I have been working on a few writing projects this summer and have made less headway than I’d hoped. There’s always a million excuses not to write, so in service of becoming a better writer (and perhaps creating another excuse to procrastinate), I turned to self-help books. The one that actually got me to sit down and write was Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

Pressfield’s thesis is simple: the biggest threat to our creative selves, to finishing anything, is “Resistance.” If you’ve ever committed to exercise and quit or meant to pursue a new job or volunteer project and bailed, you know Resistance. He writes:

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet…To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. (Introduction).

Pressfield’s solution to Resistance is to “turn pro,” which means to build the structure to succeed, then commit, and show up again and again, with help from the “angels” and “muses,” the people who support us along the way.

Pressfield’s formula—to recognize Resistance, then attack the task like a professional, engendering help from those around us—resonated with me spiritually. Maybe it’s because I read the book during Elul, but I started thinking about the idea of “Spiritual Resistance”: avoiding shul, putting off an apology, and delaying the work of teshuva (repentance) that this season demands.

This is Rambam (Maimonides) 101. He knew how hard teshuva is: “Twenty-four things obstruct teshuva” (Hilkhot Teshuva 4:1). Rambam teaches that we postpone, we isolate, and we avoid uncomfortable truths; this is quintessential Resistance finding any excuse to circumvent teshuva. Taking Pressfield’s framework one step further, we overcome Spiritual Resistance by turning pro, elevating our spiritual lives by showing up. 

No prayer captures that better than Hineni, which the ba’al tefila, prayer leader, sings before Musaf on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. When I hear the word “hineni,” I imagine it as a bold and fearless declaration, “here I am,” ready to take on the world. Instead, the prayer leader steps up hesitantly and utters, softly: “Here I am, poor in deeds, trembling and afraid before the One enthroned upon the praises of Israel…even though I am neither worthy nor fit for this.” A true professional, in all his inadequacy, the ba’al tefila still shows up.

That’s what these Yamim Noraim ask of us. In spite of the challenges and hurdles that might cause us to resist, just begin by taking a few steps forward, and declare, I am here.  Even though the Hineni prayer is only recited by the prayer leader, the Mateh Ephraim, Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margoliot, demands that he “raises his voice in the middle… in order to awaken the hearts of the congregation…” (Orah Hayyim 590:38).

We, too, are asked to contemplate how to overcome our Spiritual Resistance and think about how we will show up and declare we are here. For each of us that will look different. It may mean being here to work on relationships with family and friends or that we are here to be our best selves at work. For me, I am here to nurture my relationship with Hakodesh Baruch Hu. I am here to let others hold me up along the way, the angels and muses Pressfield writes about, who are the community that has supported Maharat from its earliest days. Hineni.

This is not abstract for me right now. Two months ago, I stepped back from my pulpit role at my shul after 23 years on the clergy team. And almost immediately, people started asking me some version of the same question: so you’re not a rabbi anymore? My own nine-year-old asked it too, though his version was really about concern over no longer getting his lollipops.

I understand the question. I no longer have a seat at the front of the shul. But in the weeks since, I have torn kriah for a congregant who lost her sister. I was asked, with 35 seconds notice, to give a d’var torah at a shiva house. I have sat in hospital rooms and held people through hard family transitions and answered the same halakhic questions I always answered. None of that required a seat on the pulpit. It required showing up as my rabinic self.

That, I think, is what Hineni is actually teaching us. Not that we arrive certain of our fitness for the role, but that we arrive anyway, poor in deeds and trembling, mindful of the privilege and responsibility of helping someone who needs us. To the person who told me recently, “I wish you were still my rabbi,” I found myself answering without hesitation: I am still your rabbi. Hineni does not depend on the bimah. It depends on whether we are willing to say, here I am.

And with that utterance, perhaps the fulfillment of Yishayahu’s vision will come true: “Then you shall cry out, and God will ssay Hineni” (Yishayahu 58:9).