Yom Kippur – Break Free
All vows, prohibitions, oaths, consecrations … that we may vow, swear, consecrate, or prohibit upon ourselves – [from the last Yom Kippur until this Yom Kippur, and] from this Yom Kippur until the next Yom Kippur… regarding them all, we regret them henceforth. They all will be permitted, abandoned, cancelled, null and void, without power and without standing. Our vows shall not be valid vows; our prohibitions shall not be valid prohibitions; and our oaths shall not be valid oaths.
-Kol Nidrei Prayer
What an odd way to begin the holiest day of the year. How is it possible that we kick off Yom Kippur by renouncing vows, oaths and promises?
And is it really possible? Am I truly free from all my obligations just because I declare it so? Are my lifelong commitments for naught? The inherent duties that I have accepted and undertaken in my life as a father, a husband, a friend – have they all become null and void? Shall I do as this prayer says and bid farewell to every serious commitment that I have ever made?
Pay my respects to Grace and Virtue
Send my condolences to Good
Give my regards to Soul and Romance
They always did the best they could
And so long to Devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye, wish me well
You’ve gotta let me go
–The Killers
The issue becomes more acute when you consider that Judaism is based on a vow. The covenant that the Jewish people accepted at Mount Sinai was akin to marriage between God and His people. We have been bound by the promise of Na’aseh VeNishma, “We shall do and we shall listen” ever since. So how can we begin Yom Kippur with an annulment of everything sacred?
There are two types of people who are exempt from vows. They are excused from all obligations and have no commitments to anyone else: The Infant and The Dead.
A newborn child is obligated to no one. He or she totally receives without any expectation of return. There are no promises he has to fulfill, no places she needs to be, no people who are counting on him. She doesn’t owe anything to anyone, and we all know this is so.
The same can be said for the Dead. They too are completely and finally exempt from any promise or obligation or expectation. They are done and gone, and no longer owe us anything.
And so the question remains – of what purpose is the Kol Nidrei declaration? Is it to have me view myself as irresponsible as an Infant? Or is it perhaps that I should see myself so far beyond caring for anything in this world; so completely detached to the same degree that the Dead are disconnected from Life?
And maybe that’s indeed the point. Maybe Kol Nidrei teaches us that we need to go into Yom Kippur with the purity and innocence of an Infant and with a temporary sense of total disconnection like the Dead. That we should suspend ourselves, if but for a moment, if but for a day, from many of the things we have become bound to and taken oaths to incorporate into our lives.
Imagine if we were to do that. Imagine if we would throw it all off. What would our lives look like? What would we be doing? What would be different? What would we decide to keep and what baggage would we rid ourselves from?
Every one of us has a myriad of obligations and has made numerous commitments in the course of our lifetime. Yom Kippur comes along and gives us the opportunity to reassess those commitments. To look at and scrutinize each and every one of them. To decide which ones are good enough to keep and which ones we need to reconsider and perhaps abandon. To finally shed ourselves of the extraneous nonsense that fill our days.
I may love to follow sports but ultimately for what purpose? Does it really enhance my life that I need to rearrange my Sundays to accommodate the game or maybe I ought to rearrange the game to accommodate my family? Maybe I should annul my vows to fashion, or to checking my phone first thing in the morning before anything else. Do I need to binge Netflix? Must I forever give so much weight to other people’s opinions of me – people I hardly even care about? Or to so many other things in life that I have simply accepted as givens through habit and that have now become attached and part of me as if I have vowed myself to them forever?
Yom Kippur is a gift that gives us the chance to rethink every obligation, every promise, every vow that we have made – actively, or passively through habit – and to rid ourselves of the useless ones that consume our time, our energy, our emotions and our lives. Yom Kippur is the chance to sum up the courage to cut ourselves away from any and all futile compulsions that don’t provide us with the spiritual and meaningful life we all seek.
And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes, clear your heart
Cut the cord
If we accept the message of Kol Nidrei and of Yom Kippur, we will find our lives so much lighter. So much happier. So much cleaner and pure like a new-born child. We will sail through life without the shackles of useless commitments and obligations to false gods and endless desires that weigh us down, day in and day out.
Kol Nidrei is that opportunity. Yom Kippur is that chance. It comes but once a year. Go get it.