,he declared,  zochreinu l’chayyim is a communal
request, remember US, nor remember ME – a prayer from all of us for the tzorchei
tzibbur- the welfare of the community and therefore could be included in the first
blessing.
That reasoning though, doesn’t really work very well. What does it mean to ask God
to remember us for life for the welfare of the community? Certainly the community
needs its members – without which there would be no community. We need
farmers, doctors, teachers,  shopkeepers, plumbers, engineers, watchmakers,
even lawyers and politicians to keep the community alive. And certainly entreaties
for the means to sustain our lives and physical well-being, jobs, money, food, shelter,
health are as much a part of our High Holiday liturgy as prayers for forgiveness and
mercy. But Rabbeinu Gershom’s answer seems a little forced and flabby, to me. The
force of the prayer is goes beyond a cry for just our physical well- being.  The truth of
the matter is that people, ordinary people, once they heard this prayer, and we know
of its existence from at least the 8th Century, liked it and soon minhag (custom)
made it part of the liturgy. Rabbeinu Gershom was trying to find a justification for its
inclusion because popular sentiment wouldn’t let it disappear. So this little prayer
affects us somehow; I don’t think it’s just because we’re thinking of the welfare of
the community. .
A later authority, R. Menachem Meiri in the 12th Century, also trying to justify its
inclusion in the first blessing, argued that this prayer was different because it doesn’
t ask for material goods as the petition of an individual often would, but  asks for life
itself.
Life is,in fact, the most repeated word in this short prayer:
zochreinu l’chayyim: remember us for life
melech hofetz ba-chayyim; King desiring life
v’chotveinu b’sefer ha’chayyim and inscribe us in the book of life
l’mancha elohim chayyim, for your sake, God of life or living God

What kind of life are we asking for?
In the second chapter of Genesis we read: And The Lord God formed man from the
dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils nishmat chayyim, the soul of life, and man
became nefesh chayah, a living being. (Ber. 2:7)
There are, as the 19th Hasid known as the Sefas Emes tells us, three aspects to
each person revealed in this verse. We are dust from the earth. This is our material,
physical nature – if we are no more than that, we are to all intents and purposes c’ilu
met, as if we are dead. We are spiritually dead. Lumps of clay, nothing more.
But God breathes into us nishmat chayyim, the soul of life, which comes from God,
the elohim chayyim, the living God, and we are animated with our soul which is
emanates from the living God.
Finally,  creatures of clay, a body housing a divine soul, the nishmat chayyim, we
become a living being, a nefesh chayah. This is who we are: creaturs who at time
desire to cling to the soul of life, and at times are overwhelmed by the needs of the
body. While we are not completely spiritual beings, we desire devekut,  clinging, a
longing to return to the life of the soul. Our prayer, zochreinu l’chayyim, is a plea to
God to help us liberate our soul from the prison of the body and allow us to return to
the life of the soul.
The life we seek is not just living, staying alive another year, but a life that is
connected to God.
We pray to God to inscribe us in the Book of Life, b’sefer chayyim. I always imagined
God with a huge ledger book in front of him, sort of like Ebenezeer Scrooge and his
account books, carefully writing in the names of all of us for the new year. But this
image, maybe even an updated image of God putting us in God’s Blackberry, is too
far from the important truth of the Sefas Emes’ teaching that the life we want God to
remember us for is not only that of being alive, but being alive as God expects us to
be alive.
A more profound interpretation of “inscribe us in the book of life,” again from the
Sefas Emes, says that our nishmat chayyim, our living soul, over the year, gets
overpowered, and hidden. Imagine your soul as a piece of paper, or a smooth stone
on which all that was from God and good has gotten a little worn away and dirty over
the year. Think of your soul like the tables of the law, the Ten Commandments, which
when first received had the writing upon them bold and deep. But after time, the
writing became faded and hard to read. So the book of life is not far away, the book
of life is within each of us. We pray to God to renew what’s on the tablets of our
hearts. We want God to write “life!” in big bold letters on our hearts and by so
desiring this, we commit ourselves to keeping the tablets of our hearts free from the
grime and dirt caused by living. It’s our job to be able to read God’s commandments
that are in our hearts.
The last part of the prayer, “l’mancha elohim chayyim, for your sake, God of life or
living God, tells God that we want life not just for our own sake. We remind God that
we understand that the purpose of our lives is not just living. As we are taught in the
Pirke Avot (6:11) whatever God created in God’s universe, is created solely for God’s
glory. That ‘s what our job is, to be alive to give God glory. Whatever we do, eat
breakfast, build a bridge, pray, go to the supermarket, make love, pay the bills, we
should strive to do ever mindful of God’s constant presence inside us, in our nishmat
chayyim. Ever mindful of the divinity within, our life each day, lived right, gives glory
to our Creator.

k.y.r.