Kol Nidre Debate

[ source ] KOL NIDRE A Jewish Prayer to Absolve All Vows THE KOL NIDRE is a Jewish prayer named from its opening words “All vows” (kol nidre), it is based on the declaration of the Talmud:- “He who wishes that his vows and oaths shall have no value, stand up at the beginning of the year and say: ‘All vows which I shall make during the year shall be of no value.'”

It would be nice if we could declare that this is merely one of the curiosities of the darkness which covers the Talmud, but the fact is that Kol Nidre is not only an ancient curiosity; it is also a modern practice.

In the volume of the revised Festival Prayers published in 1919 by the Hebrew Publishing Company, New York, the prayer appears in its fullness: “All vows, obligations, oaths or anthems, pledges of all names, which we have vowed, sworn, devoted, or bound ourselves to, from this day of atonement, until the next day of atonement (whose arrival we hope for in happiness) we repent, aforehand, of them all, they shall all be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, void and made of no effect; they shall

not be binding, nor have any power; the vows shall not be reckoned as vows, the obligations shall not be obligatory, nor the oaths considered as oaths.” If this strange statement were something dug out of the misty past, it would scarcely merit attention.

But as being a part of a revised Jewish prayer book printed in the United States in 1919, and as being one of the high points of the Jewish religious celebration of New Year, it cannot be lightly dismissed after attention has once been called to it.

OPPOSED BY SOME JEWS Indefensibly immoral as the Kol Nidre is, utterly destructive of all social confidence, yet the most earnest efforts of a few really spiritual Jews have not succeeded in removing it from the Day of Atonement services in Orthodox Synagogues where it is normally chanted three times, although a rabbinical conference in Brunswick recommended its omission.

In America, Britain, and other countries, Reform and Liberal Congregations have followed this advice, but they only comprise a small portion say 20% of Jews they have retained the melody of Kol Nidre, but have revised the prayer. Thus, Kol Nidre stands condemned by a portion of Jewry itself. The Jewish Encyclopedia , 1904, Vol.

VII, page 541, says, “It cannot be denied that according to the usual formula, an unscrupulous man might think that it (Kol Nidre) offers a means of escape from the obligations and promises which he had assumed and made in regard to others.” EXCUSES PERJURY One of the most important aspects of Kol Nidre is that it suborns or excuses perjury in the Courts in the case Orthodox Jewish witnesses, whose testimony, of course, is rendered worthless by it.

If the prayer were a request for forgiveness for the broken vows of the past, normal human beings could quite understand it. Vows, promises, obligations and pledges are broken, sometimes by weakness of will to perform them, sometimes by reason of forgetfulness, sometimes by sheer inability to do the thing we thought we could do. Human experience is neither Jew nor Gentile in that respect.

But the Kol Nidre prayer is a holy advance notice, given in the secrecy of the synagogue, that no promise whatsoever shall be binding, and more than not being binding is then and there violated before it is ever made. The scope of the prayer is “for this day of atonement, until the next day of atonement.”The prayer breaks down the common ground of confidence between men: “the vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligatory, nor the oaths considered oaths.”

It requires no argument to show that if this prayer be really the rule of faith and conduct for the Jew who utters it, the ordinary social and business relations are impossible to maintain with him. It should be observed that there is no likeness here with so-called Christian “hypocrisy.” Christian “hypocrisy” arises mostly from men holding higher ideals than they are able to attain to, and verbally extolling higher principles than their conduct illustrates.

That is; to use Browning’s figure, the man’s reach exceeds his grasp, as it always does, where man is more than a clod. BABYLONIAN CHARACTER OF JUDAISM But the Kol Nidre is in the opposite direction.

It recognizes by inference that in the common world of men, in the common morality of the street and the mart, a promise passes current as a promise, a pledge as a pledge, an obligation as an obligation; that there is a certain social currency given to the individual’s mere word on the assumption that its quality is kept good by straight moral intention. In straight Christian morality, a man’s word is expected to be as good as his bond.

But the inference of the Kol Nidre is that man should make provision to drop below that level of morality. How did the Kol Nidre come into existence? Is it the cause or the effect of that untrustworthiness with which the Jew has been charged for centuries? Its origin is not from the Bible, but from Babylon, and the mark of Babylon is more strongly impressed on the Jew than is the mark of the Bible. Indeed, the Talmud is openly praised and revered as being Babylonian.

And Kol Nidre is Babylonian Talmudic, finding its place among many other and similar dark things within that many-volumed and burdensome invention. If the Kol Nidre ever was a backward look over the failures of the previous year, it very early became a forward look to the deliberate deceptions of the coming year. Many explanations have been made in an attempt to account for this. Each explanation is denied and disproved by those who favor some other explanation.

The commonest explanation of all is this, and it rings in the overworked note of “persecution.” The Jews were hounded and harried by the bloodthirsty Christians. Many learned men want to have it understood that the Kol Nidre dates from the Spanish Inquisition, it having become necessary on account of all sorts of persecutions and inflictions to adopt the Christian religion for appearances sake.

Then the Jews in Spain, gathering in cellars to celebrate the Day of Atonement and pardon, composed a prayer that declared of no value all vows and oaths that they would be forced to make during the year….” “The learned men say, moreover, that in remembrance of those days when hundreds and thousands of Maranos (secret, Jews) were dragged out of the cellars and were tortured with all kinds of torments, the Jews in all parts of the world have adopted Kol Nidre as a token of faithfulness to

faith and as self-sacrifice for the faith.” THOSE ASSERTIONS ARE INCORRECT The fact is that the formula of Kol Nidre was composed on the night of Yom Kippur quite a time earlier than the period of the Spanish Inquisition.

We find, for instance, a formula to invalidate vows on Yom Kippur in the prayer book of Rabbi Amram Goun who lived in the ninth century, about 500 years before the Spanish Inquisition; although Rabbi Amram’s formula is not Kol Nidre, but Kol Nidrim: “All vows and oaths which we shall swear from Yom Kippurim to Yom Kippurim will