We repeat this prayer every year, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, morning and afternoon. This year, rereading the actual Talmudic story, a detail I’d always skipped past caught my eye.

On the twenty-fifth page of tractate Ta’anit, the story actually begins with two people, not just Rabbi Akiva. During a severe drought, Rabbi Akiva’s own teacher, Rabbi Eliezer, stepped up first, reciting twenty-four separate blessings, a long, learned, fully correct prayer by every rule. It wasn’t answered. Then Rabbi Akiva stepped up, and said only a few words, “Our Father, our King, act with us for Your name’s sake,” and then, “Our Father, our King, have mercy on us, for there are no deeds within us.” Rain began falling at once. The sages whispered among themselves, assuming Akiva must be greater than his own teacher. But a voice came down from heaven and corrected them, it said this one was not greater than that one, but this one forgave, and that one did not forgive.

The real point of the story wasn’t length or learning at all, it was who was doing the forgiving. Rabbi Eliezer’s twenty-four blessings were refused. Rabbi Akiva’s few words were answered. And the difference wasn’t found in how long the prayer ran, it was found in the heart of the person saying it.

The Hebrew carries a sharpness that gets lost in translation too. The line usually rendered “we have no good deeds” doesn’t actually say ein lanu ma’asim tovim, we lack good deeds, it says ein banu ma’asim, there are no deeds within us. The difference is small but deep, one speaks of a shortage of good works, the other confesses that the work itself, the very........

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