Renewing Our Vows, Renewing Our Selves

Renewing Our Vows, Renewing Our Selves

Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5779

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Sept. 18, 2018

Years ago, when I was yet a school child in Israel, we read in class a short story by David Frishman, one of the pre-eminent Hebrew Revival authors.  I still remember this story.  It was called “Three Who Ate,” and it was set at a city in Eastern Europe, when the narrator, now much older, was yet a child himself.  Cholera was ravaging the countryside and taking its terrible toll indiscriminately.  Rich and poor, Jew and Gentile alike, all were affected by the dreadful disease. Every household suffered, and some even many times over.  The story of the “Three who Ate” takes place on the eve of Yom Kippur.  The synagogue is full of men wearing tallitotand white kittels—the traditional white robes meant to remind us of burial shrouds. The prayers are punctuated by sobbing and crying, both over those who have already died and over those who are yet to die… . Some already look like ghosts, and the narrator comments on how it seemed that the very dead came back and mingled with the living on this Yom Kippur. Kol Nidrei was chanted, the prayers were said, but as the service ends, no one wants to leave the synagogue, no one wants to go home and learn of yet more deaths, perhaps even among his own family. 

Finally, after a long and dreadful night, the next day, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, arrives. Around noon, the rabbi is standing on the bimah, talking about the need for the soul to find strength this day, for the body to awaken from its stupor. His voice rises as he reminds his flock, “You shall live by Torah, not die by it,” words that somehow strike terror into everyone’s heart.  Then, in his most formal tone, the rabbi declares, “By the authority of God’s Presence and by the authority of this holy congregation, I decree that you must eat today!”  No one moves, no one stirs.  Eat? On Yom Kippur? No one can believe their ears! The rabbi begs, he cajoles, he commands. Still no one moves.  The rabbi looks around the room.  He calls for the shamash, his assistant, to come near, and he whispers some words in his ears. The shamashgoes out, and after a moment returns with wine, some wafers and a challah.  The entire congregation watches, terrified and dumbfounded, as the rabbi tears a piece of challah, says a blessing, and, with tears streaming down his face, chews and swallows it.  And after him, the cantor, and the president of the congregation, all break off a piece of the challah and chew, their salty tears mingling with the sweetness of the bread, the three who ate on Yom Kippur.

It’s a powerful story. It moved me when I first read it, years ago, and it still moves me today. I have thought about it often through the years, always wondering about its persistent hold on me.  The question that I kept coming back to was, why did everyone cry.  There’s the obvious reason, of course:  by breaking the fast, the three men, and the rest of the community after them, broke one of the most solemn of all the commandments. In a sense, by eating, they annulled and disavowed the sanctity of the day.  Still, this answer never satisfied me completely; I felt that there was more to it than that; there had be some other reason for their tears, one that kept eluding me, evading my grasp. 

So I thought about why people cry.  We cry, of course, when we feel pain, or are overcome by sorrow.  But we also cry for joy and pride. Invariably, we cry at life’s important events. As rabbi, I can never get through a baby naming without tearing up, and when my children were born, I wept like a baby. I have seen men of steel turn into puddles as they embrace and bless their bar or bat mitzvah son or daughter on the bimah. On a few occasions, even the child loses it, and then it becomes a good family cry, with not a dry eye in the entire sanctuary.

Empathy and compassion, two deeply human emotions, are also often marked by tears. Try watching—without tearing up—a good Hallmark spot, or that “Friends Are Waiting” Budweiser commercial with the yellow lab waiting for his master to come home.

We cry for deep loss, and we cry out of frustration and anger.  And sometimes, we also cry when we feel relief, when tension has us all racked up and we suddenly feel released from its burden.  

Yom Kippur has me tearing up on several occasions.  There’s the Mourner’s Kaddish during Yizkor prayers; and of course the Martyrology—the stories of the ten rabbis who, during the Roman occupation of Judaea, chose torture and death rather than to stop teaching Torah to their students.

But the very first time that has me choked up is at the very beginning, as Kol Nidrei is chanted.

Something about this prayer stirs up the deepest feelings within me.  It might be my accumulated memories, of all the times that, as a child, I accompanied my father, of blessed memory, to Yom Kippur services, and of the many services that I went to or led since then. So much has come and gone between then and now! Only memories remain, and as these well up, inevitably they bring with them waves of emotions.

Then there’s the history of Kol Nidrei itself. Its famous melody emerged in Western Europe seven or eight hundred years ago, during the terrifying times of the Crusades. As one Jewish community after another was extinguished, survivors left their homes and set out for more promising frontiers in the east—Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia.  They didn’t take much with them; little was left of their former life. But what they did take included their most precious possessions: their Torahs, Talmuds, prayer books, and their sacred music. Kol Nidrei became one of the enduring elements of this heritage, witness to the truth that, despite the devastation and destruction, our people’s faith remained intact.

The text of Kol Nidrei, on the other hand, is much older, going back at least twice farther, to the third or fourth century. Its origins are unknown, and some have proposed that it must have come about at a time of great persecution, when Jews were forced to convert at sword’s point. Kol Nidrei thus absolved them of the false vows they were forced to make and enabled them to go on practicing their Jewish faith, whether secretly or out in the open. The prayer was certainly often repeated among the Marranos, the hidden Jews of Spain, Portugal and their colonies around the world. 

Whatever the circumstance of its birth, a sacred prayer that allows us to invalidate all our vows and promises is certain to raise some eyebrows, both among ourselves but especially among the narrow minded and bigoted. That Jews are untrustworthy has always been an anti-Semitic trop, and Kol Nidrei more than once served as proof of that canard. The text thus underwent several changes, and in some communities it was eliminated altogether.  In earlier times, Kol Nidrei referred to vows and oaths taken in the past year.  In its current version, however, we speak only of vows made between this Yom Kippur and the next one, a year from now. This form of the text is a compromise that was enacted nearly 1000 years ago by Rabbi Meir ben Samuel, son-in-law of the great rabbi, teacher and commentator, Rashi.

Thus, despite the changes and controversies surrounding it, Kol Nidrei remains sanctified by the ages and today is one of the most essential and moving prayers in our entire liturgy.

I have often wondered at this prayer’s power. It holds sway over our souls, often moving us to trembling and tears. Some of Kol Nidrei’s strength lies in its history. We feel its awesome power, like a massive tide that raises memories both recent and distant. It transports us to places we’ve never been to. We see tall spires in cobblestone cities we’ve never visited; sunny landscapes where spacious fields of grain sway in harmony with wavelets dancing on wide, sparkling rivers. We sense the ghosts of thousands of generations, huddled inside dark and narrow synagogues. We almost feel the bodies pressing close to each other, each vying with another for a place to sit or stand, a place where they would always feel at home. For the living, Kol Nidrei serves as a window to times long gone yet that are somehow still very familiar to us. 

Kol Nidrei testifies to our turbulent past; it serves as a pillar, a monument to our history and tenacity.  

But there is more than just history there.  Kol Nidrei plays an important role in the way Yom Kippur works.  It’s a crucial first step along the path of atonement and forgiveness that we undergo on this day.

Kol Nidrei gives us permission us to fail.

That’s not to say that we are released from our obligation to try to be our best, that we stop reaching for the highest aspirations.  But Kol Nidrei does allow us, just now and again, to fall short of the goal. 

Like the horizon, perfection exists only in our minds.  We imagine it.  We read about it in stories and fables. But we human beings are, by definition, fallible and imperfect, and so is our world.  Life has a way of tripping us up, of setting up greater and greater challenges. Circumstances, as well as our own limitations and shortcomings, determine how close to our goal each of us actually gets.

Along the way, some of us rebel.  We reject expectations laid on us even before we are born. We seek an easier way. Others, driven from the get-go, refuse to admit what they see as defeat. We try even harder, and when inevitably we fall, we shake our fist and then set out and try again, and again and again.  

Some of us see ourselves as a sort of Atlas, the mythical giant whose fate it was to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Afraid to relax for even a moment, unwilling to lay down the burden or even to share it, we put our own safety, as well as the wellbeing of those in our care, at risk. With sorrow and guilt tearing at our soul, we allow anger to replace compassion, frustration to take the place of kindness.

It’s tough to admit our human frailty. Yet that’s exactly what Yom Kippur wants us to do.  By releasing us of all our oaths and bonds, Kol Nidrei enables us to have an objective look at ourselves.  It lets us to take a break from it all, even if only for one day, so that, like some Prometheus unbound, we might be able to take stock of our failures as well as our accomplishments, and to be more realistic about what we can and cannot do.

As the day progresses, the list of our failures lengthens.  We are troubled by what we find; we become nervous and anxious about what we see.  Maybe we didn’t try hard enough. Maybe we tried too hard. Maybe we became too focused on our goal, and not on the way we went about reaching it. Maybe we promised too much and found ourselves unable to fulfill. Maybe we let our weakness, or perhaps exhaustion, distract us. Maybe we let ourselves be tempted to take a shortcut, meandered from our path, got lost along the way. 

Our failures are hard to take. We are ashamed of our mistakes, mortified by how we may have let others down. 

We beseech God for forgiveness; we ask our family and friends to forgive us as we forgive them. We hope and we pray.  Yet Yom Kippur could easily become an exercise in futility and self-defeat if we didn’t also manage somehow to forgive ourselves.

And that’s the real purpose of Kol Nidrei, and why it is recited at the beginning of the Day of Atonement.  Even as we set out on our journey of reflection and introspection, Kol Nidrei states that it’s OK to fail. By forgiving us מלכתחילה (mi-l’chat’chila)—from the outset—this amazing prayer gives us permission to forgive ourselves. Throughout the many lengthy recitations of our sins and transgressions, Kol Nidrei is there, a constant, gentle, ancient reminder that we are only human: We are weak; we are frail; we are prone to failure.

Maybe that’s why I am so moved by this prayer. For me, Kol Nidrei has redeeming powers. Even as I sense my own shortcomings, I feel that I am given a great gift: a second chance. 

And maybe that’s why, in the story of the “Three Who Ate,” the entire congregation, led by its teachers and leaders, weeps.  For, at that moment, they all recognize that even as they were breaking the commandment, God was responding with understanding, with compassion, with forgiveness. 

So, along with all the other reasons for crying—tears of sadness and tears of joy, tears of pain and tears of pride—we discover that there is yet one more cause.  There are, I believe, tears of holiness.  Those are the tears that come when you know that God, the source of strength and renewal, is there even at a moment of anguish and despair; when we come to truly comprehend that, at the darkest points in our life, God is still there, reaching out to us with light and hope. Holy tears flow freely at those moments when we recognize that, up to the very last breath we take, we are free to try and try again.

During the next 24 hours, as we look into the darkest recesses of our soul and reflect upon our various failures, let us also keep in mind that Yom Kippur gives us an unexpected gift, one that we don’t often give ourselves or others—a second chance, an opportunity not only to renew our vows, but to renew our selves. As we weep for the sins we have committed, let us also rejoice for the opportunity to do things right the next time around.  We may not reach all, or even most, of our goals, but we can certainly try to, and see how much farther we get with each successive try.  We may even surprise ourselves. 

G’mar chatima tova, may we be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year of health, joy, love and peace.   

© 2018 by Boaz D. Heilman