If Your Father is the King, What Does That Make You?

One of the most familiar prayers of the High Holiday season is Avinu Malkeinu — “Our Father, our King.” The words are so familiar that we can easily say them without stopping to consider what they actually mean.

Avinu — our Father. Malkeinu — our King.

We speak of God in two very different ways. God is close to us, like a parent. But God is also sovereign, and  commanding, like a King.

And if God is our Father and our King, then what does that make you?

About 20 years ago, I read a story that challenged me to think about that question in ways I had never considered before. It was about a woman named Sarah Jane Culberson, who discovered the answer to that question in a way that few people ever will. Sarah had been adopted as a baby and raised in West Virginia. She knew very little about her biological parents. For years she wondered where she had come from and who they had been. Finally, when she was twenty-eight years old, she decided to search for her biological father. What she discovered was almost unbelievable.

Her biological father, Joseph Kposowa, lived in Sierra Leone. More astonishingly, he belonged to the ruling family of the Bumpe chiefdom.

Sarah Culberson discovered that she was, quite literally, a princess.

But Sarah quickly discovered something else. Being a princess was not primarily about privilege. The people of Bumpe had suffered terribly during Sierra Leone’s civil war. People had been murdered and maimed. Homes had been destroyed. The school founded by Sarah’s grandfather had been ravaged. Students continued to come, but there were no desks, no books, no supplies, and inadequate buildings.

Suddenly the title “princess” meant something very different.

It meant responsibility.

Sarah struggled with that responsibility. What did she owe people whom she had only just discovered were her people? What did it mean to belong to a royal family when that family and that community were suffering?

Eventually she found her answer. She reorganized her life and her finances and committed herself to helping rebuild the school and support the people of Bumpe.

Sarah Culberson went looking for her father. She discovered that her father belonged to the royal family. And then she discovered the much more important truth: If your father is the king, being a princess is not merely an honor. It is a responsibility.

There is an old Hasidic story about a king’s son who forgot precisely that lesson.

The prince sinned against his father, and the king sent him away. At first, people still recognized him as the king’s son and treated him accordingly. But as he traveled farther and farther from home, no one knew who he was.

Eventually he sold his fine clothing to buy food. When he had nothing left, he became a shepherd.

And after enough time had passed, something remarkable happened.

He forgot that he had ever been a prince.

He became accustomed to the life of a shepherd. He became so accustomed to it that his greatest desire was to have a pair of thick boots to keep his feet dry in the mud.

One day the king happened to travel through that province. According to custom, anyone who had a request could write it down and throw the note into the king’s carriage. The prince wrote his request. He asked for a pair of boots. The king recognized his son's handwriting and was saddened to think how low his son had fallen: that he had forgotten that he was a king's son, and felt only the lack of thick boots.

The tragedy was not that the prince had lost his royal clothing. The tragedy was that he had forgotten his royal identity.

During these High Holy Days we call God Avinu Malkeinu — our Father, our King.

If God is our King, then Judaism is not merely something we possess. It is not simply a heritage we inherited, a label we carry, or a source of pride.

It imposes obligations.

To live with integrity.

To treat other people with dignity.

To care for those who are vulnerable.

To give tzedakah.

To study Torah.

To preserve Jewish life.

To support the Jewish community.

To repair what we have damaged.

To return when we have wandered too far from home.

That is what teshuvah ultimately asks of us.

Not merely, “What do I want from God this year?” But rather, “What does God ask of me?”

During the High Holidays,  we are called to remember. Avinu Malkeinu. Our Father. Our King. And if our Father is the King, then we too carry a certain nobility. Not a nobility of privilege. A nobility of responsibility.

As we observe Shabbat Shuvah and prepare ourselves for Yom Kippur, may we remember who we are, whose children we are, and what that identity asks of us. And may we live in the coming year in a way worthy of the crown.