The Mystery of Kol Nidrei: Embracing the New Year
The text that begins the Yom Kippur service is a mystery. When did Kol Nidrei enter the liturgy? Who composed it? What community first adopted it? No one has definitively answered these questions. From the ninth century on, great rabbis opposed Kol Nidrei. It fits awkwardly with the rest of the holiday’s themes. On Yom Kippur, you ask forgiveness for past transgressions and look in hope toward a fresh start and new year. Kol Nidrei seeks to absolve you of vows you haven’t even yet made, anticipating a future of broken promises.
What isn’t mysterious is its appeal. Kol Nidrei has a special power. It sets the tone of Yom Kippur. Many share a memory of feeling the room shake when the cantor intoned Kol Nidrei—and perhaps their soul with it. The delivery may not be inherent to Kol Nidrei, but neither is its forward-looking perspective. Before the rabbis altered it, Kol Nidrei aimed to absolve the listener of past vows rather than future ones. Whatever its origins, the solemnity and physical power of Kol Nidrei is now part and parcel of our experience of it.
In this respect, there is one High Holiday ritual that resembles Kol Nidrei: the blowing of the shofar. A truly magnificent shofar blast sends a shockwave through the body. Hearing tekiah gedolah, the sound becomes a part of you. Unlike Kol Nidrei, the shofar’s connection to the High Holidays is obvious. Not only obvious, but central. The Biblical commandment to observe Rosh Hashanah speaks of the holiday as yom teruah, a day of “blasting,” referring to the shofar.
The resemblance between hearing a shofar and Kol Nidrei may go some way to explaining our attachment to the latter. To get at what they share, you have to appreciate what experience the shofar itself invokes.
Among other things, shofar-blowing on the High Holidays is a reminder of the giving of the Torah. Exodus 19:19 describes Moses and B’nei Yisrael at the foot of Mount Sinai, where “the blare of the horn grew louder and louder.” The horn, the shofar, comes not from the encampment of the Israelites, but from the heavens. It is part of the terrifying sensory experience of Sinai. That day the people of Israel choked on smoke, watched the sky darken, and felt their bodies reverberate with a sound that came from everywhere and nowhere.
The shofar reminds us of Sinai. Revelation blows the mind, but it also disrupts the body. Philosopher Jean-Luc Marion argues that revelation “exceeds all efforts to receive it.” Indeed, the “first intention and effect” of revelation is “to deepen” the gap between our faculties—sensory or otherwise—and its content. Sinai is the quintessential revelation. It dramatizes the incommensurability of human effort and divine will. B’nei Yisrael literally staggers back in terror from the force of God’s speech (Ex. 20:18).
But what does B’nei Yisrael say, before and after the Sinai revelation? “Na’aseh”—we accept, we will do (Ex. 19:8, Ex. 24:7). More than the shofar reminds us of Sinai, it brings to mind what we did there. B’nei Yisrael embraced a covenant with expectations higher than any in human history. We embraced it grasping only part of what it entailed, knowing we would miss the mark, repeatedly, and have to try again. We embraced it while our bodies trembled with the force of its delivery.
Kol Nidrei, like the shofar, is a sensory experience. It shakes you up to get you out of your head. But while Yom Kippur in general compels you to look back, repent your sins, and petition for a good year to come, as you promise not to do what you did before, Kol Nidrei acknowledges that you will make mistakes. Here the resemblance to the Sinai revelation shines through. Kol Nidrei assumes you intend to grab hold of and make good what lies before you, fully aware how much will escape your grasp. That’s what you commit to when you hear Kol Nidrei.
On Yom Kippur, together with the rest of the congregation, you accept the great responsibility of forging ahead, the future unknown and frightening but full of promise. And you say as you did alongside the whole Jewish people at Sinai long ago: na’aseh.