The custom of reciting special penitential prayers before Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is an ancient one. It certainly dates back to the time of the Geonim in Babylonia, if not even earlier. The custom of the Sephardi Jews is to recite these prayers beginning with the entire month of Elul until Yom Kippur. The custom of the Ashkenazi Jews is to begin the recitation of these prayers the week before Rosh Hashana and to continue their recitation also until Yom Kippur.
Since the prayers are almost all written in a poetic form, their vocabulary and structural format is often times difficult for the average Jew to fathom and appreciate. Nevertheless, these prayers have become hallowed in Jewish tradition and have stood the test of time in a tireless and amazing fashion.
Jewish tradition treated this anomaly – the luck of the draw, so to speak – as being heavenly inspired and not just random human choice. Because of this belief in a supernatural hand guiding the ritual of selichot, this prayer service has remained static for most of the last five centuries.
There also exists an entire special prayer service to mark Israel Independence Day and also Yom Yerushalayim. Even though these additions to our established prayer services are not yet fully adopted by all sections of the Jewish world, it is fair to say that they have secured some sort of place of permanence within religious Jewry.
However, there certainly is a built-in resistance to any sort of change, be it addition or subtraction, in the established format and ritual of our time honored services.
After perusing this work, I decided for myself to stick with the old format and its contents. Of course I realize that this is partially a generational thing and that people of my hoary age are very reluctant to accept change to long-held and time-honored traditions, rituals and habits. Yet, I must say that the new version is an almost heartless work. There is very little emotion in modern Israeli Hebrew as it is spoken and written. And it certainly lacks the overlay of tradition and the innate feeling that one has knowing that one is praying not only to the God of one’s fathers but using the same words that his father and grandfather did in faraway places and under different circumstances.