Postcards from ימים נוראים: Overdue Thoughts on Kol Nidre

7 Tishri, 5773

The backstory: Although I have been going to my synagogue since Spring of 2010 and then converted in 2011, this year – 5773 – will be the first time I will be witness, and indeed a part of, Kol Nidre. As fate would have it, I did not make it during the previous two HHD seasons. The first year I was honestly lost in and subsequently overwhelmed by the High Holy Days – as strange as it sounds, the only way I could get through my first Yom Kippur was to be absent for Kol Nidre. Last year I was in bed with an awful head cold, which, as I had also stopped eating or drinking, and along with a change in meds, would contribute to my fainting in the middle of YK services the very next day. (Text received during my ER visit from one of my rabbis: “Are you all right? Did you mean to faint right before Mi Shebeirach?” Heart my clergy!)

Today I can relate that I am neither over-awed nor under-the-weather and am excited for this long delayed first Kol Nidre, especially with some new understandings I have recently come across.

Continuing backstory: A few months ago, Kol Nidre was the subject of a pre-Elul Torah study. As it was one of my HHD mysteries, and having been absent from it over the last two years, I immediately sat up to catch the discussion as it flew around me and ricocheted off the walls and ceiling. (My Torah Study group is wonderfully if not fearlessly active in their spiritual wrestlings. The WWE has got nothing on us.) Many characteristics of Kol Nidre I understood immediately – it was a legal formulation and not a prayer (check), written in Aramaic and not Hebrew, (check) wrapped in a beautiful haunting melody (check), which basically begins the Yom Kippur Services for the next 24 hours (check check check).

Yet there was one aspect I kept intellectually tripping over: the disavowing of vows. Um, why would there be a legal document read before Yom Kippur (the day of forgiveness/atonement) which seemed to allow any oath mentioned over the last year to be disavowed? Confusion reigned. Why bother genuinely asking for forgiveness and atonement from both another individual and God if we were saying any oath we made could be so broken?

You can probably guess what happened next. I raised my hand and voiced that question. No sooner had the words formed in the air than someone along the back row muttered “She’s wrong”. (Which is kinda the last response you want to hear in Torah Study.) The rabbi leading the group that morning responded by using my question to discuss how Kol Nidre was historically the basis of so many age-old anti-Semitic justifications. (Which, on second thought, is REALLY the last response you want to hear in Torah Study.) [1]

(Note to the designers of the ubiquitous “Intro-to-Judaism” courses: please consider including some special discussion regarding Kol Nidre in HHD lessons. That is all.)  

Now, some moons later, I am delving into a set of books called Rosh Hashanah Readings and Yom Kippur Readings, both edited by RabbiDov Peretz Elkins, so I can better understand, appreciate and participate in the HHD, which is unabashedly my favorite season of the Jewish calendar. Needless to say, I am pouring over the Kol Nidre section in search of some context to hang my questions on. And finally, upon reading more deeply the liturgical/halakhah/Biblical/historical background of Kol Nidre, I heard the clilk! of understanding from within, like that moment the key opens the tumblers of a particularly stubborn lock .   

* * *

(If the following aspects of Kol Nidre is all remedial Sunday School for you please skip to last line. No worries; I forgive you.)

My understanding now of the halakha roots to Kol Nidre can be traced all the way back to the Torah’s admonition against making frivolous oaths and promises. (Remember, this caution came in the ancient time of Balaam and blessings and curses, when it was thought that what came out of our mouths not only spoke of what was within ourselves but had power to create and destroy, heal or harm, in the real world. Much as it does now, even though we seem to forget this loaded truth online and off in the real world.) Your word was – or at least should be – bond. Specifically to each other and especially to God.

Kol Nidre seems to understand that despite the Torah’s warnings and the best of intention from us Jews, “frivolous”[2] oaths will pass from our lips to God’s ear. (Welcome to the human condition.) Therefore, before we can ask for God’s forgiveness and mercy, we must first deal with processing all those unfulfilled promises. This strikes me as amazingly functional in religious, emotional, psychological and even sociological terms. In this respect, Kol Nidre is the vehicle that helps us get from one side of Yom Kippur to the other. (I also now understand that Kol Nidre is specifically for oaths between us and God. We're still on the hook for buying that round next Saturday night because the Red Sox lost. Again.)

Additionally, there is a strong historical connection between Kol Nidre and the Conversos of Spain. [3]Faced with conversion to Christianity or death, they chose life in anti-Semitic medieval Spain as hidden Jews. How important Kol Nidre must have become for them in keeping their spiritual integrity intact during such times! (And from a socio-political p.o.v., it is therefore no surprise that anti-Semitics would hold up Kol Nidre as proof-positive that Jews would not keep to their forced conversions, embrace another belief system under the threat of torture and death could not be trusted at their word.) A beautiful drash in YKR also draws a connection between the Conversos of Spain and those of the Queer Community who find that too must hide their true identity in an unforgiving and cruel world. (I really cannot recommend these books enough.)

What Kol Nidre means in 5773 is something I am still gleaning and certainly welcome any-and-everyone else’s interpretation. (Anti-Semites excluded. Clearly.) 

With only two-and-a-half days (daze?) to go, may you have an easy fast this Yom Kippur, may your name be sealed in the Book of Life and may you (continue to) have the sweetest of years!

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[1] Torah Studies assume some background knowledge of the topics under discussion.

[2] Yom Kippur Readings: Inspiration, Information, Contemplation, p20 – ed. Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

[3] ibid (p. 22)

You Say You Want A Revolution...*

(*...will that be with a side order of sit-ins or just a beheading?)

For me Boston often feels like a perpetual boiling point for civil rights. Every weekend seems to bring a new rally to The Common or Copley Square or The State House. Tea-Partiers, Immigrant Rights, Queer Rights, Labor Unions, all bump elbows in a town that is small enough to be tucked away in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The streets and campuses here echo with the cries of the righteous, whoever that may be on any given day, to the point where the line between mainstream tolerance and indifference becomes blurred.
That being said, the current anti-Israeli sentiment around here is leaving me uneasy. Many of the tenets of protest I have lived by as a longtime activist seem to have been abandoned like yesterday’s space-saver in snow-buried Southie.

First is that over-used, least understood and much co-opted word ‘peace’. I learned my protesting from the school of Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul and Martin Luther King, Jr., where fighting back comes from a place of non-violence as opposed to "an acceptable level of violence", where you raised an open hand, not a clenched fist, you rose above your opponent instead of sinking down to them, you stood up rather than striking out; you disrupted the empire by sitting in, not by setting off bombs.

So it disturbs me greatly when during the recent Egyptian revolution there were calls to take Hosni Mubarak out "17^th Century Revolution style" or that the uprising had reached a level of "CHFHO" (Chop His F**king Head Off") already. For me Peace can never mean, or be obtained by, "acceptable level of violence" nor "preparing for armed conflict." When those onboard raise hands that hold the simplest of weapons, it is no longer a "peace" flotilla but a "protest" flotilla.

Also disturbing is the distinct lack of any real dialogue regarding the discourse. Some anti-Israeli protestors have made no pretense in refusing to come to the middle ground, instead staking claim to the most extreme of fringes (spots I imagine to be crumbling drop-offs that offer little wiggle room.) Instead of coming to a place of discussion they make demands; rather than discuss they debate; rather than actually hear they listen for the opening to make the next clever retort.

I also find it disturbing how easily History is ignored and everything is framed in the context of a few decades, years, weeks, the latest rally, RIGHT NOW!

I guess it should not surprise me (even though it does) to hear such arguments from this encampment as "the only way Palestine could live is if Israel dies", "you should stop being Jewish" or that "Zionists have taken over your police, government, media culture, etc.". It is profoundly distressing to me to hear how easily anti-Semitism is tucked into anti-Israeli protests, how old anti-Jewish myths are resurrected unchallenged in the new age, how extremism is packaged and sold as the new diplomacy, how critical thinking is discarded to embrace the electricity of the newest cause, how one missile can be seen as oppression while another fired in response can be called ‘love letters’ from revolutionaries.

Please make no mistake - I think the Occupation needs to end as of yesterday, the walls between nations need to come down, the term "moral army" is an oxymoron and that the current ultra-conservative Israel government often invokes religion to justify its stream of blatant racism and needs to be called out for any human rights violations. Just as any nation guilty of such grievious acts should be. Except they are not, are they? The French government violates the rights of Muslin women by stripping them of their veils, American Islamophobia continues to run amok., British Muslims are reviled in the country’s popular culture, yet it is Israel that is singled out for this level of demonstration. Hard to ignore the implications of that..

I am reminded of one of my favorite books, Starhawk’s "The Fifth Sacred Thing" in which a post environmental disaster San Francisco resurrects itself as a true socialist haven where Peace overrides Power. So strong is this spirituality that when the military-industrial complex comes rolling into town the citizens fight back through nonviolent protest, literally laying down their lives for that ideal. I can’t help but wonder how many of today’s protestors would follow that example.