Humility, union, empathy. Those qualities sum up Selijot’s tefillah. To prepare for a new year, we must show ourselves stripped, very attentive and connected with our past and present.

Ashkenazi custom calls us to pronounce the piutim that make up the Selichot ceremony, on the motzaei Shabbat that precedes Rosh Hashanah. While the Sephardic tradition proposes starting on the first day of Elul and continuing this entire month of personal balance.

The word Selijot denotes redundancy: it means «pardons.» What stands out, precisely, is the collective of the prayer: it is not requested in a personalized or individual way. 

They are an antecedent to the tefillot of Iamim Noraim. We train our prayer for what we do not particularly need, we apologize for another’s transgression, which could have been our own. And we know that our neighbor, he will also be thinking about our wishes, requests and regrets.

Selijot predisposes us to stop manifesting ourselves as omnipotent individuals and to understand ourselves, simply as bnei and bnot Adam.