When I hear this opening melody of Kol Nidre, my insides pour out. With that first slide, then the second, I melt. The entire piece is magic.
But what is Kol Nidre? It isn’t a prayer. It isn’t a blessing. The beautiful melody conceals some pretty dry legal language. It’s a formula for hatarat nedarim, the unbinding of vows. At an individual level this practice of hatarat nedrim allows for a hakam, a sage, to release a person from certain vows they have made, usually because that person didn’t fully understand the consequences of the vow when they made it. The hakam investigates and, if conditions are right, declares “Mutar lakh”, “You are unbound”.
In Sephardi tradition Kol Nidre is recited once, while in Ashkenazi tradition it is recited three times. But it didn’t always hold such a valued place in the liturgy. The first references to a collective or communal Kol Nidre were made in the legal responsa of the 8th century Babylonian Geonim. Some of these responsa condemned Kol Nidre, prohibiting its recitation. The famed Jewish historian Salo Baron suggests that this condemnation comes from a concern for the people’s interest in magic. The language of Kol Nidre is too similar, this theory goes, to the language found on the highly popular Babylonian incantation bowls, folk magic ritual items used for fending off evil and releasing unwholesome attachments.
So perhaps there is something a little magical about Kol Nidre.
While preparing for Yom Kippur this year I was fortunate to come across a teaching from Reb Zalman Shachter Shalomi of blessed memory, one of the founders of Jewish Renewal. The teaching has been written down by Reb Elliot Ginsburg, one of Reb Zalman’s students at the time, and now one of my teachers.
Reb Zalman says to Reb Elliot: “The whole year we are connected to people. I have a relationship to work, my students, to Judaism, to God, my family . . . the earth.
Kol Nidre. We say Mutar lakh: A removal/uncoupling from the world that so much needs healing.
All connections are off, one day in which I stand clear with [Havayah].
At Neila, I take on relations again (or not), but with new mindfulness. Neila, a re-tying.”
Here is how I read this teaching: At Kol Nidre we untie our knots. Throughout Yom Kippur we are untethered, adrift. It is no accident that water imagery features throughout the day. At Neila, we re-tie knots. And we might want to tie different knots, to moor ourselves differently. That watery space of uncreation between Kol Nidre and Neila becomes crucial for this.
In The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady, a book on the processes of creative writing, Australian author Sue Woolfe explores how writers solve their creative problems. One method for solving creative problems is through loose construing.
Tight construing involves prediction outcomes, sorting data, interpretation. Loose construing, in contrast, involves “the cessation, deliberate or otherwise, of anticipating a result (p. 92). The first step to solving a creative problem is to stop trying so hard; lull your wind, defocus. This can be difficult as we do like to anticipate outcomes. It can be uncomfortable to be adrift on uncertainty. But it’s worth it, because, as Sue Woolfe says, within that looseness new elements can come in. Key to loose construing then is not yet judging those new elements, perhaps taking a more playful approach. Don’t sort, don’t sift. Remain open, and just keep going.
Kol Nidre is an invitation into, an invocation of, loose construing. Mutar lakh. If we accept the invitation, on this day we can slip into the waters of openness and uncertainty. Without looking for anything, we might, come Neila, have had something come to us.
References
Diamond, Eliezer. “The Power of Words.” Jewish Theological Seminary, 2014. https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/are-words-important/
Kieval, Herman. “The Curious Case of Kol Nidre.” Commentary, 1968. https://www.commentary.org/articles/herman-kieval/the-curious-case-of-kol-nidre/
Woolfe, Sue. The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady. University of Western Australia Press, 2007.
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