Aleinu is one of the most common prayers found in the prayer service. Originally it was the opening prayer of Mussaf on Rosh Hashana and was later inserted at the end of the three daily prayers services. What makes this prayer so unique?

Aleinu is composed of two parts – Aleinu and Al Kain Nekave. Aleinu was composed by Yehoshua Bin Nun after the miraculous capture of Jericho when the blowing of the shofar caused the walls to fall down. Al Kain Nekave was composed by Achan before being put to death for taking the loot of Jericho. G-d forbade taking the loot, but Achan did not listen. As a result the Jewish army lost many soldiers in their next battle with the Aye. The first letters of the first three words of this prayer spell out Achan’s name (Al Ken Nekave).

This adds to the mystery of Aleinu. Why was a prayer that is half composed by our great leader Yehoshua Bin Nun and half written by a supposed villain, Achan, used as the opening prayer of Mussaf on Rosh Hashana?

To understand this dilemma, we will explore the concept of Teshuva (repentance). How does an apology like “I am sorry” erase all sins?

Rav Eliyahu Dessler in his renowned work Michtav Mi’Eliyahu explains that G-d wishes us to recognize him as the True G-d. There are two ways of achieving this goal. A person can either be a Tzaddik, a righteous person following G-d’s path all his life or alternatively, one can achieve this through trial and error. If a man sins, it means he thought he could have something to gain by going down a different path. If he looks at his deeds and realizes he sinned, he has gained little from taking this path and therefore now recognizes that G-d’s way is the correct way. Both ways reach the same goal, but obviously the first path is more recommendable.

Yehoshua Bin Nun proclaimed G-d’s Name with a major spiritual showdown in Jericho. Achan took the second approach. By acknowledging his mistake, he brought about a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of G-d’s Name by announcing that the way of G-d is the correct way and admitting that he tried the other way and it was not worth it.

If we look at the Aleinu prayer closely we can see the difference between the themes in the two sections. In the first section Aleinu, the Tzaddik writes about the greatness of G-d and how lucky we are to be his people. In the second section, Achan expresses his desire that all alternative paths luring us away from G-d be destroyed, that we recognize them as false and that we should recognize G-d as being the True King. This is the true repentant speaking, praying that the falseness of this world which causes sin be eradicated, so that truth be recognized. We can now understand why the Mussaf service of Rosh Hashana opens with this prayer.

One of the greatest challenges the Jews experienced was the devastation of our nation during and following the destruction of the Second Temple. The Jews were physically destroyed and their spirits were broken. The great luminary savior of the Jewish people and the Torah at that time was R. Yochanan ben Zakai who escaped the siege and reconvened the Sanhedrin in Yavne. He instituted the saying of the Aleinu prayer three times a day to raise peoples’ spirit at that time, since Aleinu reminds us that when we follow in His ways, He is truly Glorious and we are fortunate to be His people. In addition, Aleinu reminds us that repentance works and that when we repent, G-d’s Glory will return.

Yochanan ben Zakai in his great wisdom foresaw that the Jewish people would be challenged time and time again during their long exile. The recitation of the Aleinu prayer, now an integral part of our prayers, helps strengthen our spirit, day in day out ensuring that we continue to be proud Jews and hold our heads high.

This week’s parasha describes the lamentable case of the ben sorer u-moreh, the rebellious son, whose parents must turn him over to the authorities for execution on account of the sins he will inevitably commit in the future. He is judged (according to the Mishna in Sanhedrin, 8:5) “based on his end – he should die innocent rather than dieing [later] with guilt”:

If a man has a wayward and rebellious son, who does not listen to his father or his mother, and they chasten him, and [he still] does not listen to them, his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place. And they shall say to the elders of his city, “This son of ours is wayward and rebellious; he does not listen to our voice; [he is] a glutton and a guzzler.” And all the men of his city shall pelt him to death with stones, and he shall die. So shall you clear out the evil from among you, and all Israel will listen and fear (Devarim 21: 18-21).

The Oral Tradition (see primarily the mishnayot in Sanhedrin 8:1-4), so uncomfortable with the very idea of the institution of ben sorer u-moreh, interprets these verses in such a way to both raise the bar of what constitutes an executable case, as well as provide so many mitigating possibilities, that in the end the Gemara (71a) posits that there never was nor ever will be an actual ben sorer u-moreh (similar to the hypothetical case of an ir ha-nidachat, the wholly idolatrous city which must be utterly destroyed; note that in our case R. Yonatan disagrees, convinced that there was at least one ben sorer u-moreh upon whose grave he sat).

Perhaps the most perplexing exegetical mitigation is based on the word in verse 20, in which the parents declare that that the child does not listen to “our voice” (in Hebrew: b’koleinu). From the odd noun declension, in which the parents refer to “our [plural] voice [singular]“, R. Yehuda determines that the parents must be of “equal voice”, so that if one of them called on the phone, for example, the ben sorer u-moreh wouldn’t be able to tell from the sound on the other end if it was mom or dad. Since they must be of equal voice, he adds the requirement that the two parents must be equal in height and in appearance (just imagine their family album!). Without these highly unlikely conditions being met, even the most rebellious child in the world would not meet the conditions to be susceptible to the death penalty.

What is the meaning of R. Yehuda’s odd requirements? Perhaps he is telegraphing to us the precursors of what becomes a ben sorer u-moreh most. Without entering the “nature vs. nurture” thicket, it is clear that the harmony of message the child receives from both parents greatly influence the path he will choose as he begins to mature and individuate (as the psychologists tell us). When two parents sound literally identical, the message becomes muted – like two sounds of equal wavelength which cancel each other out (as the physicists tell us). Parents must act in tandem, and surely their world views and values are best communicated when there is harmony – but rigid ideological lockstep so that the child cannot differentiate between mother and father (or perhaps Mussar Avikha and Torat Imekha) is the path the rebellion. This may be related to the fact that these two parents are precisely the same height, causing them to literally see everything from exactly the same perspective. If this converts to a figurative carbon copy of how to view and interpret the world, it robs the child of the complimentary way to look at things that he might receive if his parents weren’t clones of each other. Just as too much overlap in the gene pool can lead to serious birth defects, so too we need a certain amount of parental variety – within an obvious framework of consensus – to avoid the dangers and defects of the ben sorer u-moreh. R. Yehuda’s principles point to parental harmony as a middle path between discord and the sounds of silence produced by two parents attempting to educate with only one voice.