We just got done singing Kol Nidre, one of the most famous and popular prayers in the Jewish religion. Kol Nidre is so popular that if Jews come to only one service a year, this will be it! Composers have written music based on it. Franz Rosenszweig, a German-Jewish philosopher, was on the verge of converting to Christianity when he heard Kol Nidre. That was enough to change his mind. Clearly, the Kol Nidre is a very powerful prayer.
Yet, unbelievably, rabbis throughout the ages, both traditional and Reform, have tried to have it removed from the service! From the very beginning, the Kol Nidre was considered to be a controversial prayer. How can this be!
One reason that the early rabbis were uncomfortable with Kol Nidre is that the prayer most likely has its origin in magic and superstition. In ancient Babylonia, there was a custom of burying clay bowls around the house or in graveyards. These bowls had inscriptions on them that were very similar to the words of Kol Nidre. The bowls were meant to annul any vows that could cause harm. They were usually turned upside down to trap evil spirits who might be lurking inside. One thing this custom indicates is that vows were taken very seriously. A formal procedure was necessary for annulling them.
In Biblical times it was virtually impossible to annul a vow. The Torah tells us, in the Book of Deuteronomy that: “Whatever your lips utter you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the Lord your G-d with your own mouth.”
During the 2nd Temple period, methods for annulling vows began to be developed. A procedure called “hatarat n’darim”—the loosening or unbinding of vows—made it possible to annul a vow through a third party such as a rabbi or committee of three judges. This had its own issues as it meant that vows became trivial and were no longer taken seriously. Hence, the early rabbis in Babylonia began to take issue with the custom of hatarat n’darim.
Meanwhile, in Palestine, a general formula of hatarat n’darim was created that allowed ALL vows made in a given period of time to be annulled simultaneously. It was no longer necessary to specify the particular vow. Since this contradicted the Talmud, this gave the rabbis in Babylonia another reason not to like it besides the fact that the origins of the formula had its basis in magic and superstition. Nonetheless, despite the objections of the rabbis, it began to be customary to recite the formula on the evening of Yom Kippur, and by the mid-11’th Century, Kol Nidre had become an established part of the Yom Kippur service.
Later in that same Century, Rabbi Meir Ben Samuel, a son-in-law of Rashi, objected to Kol Nidre because it vio-lated halacha or Jewish law. His son Jacob, also known as Rabbenu Tam, pointed out that the requirements for hala-cha only applied to vows that were already made; they did not apply to vows made in the future. Hence, the wording of the Kol Nidre was changed to read “from last Yom Kip-pur to this one” to “from this Yom Kippur until the next”. Incredible as it may seem, we are actually asking to be annulled from vows that we haven’t even made yet! To make things even more confusing, since Rabbenu Tam was an Ashkenazi Jew, his ruling only applied to Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic Jews retained the original version!
Even in modern times, Reform Jews had their own reasons for objecting to the prayer and attempted to have it removed from the prayer book. The whole idea of annul-ling vows that people hadn’t made yet defied logic and reason and offended their modern sensibilities. They also didn’t like the idea that many Christians felt that because of Kol Nidre, Jews couldn’t be trusted to keep their word. This was especially bothersome to Reform Jews who were interested in assimilation and being accepted by the larger Christian community. In 1844 Reform rabbis voted to omit Kol Nidre from the service. Over the next hundred years or so, they tried everything from changing the words, substituting an alternate prayer, and even playing the melody (without the words) on musical instruments. Astoundingly, Kol Nidre was not brought back into the liturgy until 1978, when a new version of “Gates of Repentance” was published!
So what are we to make of all this? The Rabbis objected to Kol Nidre from the get go; Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews don’t even use the same version, and the Ashkenazi version defies all sense of logic and reason by annulling vows that haven’t been made yet. Yet somehow Kol Nidre has endured and has become one of Judaism’s favorite prayers. Maybe it’s better not to focus on the words too much, but to simply enjoy the music and remember to try to be better people. None of us are perfect. Regardless of how hard we try, we WILL break our promises and we WILL fail. That much is guaranteed. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
We have just completed the Ten Days of Teshuvah or Repentance. Now is the time to acknowledge our imper-fections and ask for forgiveness—not only for the things we’ve done in the past, but also for the mistakes we will inevitably make in the future. We WILL make mistakes, but every year we get a chance to pick ourselves back up again and start all over with a clean slate. The important thing is to keep trying. That’s the real message of Kol Nidre.
Shabbat Shalom.