Hearing Hashem's Kol Throughout the Year (and What We Can Learn from the Story of Guma Aguiar)

The Rambam (Hilchos Teshuva, 3:4) explains the message of the shofar as follows: "Awake, sleepers, from your sleep, amd slumberers from your slumber. Search your deeds, and repent, and remember your Maker...look to your souls and improve your ways and your faults..."

There is a custom to sound the shofar at the conclusion of the Neilah service on Yom Kippur. What is the meaning of this practice? Hasn't our judgment already been sealed at that point? What value, then, does an additional shofar blast add?

A Modern Day Bilaam Story: How a Russian Ba'al Teshuvah Nearly Destroyed the State of Israel and the Power of Yom Kippur Tefila

The story of Balak and Bilaam is a paradigm for how Hashem protects the Jewish people without them even being aware of the danger that lurks. It's a little early in the year to discuss parshas Balak, but for anyone who read the story of Leonid Tikochinsky in this week's Mishpacha magazine, the connection is clear.

Briefly, before ultimately returning to Judasim and making aliyah, Mr. Tikochinsky was an ardent Communist who rose within the Russian naval service to the position of commander of a Soviet nuclear submarine. And it so happens that during the Yom Kippur War, he was directed to position his sub off the coast of Israel, and await an order to fire nuclear missles that would inevitably have killed millions of Jews and destroyed the Jewish state. While, at the time, Tikochinsky knew he was a Jew, he had been so brainwashed by Soviet propoganda that he says now he would not have hesitated to fire had the order arrived, or even given a second thought to slaughtering millions of his brethren. Of course, B"H, the order never came.

On the Value of Tears During Tefila

The intensity of tefila on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur often moves one to tears as we pray for life, health, parnasa, shidduchim, etc. As we ask Hashem during the selichos for Kol Nidrei: "koli shema u'reay dema ayni" - "hear my voice and see the tears of my eyes."

The gemara in Brachos (32b) teaches that the destruction of the beis hamikdash sealed off all gateways of prayer to heaven except the Gate of Tears.

Yet sadly, but inevitably, people who cry during tefila sometimes find that their prayers are not answered. Hashem says, "No."

How can we reconcile the gemara in Brachos with the apparent reality?