There is a practice during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to ask forgiveness. While getting ourselves spiritually ready for the new year and facing Hashem’s decrees for the year on Yom Kippur, we are also supposed to set things right with the people in our lives.
It’s a beautiful idea, but one that I’ve always found to be a bit forced. It feels funny to asked your loved ones to forgive you for any wrongs you have committed against them during the year (quite vague) and a bit strange to dig up a specific wrong from months ago to discuss. Typically, for these reasons, I haven’t really asked for forgiveness in the past during this time.
This year, however, is the first time in my life that I feel that I have to truly ask forgiveness.
And it’s my children that I am asking to forgive me.
We always have reason to worry that we may have unintentionally harmed someone or that, while wanting the best for our children, we may have not acted in their best interest. With the year that we have just experienced and the trauma left behind, I find myself questioning so much as a parent at this time of year.
As such, I come before you at this time, my children, to ask for your forgiveness.
Forgive me, dear children, for any of the ways that I reacted on October 7th or during the weeks after that didn’t make you feel safe, protected or secure.
Forgive me for falling apart on the 7th, after hugging your brother in uniform goodbye and watching him walk out the door. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be stronger for those of you who stood there, watching.
Forgive me for realizing, only after running to cry and rage alone in my room, that you needed me; and taking one of you into my arms when I realized you were falling apart, too.
Forgive me for not realizing what you were dealing with on base, or how many friends you had lost.
Forgive me for not realizing that you had so many chat groups among friends, and that you had watched, in real time, everything unfold, including the cries for help of your friends and fellow soldiers.
Forgive me for not knowing that you had written messages to friends saying, “Please send a sign of life.” And that you had to then sit with that knowledge, on your own during the fight, while the phone was silent.
Forgive me for not having any way of helping you through these pains; of not being able to alleviate your fear, anger, devastation while putting on a strong face and heading out to fight.
Forgive me for not being able to rescue you from Sderot. For not even being able to communicate with you on the phone or offer words of encouragement.
Forgive me for what you experienced during those 30 plus hours, for what you heard and saw and felt in Sderot.
Forgive me if we didn’t help you to process that trauma in the right way in the weeks and months after. We tried as much as we could, as much as we knew to do. Forgive me if it wasn’t enough.
Forgive me for any way that we weren’t there for you, our soldiers. There was so, so little we could do for your fear, your pain, your loss. Please forgive me if we didn’t do enough; if we didn’t help enough; if we weren’t enough.
Forgive me if the words that we offered right before you each went into battle weren’t the right words; if the love we tried so desperately to convey through the phone wasn’t felt or wasn’t enough.
Forgive me if our messaging wasn’t on point while you were in Gaza; if, in those few precious moments that we heard from you periodically, we said the wrong thing, spoke in the wrong way, offered the wrong type of encouragement.
Forgive me dear other children who weren’t soldiers at the time if we didn’t offer enough comfort, enough support in the weeks and months after. If the focus on our soldiers and on our fears took away from things we could have been doing to help you.
Forgive me if any of my fears seeped into your fears; if the ways that I tried to be strong weren’t enough or weren’t helpful.
Forgive me for the fact that you live in a world where this is our reality; a world where you must bear arms and take up the fight for all of us. A world where you have so, so much on your shoulders and so much knowledge of the hatred others have for us and our tiny, beautiful country.
Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to be enough this year; to do enough; to help enough; to say enough. But I pray that my words, at least, are enough for now as they come from the heart and the soul.
Forgive me, dear children.
For my faults.
