Howard Epstein – KOL NIDREI – A SOURCE OF JEWISH EMBARRASSMENT THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN
One of the unexpected benefits of the Lockdown, for me, was the rediscovery of the shiur, that intense exposure to Jewish Biblical and Talmudic roots involving not merely learning but also the polemics that come naturally to those who call themselves a stiff-necked people. After weeks of consideration of the waywardness of the prophet Samson and of King David, the straight-forwardness of the truly wise King Solomon and the perfidy of judges who would descend to compromise, came a premature exposure, over three sessions, of that most troubling of “prayers”, Kol Nidrei. Recited on the eponymous eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when observant Jews believe that their fate in the coming year, inscribed ten days earlier on Rosh Hashanah, the two day New Year festival, is sealed, Kol Nidrei has for long come in for special, and some unwanted, attention.
There are many reasons why Kol Nidrei is special: first, it is not a prayer but a personal declaration; next, of perhaps passing interest, it is written almost completely not in Hebrew but in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and of the general Jewish populace of his time; and lastly it does not mean what it says – or rather mean what has traditionally been ascribed to it, not least by the detractors, not to say persecutors, of the Jews.
Kol Nidrei means “All Vows”, and it is generally regarded as the statement by which Jews would abjure in advance all their obligations in the coming year – and in some forms this is extended to those undertaken in the past year, also. (Too extensive to set out here it can be accessed in a nanosecond or two courtesy of a Google search but, briefly, the declarant says: “All vows … and oaths, that we have vowed, and sworn ….from this Yom Kippur until next Yom Kippur ….may they all be permitted … and nullified, and may they not be valid”.)
On 26 September 1933, one month after Hitler became Führer of Nazi Germany, the full text of “Kol Nidrei” was published in several German newspapers, as proof of the duplicity of the Jews. Burning sacred Jewish texts was a common anti-Semitic practice in the Dark or Middle Ages, and the Land of Poets and Painters (and philosophers and scientists) was about to descend into practices of a new dark age, that would condemn to a premature and violent death not just six million Jews but also some fifty million Europeans. In May 1933, Berlin students had burned some 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books in the square of Berlin’s State Opera. Kristallnacht and the eve of the Holocaust were a mere five years into the future.
Kol Nidrei, taken for centuries to be an open, apparently-defiant abnegation of obligations has been taken for centuries to be proof positive that one should never trust the word of a Jew for, after all, does he not say on the holiest day of his year, that he considers himself free to break it?
Well, superficially, yes – but, substantively and more significantly, no. Firstly, there is nothing in the text of Kol Nidrei to suggest that its effect extends beyond the unilaterally-undertaken vow. Many a Jew will promise him or herself to give up smoking, go on a strict diet and spend more time with the kids, half expecting that these are promises – typical New Year’s resolutions – that may well be broken. Accordingly, we say to our Maker: please do not take them too seriously; I may well break them. I acknowledge my weakness of resolve in anticipation of my turning out to be all too human.
Outside one’s own orbit, matters must be treated more seriously; but there is nothing in Kol Nidrei that releases a Jew from keeping his word, when given in the coming year to another person or legal entity. That is not a unilateral obligation: it is one undertaken on a reciprocal basis, and both parties know their mutual obligations are to be respected or, short of that, liable to be enforced. It is unlikely that Kol Nidrei has ever been invoked in a court of law as a defence to an action for breach of contract nor, realistically, could it. Thus the basis for doubting the integrity or good faith of a Jew can never be founded on a reading of Kol Nidrei.
There is an even more obvious reason why Kol Nidrei should never have been allowed to form the basis of resentment against Jews for alleged unreliability. This arises out of some of the simplest rules of construction (interpretation) of legal documents, stretching back to the Pentateuch, the Mishnah and the all-encompassing Talmud. The Thirteen Hermeneutical Rules of Rabbi Ishmael (second century CE) and similar rules of construction applied to the laws of England and Wales, all other common law systems (Canada, the US, Australasia and Israel, to name but a few) and almost certainly in other legal systems, too, provide that a general statement is susceptible to be qualified by a more particular one; and a later obligation qualifies the earlier. Accordingly, even if Kol Nidrei were taken to mean “I generally absolve myself in advance from any breach of future obligation”, the very act of undertaking a specific obligation at a later date, overreaches the general, self-ascribed pardon – and doubly so.
Kol Nidrei is nothing other than a highly-individual recognition of one’s all-too-human failings and an anticipatory apology to the Divine for the inevitable personal lapses that are bound to occur in the year ahead. Those who thought that Kol Nidrei was evidence of Jewish perfidy need to think again.
© Howard Epstein, September 2020
