From its opening words and notes, Kol Nidrei stirs the heart and mind, and pulls at the guts. Those first notes mark the point of no-return, when we cross from Ordinary Time into Yom Kippur. For the next 25 hours, we will step outside time. We’ll sit in community, search our innermost selves, review our life, our achievements, our failures, our losses, and our hopes. We’ll journey into the heart of our own darkness, and hopefully find our way through to a greater lightness in our lives.
Where does Kol Nidrei fit into all this? Strangely, it’s not a prayer. It’s a legalistic statement, in the form one might use to start a court proceeding. Technically, it’s a waiver of vows we’ve made to God. Depending on our tradition, it seeks to annul either vows that we’ve made in the previous year, or vows that we’ll make in the next year.
We’re about to spend 25 hours in God’s company, soul-searching, expressing our remorse and intention to do better, and presenting the details of the case against and for ourselves. But if we intend to own up to our shortcomings, and accept that these might deserve serious judgement and corrective action, reciting Kol Nidrei at the start seems to suggest that, whatever might we say ‘in court’ today, we’re ultimately want to be let off the hook. It is an uncomfortable part of our history that our recital of Kol Nidrei has long been cited by antisemites as a reason not to trust any oath made by a Jew.
Every year, I sit with Kol Nidrei, wondering what to make of it. There’s no doubt that Kol Nidrei is special for me, not least because I have often had the honour of chanting it on behalf of the community. But every year, I wrestle with how to square my conscience with it. After all, A J Heschel wrote in his essay, ‘Vocation of the Cantor’ (1966): “Words are commitments, not only the subject matter for aesthetic reflection.” This year, I asked myself, ‘What is the merit of keeping the words of Kol Nidrei in the liturgy?’. And I’m relieved to say that I’ve begun to find some sense in it.
First of all, the Kol Nidrei text shows that there are values we want to live by, and those values still mean something. Second, we’re admitting that we’ve failed those standards, and will most likely fail them again. Third, we’re saying that we’re truly sorry for falling short. The fact that we fail does not mean that standards don’t matter, or that we don’t care. Fourth, as part of our confessions and remorse, we’re also sorry that we’ve made promises that we didn’t or couldn’t keep, and might do so again. Fifth, we fully intend to make new promises and commitments.
In the light of everything I’ve written here, why on earth would we have the chutzpah, and perhaps shortsightedness, to make new promises and commitments? The reality is that we never know the full implication of our vows, whether they should be made, whether we have the resources to fulfil them, whether they’re ill-advised, whether events outside our control will prevent us from following through, whether we’re missing key information. But I am emboldened by a 1997 sermon called ‘Our persistent failures’ by Rabbi Milton Sternberg. He said that our only option is to say to God, “I promise, tomorrow, I’ll do better … I mean it.” We can’t lower our standards, we can’t expect to get bailed out, and yet we also can’t give up. The parados is that, despite our record, the wrong we have done, and the wrong we will do, we still ask for another chance, and it is still right and meaningful to make commitments, and to ask for leniency—and time to make amends—for falling short on those commitments.
Alexander Massey, Kol Nidrei 5785 / 2024