It is the morning of Rosh Hashana, and a hush fills the sanctuary. The ark is open, displaying all the sifrei Torah enrobed in white. This is the moment that many consider the emotional climax of the High Holidays: Unetane Tokef. “And with a great shofar it is sounded, and a still small voice shall be heard…” The piyut begins with fear and trembling, as it describes all of us passing before Hashem like sheep, measuring our deeds and our days. As the poem continues, I feel a wave of dread.

On Rosh Hashana it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed—how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who in good time, and who by an untimely death, who by water and who by fire…

My mind passes over everything that has happened to friends, loved ones, and the world during the past year. Illness, death, and suffering stalk us all. Unetane Tokef teaches that our fate is inscribed by God on Rosh Hashana. All things, good and bad, are determined at this moment.

For me, Unetane Tokef has been difficult to pray for many years. In 2013, my mother passed away on Erev Yom Kippur. Every year, I recall the weeks leading up to the end of her life. And this piyut, with its themes of death and judgment, always feels too pointed. Can it really be saying that God decrees an early death, that we deserve all of our suffering? At the time of year when my own loss is the most present, the liturgy feels like a spotlight on that grief.

The piyut continues, offering us a way that we can play a role in our own fate. Although God determines the judgment, our actions can create change. The paytan writes, “U’teshuva u’tefillah u’tzedaka ma’avirin et ro-a ha’gezera,” “But repentance, prayer, and justice/charity avert the evil of the decree.”

After suffering losses, we wonder—does this really mean that we just didn’t pray hard enough? Can we really erase “evil decrees” from our lives? And how can we sincerely pray this text, as challenging as it is?

I have gone through my own journey with this difficult text. Some years, I have read it, or avoided it, or wrestled with it, and tried again and again to find a way through.

Part I: Rabbinic Origins
Unetane Tokef is a rich text, weaving Torah and rabbinic intertexts with the author’s own poetry. To understand “ma’avirin” the evil of the decree, we must examine its sources in Talmud and Midrash. In Bereishit Rabba (44:12), it states, “Three things nullify (mevatlim) evil decrees, and these are: tefillah, tzedakah, and teshuvah.” We see the same “three things” in our liturgy, but the language is different. In the midrash, the decrees are nullified completely. However, in Unetane Tokef, we “avert/pass away the evil of the decree.”

In Rosh Hashana 16b, we see a different version of the same idea, “Four things tear up (mekar’in) the decree of judgment for a person, and they are: tzedakah, crying out (to God), changing one’s name, and changing one’s deeds.” Crying out to God is an analog for prayer, whereas changing one’s deeds is similar to teshuvah. Similar to Bereishit Rabba, the evil decree is completely erased. In this text, the decree is literally torn up, much like a legal document that is invalid.

Whether by nullifying or tearing up, in Unetane Tokef the evil of the decree is made to pass away. Poetically, just as God passes over us like a shepherd over his flock, we can make God’s harsh decrees pass. However, the language is ambiguous. What does it mean for the evil decree to pass away? Does this mean that the decree itself will be changed, or will the “evil” only be mitigated?

Dr. Reuven Kimelman, in his article “Unetaneh Tokef: A Commentary,” on the website Torah.com, argues that the addition of the word ro’a, “averts the evil of the decree,” suggests that the decree will be mitigated rather than annulled. It is the “evil” of the decree, rather than the decree itself, that is lessened or removed. We may not be able to tear up the judgment, but we can soften its harshness. As Rabbi Alan Lew puts it in his book This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared:

But do prayer, Teshuvah and Tzedakah actually change our fate? The rabbis who came along later realized that of course they do not. The real change is in the way we perceive the world. So they changed the language of the prayer accordingly. Now we say, Teshuvah, Tzedakah and Tefilah ma’avirin et ro-a ha gezerah.

Rabbi Lew suggests that the way we soften the harshness of the decree is by changing ourselves, and by changing the way we approach our own lives. To do this, we have to consider how we look at suffering and difficulty.

Part II. The Chasidic Lens on Suffering
What if overcoming the evil of the decree is really about changing ourselves, and our perspective on what happens to us? Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches us that when we re-orient our vision towards God, we can change our experience of suffering.

In Likutei Moharan (65:3), Rebbe Nachman reflects on the problem of suffering. If God is all-Good, why is there suffering in the world? He writes: “Thus we see that whatever evil and suffering a person experiences, God forbid, if he focuses on the ultimate purpose—i.e., God’s intention—he will not experience it as suffering at all…” Rebbe Nachman’s view is that the suffering we experience is a result of how we see our experiences and where we place our focus. We suffer because our awareness is taken from us. He likens this experience to the phenomenon of a person closing their eyes when they experience severe pain, because they are trying to shift their focus away from that pain. So too, we must close our eyes from our own suffering and re-orient toward the “ultimate goal of Creation:”

One has to close one’s eyes and fix one’s gaze on the ultimate goal. This is because the light of this ultimate goal is very distant from a person. The only way for him to see it is by closing his eyes.

This interpretation of human suffering shows us that perhaps, the “evil” of our suffering is a result of our own perspective. When we focus our vision on our relationship with God, we can mitigate the intensity of our pain and how we view our experiences.

Alternatively, does this pain come because we are distant from God? Is this the reason for evil and suffering? For centuries, some Jewish thinkers have claimed that we experience suffering because God has turned God’s face from the Jewish people (the concept of hiddenness, or hester panim). However, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889-1943) in his Warsaw Ghetto work, Esh Kodesh, rejects this idea:

How is it possible to say that that suffering is a result of hester panim? Indeed, “I will be with them in distress,” (Tehillim 91:15 “Imo Anokhi b’Tzarah”). Further, it is God who bears the burden of our suffering…(5701, Re’eh).

The Esh Kodesh teaches us that in reality, God has not hidden Godself from us. To the contrary, God feels and carries our pain with us. He goes on to say that it is only our perspective on our pain that creates this feeling of distance and concealment when we are in pain. Perhaps we can lessen the “evil” or the suffering that results from painful experiences, because God is present with us in these difficult moments. When we suffer, God suffers with us.

Part III. Offerings
We learn from these Chasidic teachings that the way we might lessen our experience of suffering is through focusing on God’s presence. When we open our eyes to the reality of God, we can mitigate the “evil” of the experience. When we remember that God is with us even in dark moments, it may be possible to let some light in.

In How God Becomes Real, sociologist Tanya Luhrmann explores how different religious groups make God manifest in their lives by “kindling” God’s presence. She relates a story about a group of nuns who contracted chronic tropical diseases in the process of their work. One nun was able to transform her experience of her disease through prayer and connection with the divine:

She called a meeting of all her amoebas and told them that she loves them. These days, every morning she stands in front of a mirror and “addresses all of God within herself.” She still experiences pain, but it no longer seems significant. It no longer feels like God’s punishment…(p. 150).

This vignette suggests that by reframing her disease from a punishment to a way to experience God, this nun was able to diminish her own suffering. We may not be able to nullify physical or emotional pain, but we can change our experience of it by “kindling” God’s presence and feeling that God is with us.

So, how do tefillah, teshuvah, and tzedakah avert the evil of the decree? By calling out to God in prayer, by drawing nearer to Hashem and the mitzvot, we are deepening our connection to God. It is through our relationship and our experience with Hashem itself that we soften the experience. Much suffering is the result of loneliness and of distance—from our community, from ourselves, and from God. When we do teshuvah, we try to close that gap. And in this way, we have the possibility to change our experience of loss and difficulty.

However, it is not always possible to recognize that God is with us in our narrow places. Because of the depth of our pain, sometimes we feel angry and distant from God, even if we try to pray, connect with mitzvot and our community. However, anger is not always a path of distancing oneself from God. In Jewish sources, anger can even be a valid way of communicating with God.

On the What Now? podcast, Rabbi Eliezer Diamond relates that anger can be part of the Divine-human relationship. He says that we see this in the Psalms of complaint or lament: “My whole being is stricken with terror, while you, O Lord, How long?!” (Tehillim 6:4). When we recite these psalms, we are channeling a deep tradition of raging against and arguing with God. And when we argue with God, we are still expressing a relationship and a desire to connect.

In my own life, after my mother’s passing, I went through a period where I was angry with God and I found it difficult to pray. In my own way, I believe that sometimes even not praying can be a way of crying out, of protesting loss and tragedy. We are angry with God because we believe deeply that God should be a force for goodness and justice. According to Elie Wiesel, “Indignation may in fact be the most authentic expression of faith, for it is a testimony of our belief—in spite of what we see—that God is just” (Ariel Burger, Witness, p. 93). When we rage at God, we are expressing a deep faith in God’s justice, even when it seems lacking in the world.

Part IV. Conclusion
There is no one right way to approach Unetane Tokef in light of deep human suffering. For some, it may be impossible to reconcile its striking words with our own experience. For others, this piyyut may offer comfort. Rabbi David Kraemer, also on the What Now? podcast, shares a story of a terminally ill person who found great comfort in the idea that tefillah, teshuvah, tzedakah could change his own health. Unetane Tokef might bring a contradictory combination of comfort, rejection, and acceptance, whether for different people or for a single person at different points in their lives.

The challenge of “ma’avirin et ro-a ha’gezera” is that when we read this line, we ache for the gap between its promise and the suffering and loss that we still experience. Despite our prayers, bad things happen. And when we reach this line in our machzor, we wonder whether we should have done more. However, there is another way to read this part of the piyyut. Unetane Tokef begins, in terrible majesty, describing God’s great power to judge all of humanity. Dr. Shira Billet suggests that “tefillah, teshuvah, tzedakah” actually reflects the potential for agency and human power in the face of mortality. Even as God has awesome power to determine our fates, there is still room for us to create change.

In this way, Unetane Tokef reminds us that tefillah and teshuvah can diminish the “evil” of the decree by reawakening us to God’s presence. By building a closer relationship with God, we remind ourselves that we are not alone. Through this relationship, we have the power to change ourselves and our perspective. Perhaps, by crying out to God, by drawing near to the divine with intention, we can sweeten some of the bitterness of life and death.

This can be a long process. Perhaps there are years when we need to leave the room, or when we cannot pray at all. At these times, we can imagine that God is crying with us, in God’s innermost chambers. When we learn to feel God’s presence, even in dark moments, that is how we begin to transform our fate. And so, when we pray this Yamim Noraim, may we feel that God is with us, b’eit tzarah, in the time of our suffering. As we deepen our connection to God and to each other, may we lighten our burdens together.