Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre. Certainly the most attended Jewish prayer of the year. Certainly the most awesome. But why?
The words are pretty mundane, a basic annulment for
misunderstood, haphazardly applied, ill-advised vows
a person may have taken upon themselves.
There is a similar prayer recited Erev Rosh Hashanah.
To most Jews it is unknown, or at best obscure.
Kol Nidre everybody knows.
One of the books I know only from reviews, is a compilation of last letters from soldiers on the front -- letters to their wives, their mothers, their children, their newborn babies.
From what I have heard of the book there is little in the way of abstract philosophy; it is all about small moments, washing dishes together, sharing a nighttime ride into town, macaroni and cheese.
This is how connections are made: small, insignificant interfaces, which could have happened dozens of times before and hundreds later, but that moment - just that moment -- became an indelible connection.
(A mitzvah is a connection - that is the meaning of the word.)
Why did that moment take on a life of its own?
We rarely know, and almost never care;
we just embrace it for what it gives us.
Standing on the outside of the relationship it may well seem overblown and corny; not from the inside.
In the collective Jewish experience the Kol Nidre stands out a recurring lighthouse in the tempest of the year, a comfort, and also a challenge that feels right for us.
My father says that the nicest thing about Italian opera is that you don't understand the words. Comprehension can, in flourishing moments, only diminish.
That is why comprehension, analysis can only rob a soldier's letter of the very reason we would ever care to read them. We don't know why or when Kol Nidre came to be Kol Nidre, we just know that it is.
Niggun evokes that quality which defies analysis and breaks the heart and makes it full.
Kol Nidre Night is a time for niggun;
Not choirs, not chanting, not necessarily understanding the words, or even knowing the tunes.
That all is preparation of Kol Nidre, to make the Kol Nidre that much fuller. If this past year we didn't prepare for Kol Nidre - that is why we have a next year.
So now is not a time to analyze, to dissect the moment. Don't worry if you don't understand; you'll have a whole year to learn.
Don't worry if you're not on the right page; every page is the right page.
Don't worry if you can't follow the tune; the tune will follow you regardless.
Now is the time to just be there, to just be.
For now, let us write home our letter from the war front.
ב"ה