When a Prayer Crosses the Boundary

There’s a Jewish prayer called Adon HaSelichot - “Master of Forgiveness.”

It’s not well known outside Jewish communities, but it is one of the central hymns of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is ancient, rhythmic, and repetitive. For generations, it has been sung in synagogues across the Middle East and Europe, carrying echoes of exile, survival, and hope.

But what if one day, the prayer was heard?

Not metaphorically. Not as a private feeling.

What if the sound itself - the frequencies, the vibrations - actually crossed the boundary between the human and the divine?

This is the starting point of my new novel, “Adon HaSelichot” ("אדון הסליחות").

It begins in a small town in southern Israel, in a modest synagogue filled with ordinary people. A cantor singing the old melody. An aging poet, a skeptical physicist, a girl who sees more than adults can explain, and a grandmother carrying memories from another land. They all gather, as countless communities have done before them, to recite words older than memory.

And then something happens.

The prayer connects. It resonates. It weaves invisible threads between everyone in the room - and perhaps, with something far beyond them. For a brief moment, separation dissolves. Human and divine touch.

But what follows is not revelation. It is uncertainty. Each character struggles to translate the experience into their own language: science, poetry, tradition, memory, innocence. Was it God? Was it physics? Was it an illusion? Or was it something else entirely?

“Adon HaSelichot” is not about giving answers.

It is about learning to live with questions.

Why Hebrew?

Adon HaSelichot was written in Hebrew because the story itself is inseparable from the language.

The novel grows out of a prayer - a hymn sung for centuries on Yom Kippur in synagogues from Baghdad to Jerusalem to New York. The rhythm, the repetitions, the sounds of the Hebrew words are not just background: they shape the way characters speak, sing, and remember. Writing in Hebrew allowed me to stay close to that texture - to let the cadence of the language echo the cadence of the prayer.

There is also the question of audience. The first readers I imagine are those who live in, or alongside, Jewish culture in Israel. For them, the words Adon HaSelichot are immediately familiar, carrying weight, melody, and memory. For others, they may sound foreign, mysterious, or sacred in a distant way. Both are true - and both are important.

That said, the themes of the novel are not bound by Hebrew: uncertainty, community, memory, the desire for meaning in the face of silence. Because of this, I do hope that a translation will follow. A good translation can carry across the story and its questions, even if some of the music of the original language will always remain unique to Hebrew.

For now, the book exists in the tongue that gave it birth. Down the road, I hope it can speak in others as well.

Adon HaSelichot book cover image concept