Author Topic: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre  (Read 1943 times)

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Offline Machiavelli

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Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« on: September 22, 2015, 08:04:13 pm »
Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, begins today at sundown and ends tomorrow at sundown. The evening service begins with the Kol Nidre. It has a haunting melody.
Listen.

This is the translation from Aramaic:

All vows, obligations, oaths, and anathemas, whether called ‘konam,’ ‘konas,’ or by any other name, which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound, from this Day of Atonement until the next (whose happy coming we await), we do repent. May they be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, and void, and made of no effect; they shall not bind us nor have power over us. The vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligatory; nor the oaths be oaths.

Kol Nidre is also the basis of a composition by Max Bruch, which can be found on YouTube in various performances and arrangements.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2018, 07:32:08 pm by Machiavelli »

Offline andy58-in-nh

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2015, 08:12:34 pm »
Thanks for the links on this Yom Kippur eve.

And thanks for reminding me to call my mother.  *who knows*
"The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Offline GourmetDan

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2015, 08:30:04 pm »
 
Quote
"All vows, obligations, oaths, and anathemas, whether called ‘konam,’ ‘konas,’ or by any other name, which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound, from this Day of Atonement until the next (whose happy coming we await), we do repent. May they be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, and void, and made of no effect; they shall not bind us nor have power over us. The vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligatory; nor the oaths be oaths."

I always found it interesting how a certain group of people can tell the world outright that they will not honor any vow, oath, pledge or contract they make for the upcoming year and the world is supposed to think that is a wonderful thing and trust them to tell the truth...


"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." - Ecclesiastes 10:2

"The sole purpose of the Republican Party is to serve as an ineffective alternative to the Democrat Party." - GourmetDan

Offline andy58-in-nh

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2015, 08:45:34 pm »

I always found it interesting how a certain group of people can tell the world outright that they will not honor any vow, oath, pledge or contract they make for the upcoming year and the world is supposed to think that is a wonderful thing and trust them to tell the truth...

Read and learn...

There are two “histories” regarding the prayer, one popular and the other scholarly. The popular version connects the wording of the prayer with the religious dilemma facing medieval Spanish Jews. In 15th-century Spain, at the height of the infamous Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church embarked on a determined hunt to seek out and punish all non-practicing Christians.

In response to extreme antisemitism earlier that century, a sizable number of upper-class Jews chose to convert to Christianity in order to, at the very least, avoid social disdain. For a small number, their religious conversion was genuine; but for the majority, their “conversion” was in name only as they still found creative ways to practice Judaism in the privacy of their own dwellings.

These Jews came to be known as “marranos” and became one of the foci of the Church’s inquisitory offensive. The Kol Nidre prayer, according to this theory, was created in response to these Jews’ desire to nullify their vows of conversion. We can see the potential validity of this historical claim in a literal translation of Kol Nidre:

“All vows and oaths we take, all promises and obligations we made to God between this Yom Kippur and the last we hereby publicly retract in the event that we should forget them, and hereby declare our intention to be absolved of them.”


This legal formula may have allowed marrano Jews to rid themselves of guilt they felt when, under social and religious duress, they converted to Christianity. By setting Kol Nidre at the beginning of the first Yom Kippur service, these Jews developed a way to confront the gravest sin imaginable so that they could devote the remainder of Yom Kippur to address their other transgressions.

Scholars do not wholly refute this understanding of Kol Nidre, but they do contend that Kol Nidre has much earlier roots and probably predated the marranos. According to their research, it is unclear exactly when or where the Kol Nidre legal formula was created. The wording seems to mimic other legalistic contracts of the Babylonian Jewish community of the 6th and 7th centuries.

The first undoubtable citation appears in an early comprehensive siddur edited by Rav Amram in the 8th century. Over the next few centuries, the prayer became more widespread and a soulful melody became associated with it. Notably, there were some rabbis who disparaged the prayer as a superstitious attempt by Jewish mystics to nullify vows made by evil forces in the universe intent on hurting the Jewish people. These criticisms were muted by the majority of the people who cleaved to the prayer and aided its spread to other communities.

More history here.
"The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Offline GourmetDan

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2015, 08:55:39 pm »
 
Only problem with your response is, vows of conversion (in order to be nullified) would have to have been historical... not future.

On the 'holiest' day of their year, the Jews tell you to your face that they will break any future vow they make to you and that God is just fine and dandy with that statement.

It's not a vow of repentance from past acts, it is a promise regarding future acts... exactly as the words bear out.

It's ludicrous...

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." - Ecclesiastes 10:2

"The sole purpose of the Republican Party is to serve as an ineffective alternative to the Democrat Party." - GourmetDan

Offline Machiavelli

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2017, 06:00:27 pm »
Bump for 2017

Offline Sanguine

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #6 on: September 29, 2017, 09:44:35 pm »
Read and learn...

....

More history here.

Interesting, Andy.

Offline Machiavelli

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2018, 06:47:23 pm »
Bump for 2018

Offline INVAR

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Re: Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre
« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2018, 07:24:19 pm »
For my Jewish friends:

May you be Sealed for another Year.


For Christians who observe this day:

Rejoice for our High Priest has entered the Holiest of Holies with His own Blood to make atonement for us, and has done all the work to cleanse us from our sins when we repent.
Fart for freedom, fart for liberty and fart proudly.  - Benjamin Franklin

...Obsta principiis—Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon [the] American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour." - John Adams, February 6, 1775