Finding Meaning in Kol Nidrei

Abstract

O n Yom Kippur Eve as we chant Kol Nidrei, the moving melody ushers us into this solemn day of reflection and self-examination, but the ancient text itself seems remote and inscrutable in translation. Yet there is meaning to the text and that meaning can be understood after looking back into Kol Nidrei’s past. Kol Nidrei can be best understood as a prayer, not a legal declaration, to annul past unfulfilled personal vows and oaths. When Kol Nidrei was created, it filled a need formally to annul past, unfulfilled vows and oaths so that one could come to Yom Kippur with a clean slate. This renunciation however had no legal basis. Later the geonim may have altered the original Kol Nidrei text, making it into a prayerful plea to God to void these past, unfulfilled vows and oaths. In the twelfth century Rabbi Yaakov b. Meir (called Rabbeinu Tam) mandated a revision of Kol Nidrei to conform to talmudic law. He ruled that the Kol Nidrei declaration was only valid when it annulled future, not past, vows and oaths. In the thirteenth century Jewish communities in Spain resisted the revision of Kol Nidrei mandated by Rabbeinu Tam by retaining the earlier version. Kol Nidrei then became an early marker of the differences between Spanish Jewry, the Sephardim, and the Ashkenazim, their French and German brethren. A review of the difficulties associated with Rabbeinu Tam’s revised Kol Nidrei justifies the continued use of the original form by Sephardim. Rabbeinu Tam’s revision was based on a passage from tractate N’darim in the Babylonian Talmud whose purpose was to automatically annul exaggerated vows, those made to strike a bargain, or those made under pres-