The High Holiday of Yom Kippur

Excerpts from The Kol Nidre Service (All Vows)

Background: 

“The Kol Nidre is a service of prayer that is traditionally repeated on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish Year and most sacred day in their religious calendar. It is a personal prayer of confession– that we all are transgressors, and all are in need of forgiveness…

This particular rendition or more liberal adaptation comes from a former colleague known for his many fine contributions to liturgy, music and academic enrichment, The Rev. Dr. Mark Belletini.

We vowed, not so long ago, to live lives that added and not subtracted. We promised, not so long ago, to live lives that matched our words. Lives not hard or brittle with anger, but soft, with letting go.

We made an oath, not so long ago, to live lives that reached for the stars, and did not consist of strings of little disappointments or fragments of shattered dreams we once used as mirrors to see how good we looked.

The days have flown by quickly, and they will flow quickly in the year to come. Circumstance and stress come to us all- it is our human condition.

And thus, I say before the witness of the blue sky bending above, and before the nodding chicory flower of this early autumn, and before the clear eyes of the children yet to be born, children who will inherit the world from us, that all the vows we will make not long from now, all the promises we will make, all the unspoken oaths we declare, are hereby canceled, annulled, voided, and made unbinding…

We are free, not to promise to be good, but simply to get on with loving one another. We are free, not to vow any great transformation, not to engage life with tenderness and understanding,and the outpouring of kindness.

We are free, not to swear oaths of everlasting loyalty and righteousness, but to continue to be generous to each other, to ourselves, and to the common good. At the start of this New Year, we can begin again in love…