04 Nov THIS ANONYMOUS EMAIL LEFT ME SHAKEN

Just before Rosh
Hashana an email
arrived without a
name: just a cry, an
anonymous letter
addressed not to me,
but to G-d. “You have
hurt me. You have
abused and tortured me. You have taunted
and judged me… You left me. And so I
leave you, too.” Line after line bled with
anguish, betrayal, and the raw honesty of a
broken heart.
This email didn’t just arrive in my inbox;
it punched me in the gut. I didn’t just read
it with my eyes; I felt with my entire being
the pain it conveyed. At first glance, it
smacks of heresy, sacrilege, and
blasphemy. “I leave you, too.” But when
you read between the lines, you see
something else altogether. With
permission, here is the email, followed by
what I sent back as a response:
I write this to you, G-d, because the time
for apologetics has come to an end.
I will express this in no uncertain terms.
You have hurt me. You have abused and
tortured me. You have taunted and judged
me. In my hour of need, you abandoned
me. You have condemned me to loneliness
and envy. You elect at every moment to
continue to subject me to pain which
drains the little hope I still have for things
in my life to improve. I have been aware of
all of this for awhile, but the time has
come for me to say it.
You dare call yourself a merciful father. A
father who treats his children like you do
deserves nothing but the staunchest
condemnation. You willingly subject
humanity to horrors unimaginable and
claim to be a G-d of kindness and
compassion. If you are as they say you are
– omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent –
then it is within your power to reverse the
sadistic creation that you have fashioned.
Yet you continuously choose to prop it up.
Here is what I have to say to you.
Nearly a decade of dedication to you. Your
laws. What I thought was your will. Go on.
I’d like you to think about the thousands of
times I’ve prayed. Put on tefillin. Kept
Shabbos. Pushed normal thoughts of girls
out of my developing brain and castigated
me when I strayed. I slaved away over a
Gemara for years, bored to tears and
pressured to meet toxic social standards,
because I thought it would make you love
me. Well, so be it. You have hurt me, and
this time, I’m going to remember it.
Of course, what I’d like to say is that I’m

going to hurt you, too. But, if you are as
they say you are, that’s not quite something
I or anyone else can do. Fine. I accept that
hurting you is beyond my control.
Fortunately for me, you decided to grant
me free will, and oh, I’m itching to use it.
This mouth will never utter another word
of praise or thanks to you, the source of
my pain and misfortune. I will dedicate
my arms and legs and ears to helping those
in need because you have abandoned
them, too. I will forever rue the day your
cruel masochism decided to plant me in
this traumatic world to suffer and scream.
How many times – how many times?! –
have I prayed to you to heal me? To
comfort and console me? To show me the
purpose in my pain? You have left me
unanswered. You have stood me up. You
left me.
And so I leave you, too.
May you know the pain of a parent
witnessing their child turn his back and
walk away. May you feel the seething
grief that darkens my days and slashes at
my guts. May your eyes flood with tears
shed over losing your son forever.
I don’t want you to explain anything
anymore. I don’t want to hear from you at
all. I’m done asking questions, and I’m
done reaching out. I suppose the next time
I see you will be whenever you decide to
pluck me from this world and stand me up
before your kangaroo court to judge me as
a wicked man for defending myself from
an abuser. Until then, please don’t talk to
me. Don’t communicate with me. I will
never forget what you have done to me,
and I know you won’t, either. This Rosh
Hashanah, I will be doing some
remembering of my own.
I hope it was worth it.
My response:
I have read and re-read your email so
many times and each time it breaks my
heart and brings tears to my eyes. I am
beyond sorry for your pain and experiences.
I found your words so real, raw, authentic,
and profound. While they are written to
“write off” Hashem, I see them as one of
the greatest expressions of emunah I have
ever read. If you didn’t believe He is real
you wouldn’t bother being angry or
disappointed with Him or walking away
from Him. Your walking away is in fact
an enormous demonstration of walking
towards. Maybe on Rosh Hashana, if you
don’t want to open a machzor, print out
your letter and read it to Him. Scream it to
Him.
If you want to communicate further and if

I can help you in any way, please let me
know. I am honored, humbled, and
grateful that you shared your letter with
me.
The author ended up revealing himself to
me and despite his letter of rejection to
G-d, he not only attended Shul on Rosh
Hashana and Yom Kippur, he never
stopped davening for a day.
Although his letter rejected Hashem, the
fact that he continued to seek Him
reminded me of an image shared by Nobel
Laureate Elie Wiesel.
Elie Wiesel said that he was present when
a group of inmates, suffering beyond
comprehension in Auschwitz, put G-d on
trial. He described that the Almighty was
found guilty for the evils of the Holocaust.
Wiesel later wrote a play on this topic
called, “The Trial of G-d.” What Wiesel
said happened next is truly remarkable.
After the trial of G-d was over with a
guilty verdict, noticing the sun was setting,
the very same people who acted as the
prosecutors organized a minyan and
davened Mincha, the afternoon service.
I share this with you not as a model or
standard for us to aspire to. Anger at
Hashem is not an ideal goal or objective,
but it is also not a failure of faith or an
expression of heresy. There are some who
go through all the motions of mitzvos and
Torah, they daven diligently, they would
say they talk to Hashem three times a day,
but have they ever had a real and honest
conversation with Him?
Associating what is happening in our lives
as coming from our Creator is not heresy,
it is faith. Disappointment and malcontent
are not necessarily indications of
faithlessness, they are often evidence of
genuine belief in G-d. One is not angry at
someone that isn’t real. One doesn’t feel
disappointed with a figment of their
imagination.
Indeed, while our greatest teachers and
leaders were not ordinary people, and their
words need to be studied, analyzed and
appreciated for their deeper meaning, we
do have precedent for directing
dissatisfaction and challenges toward
Hashem, beginning in our parsha with our
founding father, Avraham.
When informed that Sedom is going to be
destroyed, Avraham doesn’t passively
accept the will of Hashem. He brazenly
challenges: “Will You indeed sweep away
the righteous with the wicked? … Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do justice?”
Generations later, feeling overwhelmed

and upset, even somewhat abandoned,
Moshe challenges: “Why have You dealt
ill with Your servant? … Did I conceive all
this people? … I am not able to carry all
this people alone… if You will deal thus
with me, kill me, I pray You, at once.”
This theme continues with our Neviim.
After Hashem spares the people of
Nineveh, Yonah, feeling his mission is
undermined, is explicitly angry: “But it
displeased Yonah exceedingly, and he was
angry. And he prayed and said, ‘Hashem,
is not this what I said when I was yet in my
country? … Therefore now, Hashem,
please take my life from me.’”
Experiencing misery, pain and grief, Iyov
expresses his anger after what he feels is
unjust suffering: “I will say to Hashem,
Do not condemn me; show me why You
contend with me.” Feeling betrayed,
Yirmiyahu challenges: “You deceived me,
Hashem and I was deceived; You
overpowered me and prevailed. I am
ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks
me.”
To be clear, our great leaders used these
moments to draw close, not to push away.
They believed in and were devoted to
Hashem beyond anything we can
understand. Their words deserve to be
studied closely. But it is undeniable that
the Torah communicates their words in a
way that gives us license to confront and
protest to Hashem. After all, that is the
basis of all tefillah, an invitation to
challenge the status quo and to appeal to
the Almighty to do things differently.
Don’t aspire to be upset at Hashem. But if
that is how you are feeling, don’t deny it,
don’t beat yourself up, knock yourself
down, or feel guilt and shame. It’s okay to
feel anger, disappointment, or betrayal
toward Hashem. These emotions don’t
have to distance us, they can draw us
closer, deepen our prayers, and reveal the

raw honesty of our faith. Like the letter-
writer, we can confront G-d and yet

continue to daven, knowing that our
questions and our tears are themselves an
expression of emunah.