L
isten please to the powerful words of the Midrash Shocher Tov on a pasuk in Dovid Hamelech’s Tehillim (102:18) “Panah el tefillas ha’arar v’lo vazah es tefillasam — He has turned to the prayer of the lonely one and has not despised their prayer”:
Rabi Yitzchak said: This was said regarding the generations that have no prophet and no Kohein and no Beis Hamikdash to atone for them. All that remains with them is one tefillah the one that they pray on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Hakippurim — so do not deprive them of it.
Imagine having inherited a piece of 3000-year-old cloth an authentic remnant of the lashon shel zehoris the string which as the sa’ir la’Azazel hurtled to its death over a desert cliff turned suddenly white Hashem’s signal to His children that their sins were forgiven. Or imagine being a direct descendant of a righteous Kohein Gadol whose service on Yom Hakippurim had brought selichah and mechilah to the entire nation.
Yet while such direct connections to a glorious but distant past might have some subjective personal meaning they don’t actually bring about atonement. But the Midrash teaches there is in fact another very direct and deeply meaningful connection to that past that every one of us possesses.
