Question of the Week: For years, England's House of
Commons demanded that all elected officials rake an oath "on the
true faith of a Christian." One man decided to challenge the rule.
With the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, this Jewish
figure ran as a Liberal Party candidate for a seat in the City of
London. He won, but refused to take the oath and lost his seat. So he
ran again and again (five times in total) and won every time, until at
last he was permitted to serve — without taking the oath. Name him.

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BEGINNING THE DAYS OF AWE WITH AN APPEAL FOR MERCY.

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
AppleTree Editor

Selichot At A Glance

• When: For Ashkenazic Jews, Saturday night
(around midnight), Sept. 8. (For Sephardic Jews, it
began Saturday night, Aug. 25.) Thereafter, until
Yom Kippur, recited daily before the morning serv-
ice.

• What it is: A penitential service of prayers, con-
fession and asking for Divine mercy.

• What the word means: Selichot is the plural of
selicha, the Hebrew word for "forgiveness."

• Reason for the observance: To prepare ourselves
for the Days of Awe — Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur — when we ask God to forgive us and
grant us and continued life.

The concept of Selichot is drawn from the
Torah, specifically, the episode of the Jewish peo-
ple's encampment at Mount Sinai following the
exodus from Egypt.
Moses ascended Mount Sinai three times: First,
to receive the Torah from God orally and on the
two stone tablets (Exodus 19, 20, 24). In the
meantime, the people below lost faith and created
an idol, the now infamous golden calf. Moses
returned, chastised the people, destroyed the
tablets and went back up the mountain a second
time to pray for God's forgiveness and to receive
new tablets (Exodus 32:30-35).
Moses went back to the encampment, then
ascended the mountain a third time (Exodus 34).
This is reckoned as the first day of Elul, the month
immediately preceding Tishrei (Rosh Hashanah is
the first and second of Tishrei; Yom Kippur is on
the 10th). Moses prayed for God to grant the
Jewish people complete atonement.
After 40 days (on Yom Kippur), when God
erased the collective sin of the people, Moses
descended from the mountain. Since then, the

Torah Scroll

days of Elul through Yom Kippur have been
regarded as a period of Divine grace and especially
suited to introspection, moral self-evaluation, seek-
ing forgiveness and invoking prayer.
For Ashkenazic Jews, the final week of Elul is the
beginning of Selichot; Sephardic Jews start Selichot
at the beginning of Elul. The Selichot service is
made up mostly of liturgical poems called piyutim,
which are intended to turn our thoughts and feel-
ings to God. Although the poems and prayers that
make up Selichot are concerned with the sins of
the individual worshipper, they constantly evoke
the suffering of Israel as a nation. Within this con-
text is the theme of Israel's steadfast faith in God's
mercy and in the ultimate redemption.
To set the mood for penitential prayer, many
synagogues long ago initiated the practice of a ser-
mon an hour or so before the actual Selichot serv-
ices began. In America, this gradually developed
into a social hour, replete with refreshments. Some
congregations have done away with the sermon
and replaced it with a lecture on an aspect of
Jewish culture, history or politics; other congrega-
tions show a movie with a Jewish theme. (Quite
often, many of the congregants leave after the pro-
gram, and only a few are left to recite the prayers.)
The core of the Selichot service is the "Thirteen
Attributes of Mercy," derived from Moses's third
ascent on Mount Sinai (Parashat Ki Tisa, Exodus

34:5-7): "And the Lord passed by him and pro-
claimed: 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and
gracious, slow to anger and abundant in kindness
and truth; keeping mercy for thousands of genera-
tions, forgiver of iniquity, willful sin and error, and
who cleanses, but not completely, recalling the
iniquity of parents upon children and grandchil-
dren, to the third and fourth generations.'"
In the Talmud, Rabbi Yochanan reasoned that
God taught Moses this prayer as a way of
approaching Him to request forgiveness.
A later episode involved the 12 scouts sent to the
land of Canaan, who returned with a discouraging
report which resulted in the people's call for a
return to Egypt and God's intention to strike them
down. Here, Moses recited a prayer that included a
modified form of the "Thirteen Attributes," and
God forgave the Jews.
Several times during the Selichot service the con-
gregation recites the "Thirteen Attributes," as well
as Moses's prayer.
Because the rabbis who devised the Selichot
service did not want people to think of the
"Thirteen Attributes" as a sort of magic formula
that produces absolution, they mandated an
expression of confession and remorse. Thus, the
"Thirteen Attributes" are followed by vidui, con-
fession. This consists of two parts: Ashamnu ("We
have trespassed"), an alphabetically arranged list of
sins, and Al Chet ("For the sin"), a long inventory
of transgressions, accompanied by beating of the
breast.
The hoped-for result from the Selichot service is
that worshippers will come away realising that all
of us are subject to the same frailties and short-
comings, and we must face the reality of life. We
are not always right; sometimes we say and do
things that are hurtful to others.
Sometimes we disobey or ignore the teachings of
Torah regarding Jewish observance. These trans-
gressions harm others, as well as ourselves, and by
extension, society as a whole suffers.
Among the hardest things a person can do is
admit that he or she is wrong and ask for forgive-
ness. That is the beginning of the healing process
that we introduce with Selichot.

❑

4'1

8/31
2001