October 6, 2022|י"א תשרי ה' אלפים תשפ"ג Kol Nidrei and Community By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

One Yom Kippur night, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky came into the yeshivah before Kol Nidrei wearing a red tie. A red tie, on an older rosh yeshivah! It was perplexing, but there were other things to be busy with that night, so the mystery remained — until after Yom Kippur, when a ninth grader, a sweet, sincere young student, related a question he’d posed to the Rosh Yeshiva on Erev Yom Kippur.

The haunting melody that stirs the heart of Ashkenazic Jews, the Kol Nidrei prayer, ushers in the holiest day of the year and we all struggle to understand why. Why is a declaration about annulling vows the opening religious ritual of Yom Kippur? Rav Soloveitchik explained that Kol Nidrei mirrors the teshuva process. Kol Nidrei teaches us what Yom Kippur can do. Kol Nidrei can turn back the clock and undo the past; it literally annuls vows that we unwittingly issued in the previous year. Similarly, then, Yom Kippur and teshuva also can turn back the clock and undo the past. The gemara tells us that our teshuva can transform our sins into merits. As we begin Yom Kippur, Kol Nidrei screams out to us, “carpe diem,” seize the day! Take advantage of the opportunity that this day presents for us!

Maybe we can approach this question differently. The Gemara in Nedarim (22a) compares making a neder, or issuing an oath, to erecting a “bama,” an altar outside the Beit Hamikdash, outside the Temple. The Ran explains this analogy by pointing out that in both instances, the individual thinks he can do something extra special to please God beyond what God commanded us to do. The neder, like the bama, is not something that God commanded us and more than that, both the neder and the bama can separate us from the community. The person who has his own backyard altar to serve God isn’t interested in joining with the rest of the community to serve God. Similarly, the person who makes a neder may also separate himself from the community because he takes on additional stringencies that are not commanded, which can lead him to think that he is better than the rest of the community. When we annul our nedarim, we are, in effect, rejoining our community. We no longer want to remain separate, even if separation was motivated by spiritual considerations. On Yom Kippur, I want to be part of the community.

Because that’s really what Yom Kippur is all about. It’s about all of us, the entire community, men, women and children at the Beit Hamikdash standing in unison watching the Kohen Gadol perform his ritual, or now, without a Beit Hamikdash, it’s about all of us, the entire community, men, women and children coming together to pray together as one, like angels who, according to the midrash, at peace with one another. On Yom Kippur God is telling us, “Do you want to come close to Me? First draw close to each other. Be part of the community.” In Har’rei Kedem, Rav Soloveitchik writes that the atonement of Yom Kippur is one of collective atonement. An individual can only achieve atonement through the community, much like the sa’ir la’Azazel, the scapegoat of Yom Kippur, is a collective offering. Kol nidrei, annulling the vows, the stringencies and those practices that cause separation, jealousy, hatred and feelings of superiority, is about creating a sense of brotherhood and unity within the entire community.

But there is another element to kol nidrei which is instructive. We begin Yom Kippur asking God to annul our vows. Think about it. Is that really the biggest sin out there? Eating non-kosher, violating Shabbat, stealing from someone – now those are big sins! Making a promise that I thought I was going to keep, and realizing now that I can’t keep it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. But at the very beginning of Yom Kippur, we are being told that it is a big deal. When I made the promise a few months ago, I wasn’t really cognizant of how important it is for me to keep my promise, but now on Yom Kippur I am aware that this small thing is really a big thing. Kol Nidrei is a big deal. My vows which I think are so insignificant are a big deal.

And once we begin to think about this, then we begin to reflect in a very deep way about other failures that we didn’t think were such big deals. We think about the insensitive way that we spoke to someone. We think about the lost opportunity to call someone or text someone in need when it would have taken up five seconds, ten seconds, a minute. Little things, but maybe not such little things – like a neder. And maybe when we start to think about that, we realize that when we said, “al da’at ha’makom v’al da’at ha’kahal …anachnu matirin l’hitpallel im ha’avaryanim” – “with the consent of God and this congregation… we grant permission to pray with the sinners,” we start to ask ourselves, who are the sinners? And maybe, we realize that we are the sinners.

We may come to Yom Kippur thinking that we are better than the community around us because of all of our stringencies, because we learn a lot and we daven better than the other person and we give more charity than the other person. We come to Yom Kippur thinking we are better and then we start thinking about all the little things that we’ve done wrong and we realize that we are not better than the person sitting the left of me or to the right of me or four rows behind me or ahead of me.

Yom Kippur is not about me. Yom Kippur is about us. It’s about asking for forgiveness as a community. And the only way we can do that is to see ourselves as part of the community and to be sensitive to every member of the community. Don’t focus on the neder, the religious practices that separate us from the community, but focus on the little things that we’ve done wrong and it is the little things that we can do for each other that connect us and make us all worthy of atonement on the holiest day of the year.

One Yom Kippur night, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky came into the yeshivah before Kol Nidrei wearing a red tie. A red tie, on an older rosh yeshivah! It was perplexing, but there were other things to be busy with that night, so the mystery remained — until after Yom Kippur, when a ninth grader, a sweet, sincere young student, related a question he’d posed to the rosh yeshivah on Erev Yom Kippur. He’d asked the Rosh Yeshiva if it was proper to wear a red tie on Yom Kippur, since that was the tie he had. Rav Shmuel assured him that it was and wondered why he was asking. “My friends were teasing me and telling me that it’s not appropriate,” the young student admitted. Rav Shmuel wished him well. And then the Rosh Yeshivah, using not a single word, found a way to make a young man feel so big, on the holiest of nights.

Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky understood the key to a successful Yom Kippur. It is not about nedarim. It is not about separating ourselves to show others how holy we are. It is about the little things that we do to help others feel a sense of belonging on Yom Kippur, to make everyone feel part of the community. For the next 24 hours, in addition to the fasting and the praying and the soul-searching and the personal introspection, let us do the little things right in the context of the community. Wish a Gmar chatima tovah to someone new, exude positivity to all those around you, don’t speak any lashon hara for the next 24 hours, be extra sensitive to those who are sitting near you who wish to daven with deep concentration in silence and at the same time don’t rudely shush someone who may be a little disruptive. Let us really work on the little things for the next 24 hours and let us internalize the value of the little things that make all the difference between a group of individuals in the same room or the same town and a real community that is worthy of God’s atonement on this day of Yom Hakippurim. May Hakadosh Baruch Hu bless us in this beautiful endeavor.