Kol Nidre: Null and Void

By Cantor Matt Axelrod, "Kol Nidrei: The Power of Words", https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/kol-nidrei-the-power-of-words/

Kol Nidrei — the service recited at the outset of Yom Kippur and which is arguably the most recognizable piece of Jewish liturgy — teaches us that words alone carry an awesome power. This most sacred, powerful, and iconic service of the Jewish year revolves around nothing less than the sheer majesty of the spoken word.

In fact, the Kol Nidrei prayer is not a prayer at all. Rather, it’s a somewhat dry legal formula. Two witnesses, holding Torah scrolls to insert an additional measure of gravitas, stand on either side of the cantor as he chants the text three times. The words of Kol Nidrei are not even Hebrew, but Aramaic, which was the vernacular in ancient times. Hebrew would be reserved only for holy texts and prayers, not a legal proceeding. And because we would never engage in any business or legal dealings during a Jewish holiday, Kol Nidrei must be recited before Yom Kippur actually begins, in advance of sunset. This is why the Yom Kippur fast lasts closer to 25 hours or even longer. We’re already sitting in synagogue listening to Kol Nidrei before the holiday technically begins.

Why do we use this rather bland and uninspiring public declaration to usher in the most sacred day of the year? One might think that we should proclaim our collective commitment to engage in the act of teshuvah (repentance). Perhaps we should seek to have our past transgressions forgiven and ensure that our names be entered into the Book of Life. The truth is seemingly more prosaic: We state in advance that we should not be held accountable for any vows we might take between now and next Yom Kippur. This probably doesn’t resonate with the modern mind so much, but vows used to be serious business. A vow was much more than simply a promise someone made to another person; it was a sacrosanct commitment that could not be broken.

Kol Haneshamah: Mahzor Leyamim Nora'im, Reconstructionist Press

All solemn vows, all promises of abstinence, and formulas of prohibition, and declarations of austerity, and oaths which bear a name of God, and pledges to ourselves assumed on penalty, whatever we might have sworn and then forgotten, whatever earnest, well-intentioned vows we might have taken up but not have called down on ourselves, from the last Day of Atonement to this Day of Atonement (may the Day come upon us for the good!)- from all of them, we now request release:

Let their burden be dissolved, and lifted off, and cancelled, and made null and void, bearing no force and reality. These vows shall not be binding vows, those prohibitions not be binding prohibitions, those oaths shall not be binding oaths.

By Rabbis David Teutsch and Yael Ridberg, "A Guide to Jewish Practice, Vol. 2" (book)

Rabbenu Tam changed the text in the 12th century because it was thought impossible to annul vows after that have been made. In order to truly impact any vows made, one would have to declare them null and void before one made them. As a result, the Kol Nidre text found in most traditional machzorim today imagines that the vows we make from this Yom Kippur until the next will be annulled. The Reconstructionist machzor returns to the original ninth-century text, and declared our past vows be annulled. The assumption in annulling past vows is that only those vows that were impossible to fulfill, or that could be fulfilled only by causing significant harm, or that are not remembered should be annulled. The text is not intended to annul legitimate business agreements of personal commitments.

By Dara Horn, "Eternal Life" (book)

Some time around the nineteenth century, or perhaps the centuries before that, someone - perhaps a poet, or a scholar, or a lawmaker, or a genius - came up with a way to absolve people of their vows to God. Not to absolve vows between people: there was no way out of those, other than the popular tactic of becoming a weasel or a worm. No, this solution was strictly for the kind of vows one made in absolute desperation, when catastrophe or stupidity or some other smallness of the imagination has made life unbearable, when one needed to break the laws of the universe and saw no other way but to sign over a first-born child or a first-true-love or one's ability to enjoy being alive. The solution, this genius understood, was not to break the vows after they were made, for then there could be no vows at all. The solution was to break the vows before they were made: to protect people, as any good contract should, from the consequences of their own stupidity, by preventing them from making vows to God to begin with.

By Rabbi Avi Killip, "Vows That Divide", https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/vows-divide

Publically annulling and negating our vows is not about a lack of integrity, or an unwillingness to live up to our word; rather, it is a call to let our feuds and grudges fall away. It is an opportunity to lower our walls, and interact in a more fluid way with our community and environment.

Today, even those of us not worried about official nedarim or halachic vows have our own versions of anger-induced interpersonal divides. We have friends, and colleagues, and family members with whom we don’t communicate. We have places we “refuse to set foot” and people we “refuse to call.” During the month of Elul, we make our best effort to bridge these gaps, and repair broken relationships. Kol Nidrei is the last step in this process. In the last moments before Yom Kippur, we reject our vows as a community. In the moment of Kol Nidrei we finally and completely tear down the last remaining walls, reject our divisions, and begin to pray together as one whole community.