Kol Nidre gives us a chance to begin the new year with an openness to what we do not yet know, and to rid ourselves of old and negative commitments that lead us to despair.
Rabbi YAEL SPLANSKY
Holy Blossom Temple, Toronto
Rabbi MARK FISHMAN
Congregation Beth Tikvah, Montreal
Rabbi Splansky: Yom Kippur was about to start. The congregants began to crowd around the entrance to the synagogue, “Rabbi, why are you blocking the doors? Let us in!” they pleaded.
“I’m sorry. It’s full,” the rabbi said.
There was a murmur of surprise and confusion. Finally one of the oldest members of the congregation spoke up. “Rabbi, that’s not possible. We’re all standing out here!”
“Trust me, it’s full,” the rabbi retorted. “It’s so full of promises and vows you and I made and never kept that there is no room for anything else, not even for one of us!”
Empty words can only be tolerated for so long, but sometimes that’s all we have. A year ago we made promises. We aspired to something. We pledged: “This year, things will be different. This year I will be different.” And yet, once again we find ourselves in a sanctuary filled to the rafters with promises un-kept, aspirations unfulfil
Kol Nidre is coming.
Rabbi Fishman: What a chilling idea. As scary and intimidating as you have painted the picture, I think there may be another layer of meaning we can build onto your foundation. It is the idea that Kol Nidre can be cathartic, almost a deep exhale, the chance to accept that while we have fallen short. the prospect for a clean slate still exists.
And Kol Nidre, let’s remember, is the legal formula said before we get into the business of repentance, Yom Kippur’s central activity. There is almost a preparatory nature to this moment, allowing us to shake off the missteps we made along the way and granting us the ability to say sorry without the heaviness of our un-kept promises burdening us any further.
Rabbi Splansky: Our machzor announces: “Biyeshiva shel maalah uvishivah shel matah.” Two parallel courts begin their deliberations – one in the heavenly realm and one here on Earth. “In the sight of God and the community” our trial begins.
Kol Nidre is the humbling reminder that all our certainties, all the clear lines we swiftly draw between good and evil, between who is right and who is wrong, between what we will surely fulfil and what we will not, are not so clear or swift after all.
Like a skilled cross-examiner, Kol Nidre demands that we look again, reconsider, re-evaluate. It grants us the gift of sacred uncertainty, the chance to begin the new year with an openness to what we do not yet know.
Rabbi Fishman: This Day of Atonement was God’s original act of forgiveness to His people after the sin of the Golden Calf. But before God was able to forgive the people, He, too, had to first let go of certain promises and commitments He had made. After all, Moses is told by God: “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them” (Shemot 32:10).
There is something more taking place here, and it goes to the very heart of what our ceremony is about. Before attempting to live our lives in a new and fresh and open way, we first have to rid ourselves of our old and negative commitments that lead us to despair. The model of this “letting go” is God Himself.
Before forgiveness can be granted, God has to first learn to throw away the script that leads to anger and annul His own vows of resentment. Only then is He capable of forgiving. This is the drama that we re-enact each year in our “earthly court.”
Rabbi Splansky: How does Kol Nidre end? “Vayomer Adonai, ’Salachti kidvarecha.’” God declares: “I have forgiven, according to your word.”
Not in response to our plea, not simultaneous to it, but in anticipation of it, God has provided. God does not say, “I forgive,” but “I have [already] forgiven.”
Daring to look back, we see there was nothing to fear after all. There was only the Forgiving God waiting for us to turn.
Rabbi Fishman: The Prophet Isaiah reminds us that when it comes to making requests, “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). God wants to grant forgiveness. He is practically on the edge of His seat, about to explode in anticipation and longing for the words about to be uttered by those honestly seeking to mend their ways.