The liturgical poem or piyyut, V’chol Ma’aminim follows in the High Holiday Machzor the Unetaneh Tokef, the liturgical paean to human uncertainty and exposure and to the sovereign power of God. What appears on the surface to be a simple, straightforward trust in God’s justice and goodness turns out to be morally convoluted.

Everyone trusts that God is just and good, that God is the true Judge and mighty Redeemer who can do anything. God is long-suffering with the wicked. God wants them to repent and return. That is the simple part of conventional Jewish trust in God.

More strange is this:

To be sure, who is wicked lies in the eye of the beholder. But why should God be good to them? To the Jew haters and racists? To gross and violent people? To the gross and violent people who exercise power over others? To be lenient, to suspend judgment, to not intervene is one thing, and to do active good to the wicked another thing entirely. The text only aggravates the theodicy problem. The problem is no longer divine justice, but divine mercy. Or maybe this is about the bending of God to human purposes.

The God of liturgy is intimate and loose. Even the sovereign God and God of Judgment. In this piyyut, God does not punish wicked people. In this piyyut, there is no moral calculus. Everyone trusts that God knows the inclination (yetzer) of all creatures (yetzurim). God is their creator (yotzram) in the womb.