Yom Kippur: Before the Aibishter's Eyes | Rabbi Mordechai Stern

Very shortly, each of us will be standing in the Yom HaKadosh, in Yom HaKippurim. We'll be standing לפני השם, in an unbelievable, unfathomable outpouring, a river, an ocean of white Rachamim, לפני השם תטהרו. And so many times throughout the Yom HaKadosh, in our Tefillos, we're going to daven, we're going to say, Ribono shel Olam, מחה erase, והעבר remove, take away, our Aveiros, our חטאים, our sins from in front of Your eyes. This always troubles me. It actually hurts. You’re asking the Ribono shel Olam to remove all of our mistakes, all of the bad choices we've made and the חטאים that we have and we say: Take it from in front of Your eyes. What is that supposed to mean, ‘from in front of Your eyes’? Is there a place that's not in front of the Ribono shel Olam’s eyes? The Aibishter sees everything. There's no place that's not in front of His eyes. What are we saying, Remove our חטאים, our Aveiros, from in front of Your eyes? And מוריי ורבותיי, the Sfas Emes tells us something that's piercing. He says: This is how you're supposed to read it. Ribono shel Olam, erase, remove the חטאים. Why? From the fact that because we have a התקרבות, because there's התגלות הקדושה, because we feel ourselves standing in Your presence in front of Your eyes. We feel ourselves standing in front of the benevolent understanding, the look, the perspective, the Ribono shel Olam sees us, deep into us, He understands us. We’re מנגד עיניך, that's how we're zoche with that התגלות, with that Kedushah, with that התקרבות, we’re zoche that the Ribono shel Olam, He forgives, He raises us up, He cleanses us. But מוריי ורבותיי, אחיי ורעיי, Vayimaen Yidden, I want to share with you a הרגש that I'm going into Yom Kippur with this year. Maybe we can add to the Sfas Emes. Perhaps we could say, Bizchus מנגד עיניך, Bizchus my eyes, Ribono shel Olam, our eyes, we've given them to You. How many times have we had מחה, have we turned things off, have we erased things, והעבר, we've removed things, looked the other way, turned our head to the left, turned our head to the right? מחה והעבר, Ribono shel Olam, there are things in front of Your eyes, and we're asking You, Bizchus, מידה כנגד מידה, Bizchus that we were zoche to, Baruch Hashem, be part of a movement מנגד עיניך to turn our eyes that belong to You away from things that were there, You, Ribono shel Olam, מחה והעבר פשעינו וחטאתינו מנגד עיניך. Shower us with Tahara, fill us up with Kedushah, and grant us all, Bizchus this, a שנה טובה ומתוקה.