Yitz Landes, Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Cultures
A hallmark of the High Holiday liturgy is the recitation of liturgical poems (piyyutim). As a genre and spiritual practice, piyyut first appeared in the Land of Israel in late antiquity. Many of the earlier poems still embedded in the Ashkenazi prayer book date back to this time and place, while others were written in Europe in the Middle Ages. One of the most popular forms of piyyut is the selihot—penitential poems recited along with the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy listed in Exodus 34:6–7. Although a relatively late form of piyyut—one that originatednot in the Land of Israel, but in Babylonia—selihot spread quickly to various regions of the Jewish diaspora, such that by the end of the first millennium, poets from around the world had authored dozens—if not hundreds—composing them for a wide array of occasions.
In contemporary liturgy, selihot are most familiar from the weeks leading up to the High Holidays and from the prayers of Yom Kippur. A seliha by Amitai ben Shefatia, who wrote in Italy around the turn of the 10th century, is found in many versions of the Ashkenazi prayers for Yom Kippur as part of the repetition of the Amidah during Minhah or Ne’ilah. The seliha is short—it contains 16 lines in four stanzas, the first letter of each stanza combining to spell out the poet’s four-lettered name. But despite being brief, it movingly ties together several key themes of the High Holiday season and its prayers:
“I remember, God, and I grieve” (Ps. 77:4) as I see every city built on its hill; and the city of God is thrown down to the deepest hell, and yet we are for the Lord and our eyes turn to the Lord.
The attribute of Compassion—flow down over us, and lay your plea before your Creator; ask compassion for your people, for every heart ails, every head is ill.
I have pegged my tent with the Thirteen Words, and with the gates of tears that are never locked, and so I have poured out words to the Examiner of Hearts; I am secure in these and in the merit of the three fathers.
May it be Your will, the One who hears cries of weeping, that You place our tears, to be in your flask, and save us from all of the cruel decrees, for our eyes are turned only to You.[1]
When recited toward the end of the Day of Atonement, this seliha is a last-ditch effort on the part of those who have prayed together over Elul and the High Holidays.
When recited toward the end of the Day of Atonement, this seliha is a last-ditch effort on the part of those who have prayed together over Elul and the High Holidays. In response to the utter despair described in the first stanza, the second stanza reaches out not to God, but to the attribute of Compassion itself. The author implores that it plea to God on behalf of the “pray-ers”—splitting divinity in a fashion that has proven scandalous for Jews over the centuries.[2] The climactic third stanza highlights three mechanisms that are guaranteed to work when all else fails: According to the Talmud, one who recites the Thirteen Attributes “will not return empty-handed” (b. Rosh Hashanah 17b), and even if the Gates of Prayers have closed, preventing prayers from reaching God in Heaven, the “gates of tears have not been closed” (b. Berakhot 32b). And lastly, at various points in rabbinic literature, recalling the forefathers is described can result in prayers being answered.[3] After reminding God—and those praying—that there is yet hope, the final stanza ends with a request that is comparatively simple: a direct appeal to God, asking Him to hear our prayers and to save us from the cruel decrees.
More precisely, Amitai ends not by asking that God hear our prayers, but by asking Him to collect our tears. At first glance, this can be read as just a metaphor for prayer. But Amitai specifically focuses on the eyes throughout the seliha: it is a vision that instigates the prayer, when the poet witnesses the dire physicality of Exile and states that nevertheless “our eyes turn to the Lord.” Of the three mechanisms of mercy mentioned in the third stanza, the central one is that the “gates of tears . . . are never locked.” It is thus fitting that the seliḥa ends with a prayer that God collect our tears, and then by again reminding Him that “our eyes are turned only to You.”
Amitai focuses here on the embodied nature of prayer, as tears are the physical manifestations of our most exasperated prayers—the prayers that come with weeping, the prayers that come from seeing the sorry state of the world around us. But we can still rely on a certain belief in prayer’s efficacy or perhaps even the continued evocativeness of poetry that has been recited by Jews for over a millennium. Amitai’s insight to us is that we stay connected to the ground—we peg our tents—by finding some semblance of certainty wherever it may be.
[1] The translation here is based on that of R. Jonathan Sacks in the Koren Yom Kippur Mahzor.
[2] In several prayer books, this stanza is therefore modified slightly so as not to present a prayer directed to one of God’s attributes.
[3] For more on this theme, see Solomon Schechter, “The Zachuth of the Fathers: Imputed Righteousness and Imputed Sin,” in Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910), 170–98.
