Kol Nidre 2018

Kol Nidre 2018


Hatikvah, the theme from Schindler’s List, Amazing Grace, and the Kol Nidre.  Four melodies that can move me to tears. As Jews, we do a lot of our praying out loud and we do a lot to melody.  Some of us may not know all the Hebrew.  But we know the niggun, the melody.  And those niggunim become a part of our tradition – a part of our connection to our history and our liturgy.  To open Yom Kippur, we sing the Kol Nidre three times - three times we make the declaration aloud, growing in volume with each repetition as though we are calling out, proclaiming that we must be heard.  Being heard is a big part of Yom Kippur.  This is the only night of the year we say the second line of the Shema out loud.  At the end of Neilah, we say the Shema aloud again just prior to the shofar blasting out to be heard by all.  And to me, all of this praying and singing and calling out to be heard is about awakening and connecting – awaking our souls to connect to a power greater than us.  But to what end?

I got stuck, as I was thinking about what to say tonight, on the words of the Kol Nidre.  Kol Nidre is an Aramaic phrase which means, “All Vows.”  It is not a prayer, it makes no requests and is not addressed to God.  Rather, the Kol Nidre is a juristic declaration before the prayers of Yom Kippur begin - before the prayers for the Day of Atonement.

Atonement, according to the Oxford dictionary, is synonymous with expiation.  And expiation is defined as “showing” regret for something.  Expiation is the ACT of making amends or reparation for wrongdoing.  Atonement is action.  Praying to a melody out loud is action.  And action is that which has the power to bring healing.

Atonement is not “sorry”.  “Sorry” is easy.  “Sorry I burnt dinner.” ‘Sorry I was running late”.  “I didn’t mean to let you down, lie to you, break your heart - I’m so sorry”.  Confession is hard.  I burnt dinner because I wasn’t paying attention. I was mad at you.  I’m afraid to tell you that I lied to you, cheated on you, am jealous of you.  We don’t confess to the things we should be sorry for and we say we’re sorry for things we shouldn’t.  Sorry about traffic.  Sorry about the weather.  Sorry you had a hard day.  That’s not what we mean.  We might mean we empathize, or we might just be trying to placate our husband, child, boss, colleague.  In the first case it’s not something we have any control over, and in the second, we’re merely making perfunctory acknowledgement of someone else’s pain.

Sorry is not confession nor is it a request for forgiveness.  But on this night, we do both.  We confess. And we beg forgiveness.  We stand and we beat our breasts and say those things that are hard to admit to, difficult to acknowledge and terribly, terribly embarrassing to say aloud.  There is a reason we fast on this day.  A reason we stand for so much of the day and a reason we do it together.  Judgement is not easy and is neither asked for nor made in isolation.

So tonight we gather together to atone for the sins of the previous year, right? WRONG.  Because in fact, the Kol Nidre declaration isn’t about the year that was at all.  It is about the year to come.  It says very clearly “the vows we make from THIS Yom Kippur to the NEXT Yom Kippur”.  We think of the holiday as one of repentance, and we think of repentance as most certainly in the past.  But that is NOT what the Kol Nidre says.  So, what is going on?

For centuries the language did say from last year to this year – it was a declaration addressing the year that was.  But it was changed in the 12th Century by Rabbineu Tam, a son of Rashi, who changed it to the future tense so that the Kol Nidre would conform to the Talmudic passage from Rosh Hashanah which says, “He who desires that none of his vows made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the beginning of the year and declare, ‘every vow which I may make in the future shall be null.’”  Well that’s confusing.  Why would we want to invalidate a vow that we have not even made?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gives a terrific insight to the Kol Nidre when he talks about Moses pleading with God to forgive the people of Israel who have sinned by making the Golden Calf.  God vows to kill those who have sinned so egregiously against him.  And Moses basically talks him out of it.  Moses pleads with God to forgive the people of Israel so that they may live to go forth to the promised land.  God breaks his vow, he lets the people live and in doing so allows them to go forth – he allows us to be free.

Go back now, to the Kol Nidre declaration which says very clearly that our vows “shall not bind us nor have power over us.”   We are NOT off the hook for vows made to another person.  For that, the Torah says very clearly that we must ask forgiveness of the individual we have wronged.  What the Kol Nidre says is that we are asking to be released from vows and promises to ourselves and to God. If I resolve to do something and I don’t do it, I’m a failure.  I am burdened by my own shortcomings, stuck in my own past.  But if I acknowledge the possibility of failure, if I say my vows have no power over me – then maybe I can get unstuck – maybe I can find forgiveness for myself, be a little gentler with myself about my own shortcomings so that I may learn from them and grow beyond them.  If we consider the Kol Nidre in this light as we go into a day of confession and acknowledgement, then all of the work we are about to do becomes a reminder to forgive ourselves as God forgives us our failures.  And that forgiveness becomes freedom. Not freedom to behave badly or do whatever we want. But freedom to fulfill our potential, freedom to be our very best selves.

On Passover, we free ourselves from the Egyptians, on Chanukah, we free ourselves from the Seleucids.  But on Yom Kippur, we experience a freedom that is entirely about our relationship with God.  On Yom Kippur, we free ourselves from our selves.

As we prepare to chant the Kol Nidre aloud together, I want to share one final thought with you:   Reuven Hammer said “Prayer recited in community has a special dimension... Judaism does not discourage solitary prayer. But Judaism is wary lest such aloneness become the norm and the permanent condition of the human being... prayer should lead us toward the love and care of the world we meet and through prayer we discover how important the community is for sustaining our own salvation.”

So tonight, we raise our voices in prayer as a community of people who are here to do the work, to confess, to forgive and to aspire to a new year of the freedom to be our very best selves.  Shana tovah.