[Avodah] 10 Yemei Teshuva Paradox?

[Simon Montagu]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:42 PM, David Eisen <davide at arnon.co.il> wrote:

>  On the one hand we stress that 10 yemei teshuva are days in which HQB"H
> is especially responsive to our prayers a la Yevamot 105a, yet in our
> tefillot we stress His transcendence and greater distance from us (e.g.,
> le'eyla u'le'eyla, HaMelekh HaQadosh, HaMelekh HaMishpat). Based on the
> above Gemara and the underlying pasuk in Yeshayahu of Hashem's particular
> closeness (b'hiyoto qarov), I would have expected our tefillot to express a
> special closeness to the Ribono Shel Olam instead of the opposite. Any
> thoughts?
>

By definition, if anyone changes in AYT it is us and not KBH, so if we
experience a special closeness at this time it is because we have keveyachol
come up towards him rather than he keveyachol coming down towards us. I
would suggest that this "coming up", like climbing a mountain, causes a
change in our perspective which makes us realize more fully both how high we
have climbed and the infiniteness of the distance that continues to separate
us.

I can't say that I have resolved the paradox, other than replacing it by a
slightly different one, but it makes some sense to me this way at least.

GHT!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20081008/2599a51f/attachment-0002.htm>