The Final Seal and The Open Gate

HOSHANAH RABBAH

The Final Seal and The Open Gate

We are taught in Maseches Rosh Hashanah (16b) that Yom Kippur is the awesome day upon which our judgment reaches its final conclusion, and the destiny of the coming year is sealed. As we proclaim in the stirring words of Unesaneh Tokef, "בראש השנה יכתבון, וביום צום כפור יחתמון"—"On Rosh Hashanah they are inscribed, and on the fast of Yom Kippur they are sealed."

Indeed, the final tefillah of Yom Kippur is called Ne'ilah—עת נעילת שער—because it is the moment when the gates through which a Yid has poured out his tefillos, his tears, his hopes, and his deepest yearnings throughout the Yomim Nora'im are, seemingly, closed.

And yet, the Zohar Hakadosh (Vol. III, 31b, and elsewhere), as well as the seforim hakedoshim (see Bnei Yissaschar, Tishrei 12), teaches us that the koach of the chasimah extends until Hoshana Rabbah.

So which is it? If the Shaarei Shomayim are closed at Ne'ilah, what remains for Hoshana Rabbah? If all doors have been sealed, what is left to accomplish? Through what opening can a Yid still cry out to his Father in Heaven? Through what gate can a tefillah still ascend on this holy day?

The answer is one of the most profound expressions of HaKadosh Baruch Hu's infinite rachmanus. Even as Yom Kippur draws to its close, even as the gates of Heaven are being sealed, even as it seems that the opportunity to alter the decree has passed, HaKadosh Baruch Hu leaves one gate open, one door through which a broken heart can still enter: the Shaarei Dimah—the Gates of Tears. As Chazal teach us (Brachos 32b), שערי דמעה לא ננעלו—the gates of tears are never locked.

And as long as that gate remains open, there is still a place for the tefillah that rises from the deepest chambers of the heart. There is still a place for the teshuvah born of a lev nishbar, for the trembling tears of one who can no longer contain the pain, the longing, and the hope within his soul.

This is the extraordinary koach of Hoshana Rabbah. The koach of the chasimah is still within reach because the Shaarei Dimah are still open. Therefore, it is not merely another day for tefillah in Tishrei. It is a final, precious moment of extraordinary potency in which a person can gather every pain that has remained unspoken, every hope that has remained buried within his heart, and bring it before Hashem. To stand before Him not with perfect words, but with tears. And to plead with Him as a child pleads with his Father.

The Day of Dovid HaMelech

Though the Shaarei Dimah are open every day of the year, there is a particular koach to enter its gates on Hoshana Rabbah because it is the seventh day of Sukkos, when Dovid HaMelech enters the sukkah. And there is no one who teaches us more profoundly than he how to daven with a broken heart.

Dovid HaMelech taught Klal Yisrael, for all generations, how to cry in tefillah before Hashem. How to give voice to longing. How to place one's very soul before the Ribbono Shel Olam and hold nothing back. His entire sefer Tehillim is the prayer of a person who, again and again, takes the deepest places of human suffering—fear, loneliness, yearning, desperation, hope—and transforms them into tefillah.

Indeed, he writes in Tehillim (6:7–9), "יגעתי באנחתי, אשחה בכל לילה מטתי; בדמעתי ערשי אמסה"—"I am wearied by my sighing; every night I drench my bed, I melt my couch with my tears."

And yet, from those tears emerges the triumphant declaration, "כי שמע די קול בכיי, שמע די תחנתי, די תפלתי יקח"—"For Hashem has heard the sound of my weeping; Hashem has heard my supplication; Hashem will accept my tefillah."

He begins with weeping and concludes with the acceptance of his tefillah because there is something profound to that progression. Dovid HaMelech is teaching us that his tears were not merely an emotion that accompanied his tefillah; they were themselves the tefillah. The tears carried his tefillah upward. The brokenness of his heart became a voice before Hashem.

This is the power of Hoshana Rabbah, the day of Dovid HaMelech.

The Shaarei Shomayim may be closed, but the Shaarei Dimah remain open. And therefore, whoever is not yet certain whether he has been inscribed and sealed for life and for a year of goodness and blessing should know that this is precisely the time to daven. This is the day to cry. Because this is the hour when we stand before the מלך מתרצה בדמעות, our King Who is appeased by tears.

On this day, when we daven for water, no expression better captures the power of the day’s tefillah than the words of the Navi (Eichah 2:19), "כמים שפכי ד׳ פני נוכח לבך"—"Pour out your heart like water before Hashem."

כמים—like water, because water does not remain contained; it flows. It spills through every opening, and it seeks every place it can reach. So, too, on Hoshana Rabbah, spill your heart before Hashem. Bring Him every longing. Every fear. Every dream. Every unanswered prayer. Every person for whom you are davening, and every yeshuah you are still waiting to see.

Perhaps, then, Hoshana Rabbah will truly become what its name declares: a day of Great Salvation. A day when abundant yeshuos are poured down upon us and upon all of Klal Yisrael. A day when tears can become tefillah, tefillah can awaken rachamim, and rachamim can bring yeshuah. The day when the Shaarei Shomayim may be closed, yet one gate remains open through which Hashem, in His infinite mercy, hears and accepts our tefillos and seals us in the sefer of tzaddikim gemurim, for a life of goodness and peace, for yeshuah and brachah, and for the ultimate Geulah Sheleimah.