30 | SEPTEMBER 21 • 2023 

W

e ought to 
devote the entire 
month leading 
up to Rosh Hashanah in 
introspection, according 
to rabbinic tradition. We 
ought to devote that month 
to working at improving our 
deeds and practices. Then 
comes Rosh Hashanah, 
known as the Day of 
Judgment, when we see 
ourselves as accountable, the 
first of the 10 days of even 
more intensive repentance. At 
the close of the 10 days, we 
should come into Yom Kippur 
fully intending to remake our 
lives for the better. 
Except that we realize 
we have tried to repent in 
previous years and achieved 
uneven results. Last year, we 
promised to improve our lives, 
to keep the commandments 
better, to act with more 
compassion, and how well 
have we done? Thinking 

about this, we could become 
discouraged. Maybe we have 
failed at our enthusiastic 
commitments. 
So, we begin Yom Kippur 
with Kol Nidre, at which 
we declare that we want 
absolution from all the private 
commitments we made this 
past year, which we intended 
with all sincerity, but that we 
may have failed to fulfill. Bad 
enough that we have failed to 
improve; we do not want the 
additional guilt of spoiling last 
year’s commitments. 
Or maybe we declare 
that, going into Yom 
Kippur, we do not want to 
be held accountable for the 
commitments we are about 
to make. We make these 
commitments because we 
hope to succeed, but if we 
fail, we do not want the 
additional guilt for spoiling 
our promises. 
Kol Nidre, the text we use 

for that declaration, mostly 
uses the past tense, focusing 
on the promises that we have 
already failed. In the center of 
the declaration, though, most 
congregations use the phrase, 
“from this Yom Kippur to 
the next Yom Kippur,” an 
emendation recommended by 
Rabbi Meir ben Shemuel (who 
lived in France in the 1100s). 
The literally confused tenses 
express one coherent idea: We 
want absolution from both 
past and future failures. 
Kol Nidre, as recited in 
most congregations, includes 
phrases in Aramaic and in 
Hebrew. The late Professor 
Gene Schramm (who taught 
semitics and linguistics at 
the University of Michigan) 
cited Kol Nidre as an example 
of the rule that poetic texts 
typically employ mixed 
languages as a device to 
heighten solemnity. Kol Nidre 
also gains solemnity from the 

heart-rending tune used in all 
Ashkenazic and many other 
congregations. 
Kol Nidre may have gained 
additional poignancy after 
recurring incidents of forced 
conversions, such as those 
in medieval and renaissance 
Spain, when Jews who had 
sworn allegiance to other 
faiths managed to return to 
the synagogue. 
How powerful it must have 
felt to proclaim that they 
could renounce their previous 
oaths, that there even existed 
an old formal ritual for 
renouncing the painful oaths. 
Kol Nidre had been in the 
prayer book long earlier. Rav 
Amram Gaon mentions Kol 
Nidre in the prayer book in 
ninth-century Iraq. 
Though he mentions those 
who recite Kol Nidre in his 
prayer book, Rav Amram 
opposed doing it: “… it 
is a silly custom, and it is 

YOM KIPPUR

The Mysteries 
 of Kol Nidre

RABBI LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

