The Meaning of Kol Nidre

Rabbi Sacks: introductory comments

Friends, one of the things that we've done in the last year, and I think there are some outside, is to do a new Yom Kippur Machzor. This time last year I took you through one of the discoveries that we made on the way, which is in the introduction. Still, I had no idea that we would have the opportunity of making a real discovery. And that's really what I want to share with you, our little equivalent of the God Particle, solving one of the real puzzles that has kept scholars perplexed for centuries, and in the last century, led to the writing of countless numbers of scholarly studies and books. 

And that is the question of Kol Nidrei. Kol Nidrei is the strangest ever to enter the prayer book, not least because it isn't a prayer. It is a legal formula for the annulment of vows and the first time we hear of it, it is already being opposed.

The first time we hear of Kol Nidrei is in the 8th century, in a responsum from Rav Natronai Gaon and he's already against it. People, the great Sages, the Geonim and the Rishonim, were against it all the way through. Rabbeinu Tam thought it was scandalous and quite wrong and every single, almost every halachical authority of any weight, said no, it isn't right to say it, it doesn't belong there, it doesn't belong.

And yet Kol Nidrei has outlived all of its critics and the question is why? How did it get the drama that it had and still has? I don't know, do they still send castaways to Desert Island Discs? You really don't need it if you get cast away with your iPhone, you've got 5,000 things to listen to, you know, but any Jewish castaway always chooses Kol Nidrei, right? 

It's for everyone, it is the quintessential Jewish prayer and it remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

So let me begin by showing you the five basic objections that exist to Kol Nidrei. 

Number one, it is not a prayer. It is a legal document, it doesn't mention the name of God. It is a formula for the annulment of vows between us and God and it doesn't belong in a prayer service at all.

Number two, the Rishonim and the Geonim already asked the question, can you do Hatarat Nedarim, can you release vows wholesale? Just get up and say for the whole community, “Mutar lach… nidrana lo nidrei, shvuana lo shvuei…” Can you do this? If you have undertaken a vow and you want to have it undone, you go to a Rav, you go to a Beit Din, you explain the circumstances, you give all the details, they give you a hard time, you've got to convince them on a number of fronts. That is how it is done. 

For somebody to get up without anyone asking them to do so and to annul the vows of an entire congregation, can you do such a thing? That is objection two. 

Objection three, is it right to do such a thing? Can you think of a reason why it might not be right to do such a thing? What happens when every year you get your vows annulled? The danger is you won't take vows seriously.

You say, oh, you know, it doesn't matter, I can vow and come Yom Kippur I can undo it, and therefore already the Gemara is questioning the rightness of Hatarat Nedarim in any routine way, because it will come to lead people to treat nedarim lightly, and it is a biblical command not to treat nedarim lightly. “Lo yachel devaro,” do not fail to honour Your word. 

In Judaism, Judaism is a religion not so much of holy places, not even of holy times, certainly not just of holy people. It is first and foremost a religion of holy words.

God creates the world through words. We become human through words. The Targum says when God created Man and breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living soul, the Targum translates, “ruach memalela,” a speaking being.

For our speech is our very life, and therefore we are a religion of the holiness of word. And therefore says already Mishlei, the book of Proverbs, better not vow at all than vow and take your vows lightly. So that is the third objection. 

Fourth objection is a bit of a killer here. Do we need to do Hatarat Nedarim? And here the point is very simple. We have already just done Hatarat Nedarim. When do you do Hatarat Nedarim? Erev Rosh Hashanah.

After davening, you stay behind and you do Hatarat Nedarim. It is there in the Rosh Hashanah Machzor. The Gemara already says if you want to do Hatarat Nedarim, do it on Rosh Hashanah. We do it immediately before Rosh Hashanah. It doesn't say Yom Kippur. No way does it connect Hatarat Nedarim with Yom Kippur.

So we don't need it. It's already been done, and done in a much more formal way. One person at a time, and we put together a little ad hoc Beit Din in each shul, and we're matir neder.

So we don't need it. So that's the fourth objection. 

It's not a prayer. You can't be matir neder in wholesale. Third, it's not right to do so. And fourth, we don't need to do so.

If that is not sufficient for you, here's the killer. And that is, what does it do for Jewish public relations? It's not great.

I have to tell you, when the non-Jews hear Jews get up on the holiest night and they are null vows, this was not good PR at all. Now, bad PR is not a minor thing halachically. The Gemara in Megillah has the following dialogue between Esther, Queen Esther, and the Sages of her generation.

Esther says, “Establish me for eternity.” Put my story in Tanach. The Sages initially opposed the inclusion of the book of Esther in Tanach, and they answered her saying, “You will create anti-Semitism.”

Read Megillat Esther. You don't want your non-Jewish neighbour to read it with you, okay? Here it is, we're all jumping up and down with gladness at the downfall of our enemies, and it's not good. And for that reason alone, the Sages almost excluded Esther from the canon.

There is a whole halachic category called, “Devarim assurim mishum eiva” - things forbidden because they will create hostility. If you are, if God forbid, let us say you're in Yerushalayim and you're walking down the street and a non-Jew suddenly collapses, are you allowed to be mechalel Shabbat for the sake of that non-Jew? Now, there are many people who will say yes, obviously, for all sorts of reasons, but even those who won't say yes, say yes. Why? Mishum eiva.

Because if you don't help a non-Jew in the street, that will create hostility. Mishum eiva is a fundamental principle of Jewish law. We do not do things that will create anti-Semitism.

Or, sorry, shall I rephrase that? We should not do things that create anti-Semitism. So, we know that historically, Kol Nidrei created anti-Semitism. It led non-Jews to say the oath of a Jew cannot be trusted.

The result was that when non-Jews, when Jews had a case with non-Jews, they were, for centuries, forced to take what was called a more judaico, the Jewish oath, saying that we will keep this and we won't annul it and all the rest of it. It really created anti-Semitism, so much so that one famous case, Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, before he came to Frankfurt, abolished Kol Nidrei in his first congregation. He didn't say it because of the anti-Semitism already in Germany in the first half of the 19th century.

So, here is a situation where mishum eiva, it should have been banned. And therefore, for five separate overlapping and cumulative reasons, Kol Nidrei shouldn't be there. Incidentally, sorry, let me add a sixth reason, which is that Rabbeinu Tam said you cannot annul vows retroactively. And therefore, he salvaged Kol Nidrei by turning it from the past tense to the future tense. Instead of saying, “MiYom Kippurim sheAvar, ad Yom Kippurim zeh,” we say, “MiYom Kippurim zeh, ad Yom Kippurim avar.” And of course, what happened? They say them both. Which, I mean, at least in Ashkenaz, they say them both, which is totally incoherent and just shows that when it comes to Kol Nidrei, logic does not prevail. 

So, what is it there for? Everyone asks this question. But everyone. And as I say, many books have been written about it. 

So, here is the first answer, the one that you've heard, which is that on Yom Kippur, a certain special group of Jews came to shul. Who were they? The Marranos. The Jews who, under force, under coercion, had converted to Christianity. You understand the… there was 101 years of anti-Jewish legislation in Spain. Spain had its Kristallnacht in 1391. And from 1391 to the expulsion in 1492, Jews were under immense pressure to convert. We don't know how many did. The late father of Bibi Netanyahu was the world's great expert on this.

We have a statement of Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, who was, of course, the only Jew they allowed to stay. You know, because he was Chancellor of the, he was the George Osborne of his day. Although, I think, perhaps, I, no comment on that, absolutely.

Sir Ferdinand and Isabella said, ‘You, Abarbanel, can stay,’ to which he rightly replied, ‘If my brothers are leaving, I'm leaving with them.’ And so, we have Abarbanel’s statement that as many as one-third of the Jewish people in Spain converted. 

So, once a year, these converts would come to shul and say, ‘Ribbono Shel Olam, forgive us. We remain Jews in secret. And Kol Nidrei, all the vows we have taken, we didn't really mean.’ They were under threat. They were under pressure.

We didn't really mean. And that is why Kol Nidrei is there. And that is what gave it its immense, emotive power.

It was the day when Jews, who had been completely estranged from Judaism, came back to the shul. There's only one problem with that. Can you work it out? Pardon? The date? Pardon? Ah, that's a really good objection.

The only, the obvious objection is that all this happened in the 14th century, 15th century, in Maimonides' time. It happened in the 12th century, but Kol Nidrei dates back, at the very latest, to the 8th century. So, there was a historian called J.S. Bloch, who attempted to rehabilitate the thesis by saying that actually originated in the first forced conversion of Jews in Visigoth, Spain, in the 7th century.

So, that was the best effort. But, you know, I was discussing this with Stefan Reif, just as we were about to put the Machzor to print. And he rightly said, as Peter rightly said, this was, to go to shul, if you had publicly embraced Christianity, to go to shul and risk detection was certain death.

I mean, it meant you became a subject in the Inquisition. So, it is very unlikely, very unlikely indeed, that anyone would have, or anyone would have taken a risk like that, let alone that somebody would have instituted a whole big public service for the thing. That is very unlikely.

One minor point is certainly true. We know that the formula before Kol Nidrei, “BiYeshiva shel ma’ala, b’Yeshiva shel mata, al da’at haMakom, al da’at haKahal, anu matirin leHitpalel im haAvaryanim” - with the authority of the heavenly court and the earthly court, we give permission to pray with the transgressors - was a way, not of Jews who had converted to Christianity, but Jews who had been excommunicated, been the subject of cherem or nidui, they were allowed back in the shul, and that statement instituted in the 13th century was the formal lifting of a ban of excommunication. So, it was a time when some Jews came back to shul, but not the Jews who had actually converted out.

And it isn't Kol Nidrei, but the bit before Kol Nidrei. So, faced with the implausibility of the Marrano theory, on which several books were based, somebody came up with a view that it's the music. You know, forget about the words, the music.

Now, I really, and as you know, the tune for Kol Nidrei was given to Moshe Rabbeinu at Sinai, as you know. It is called one of the MiSinai Nigunim, which means Germany 13th century. And indeed, the music is beautiful. I mean, and the Sephardim tell me the Sephardi version is beautiful. The Ashkenazi version, which is the only one I know, is absolutely magnificent. I pointed out that, you know, I have always felt that outside of Judaism, the most spiritual thing I know, I mean, we each have our chosen candidates, but for me, the most spiritual thing is Beethoven's late quartets, written after he'd been deaf for 20 years.

And the most spiritual of them all is the C-sharp Minor Quartet, Opus 131, and the opening notes of the Sixth Movement are the notes of Kol Nidrei. Somebody sent me an email today, which I haven't had time to read, which suggests that an earlier non-Jewish composition may have taken it from Kol Nidrei and used it as some kind of plainsong chant, and that is how Beethoven heard it, not directly from Jews, but indirectly. But of all Beethoven's works, the most spiritual of them all, the Sixth Movement - there are seven movements in the Opus 131 - begins with the same notes as Kol Nidrei.

And of course, the music is beautiful. But that begs the question. Namely, why would you sing Kol Nidrei in the first place? This is a legal document.

I try to imagine the following. A Chazan says to the Rav, being mesader kiddushin for a nice young couple, and the Chazan says, ‘Listen, I'm not going to sing Mi Adir and Sheva Brachot, everyone does that, I'm going to sing the Ketuba, you know. Can you imagine a Rav getting up and singing the Sale of Chametz form? I mean, do you sing a legal document? I mean, go figure.

So if it's the music that gave Kol Nidrei its drama, the prior question is why anyone ever thought of singing it in the first place? So that cannot be the answer. 

So finally, the more recent books written on the origin of Kol Nidrei come to the conclusion that there's no reason why Kol Nidrei is so powerfully emotive, but for the fact that Yom Kippur is the holy of holies of Jewish time, and everyone feels the spirit of Yom Kippur, and the first thing that you happen to hit on Yom Kippur is Kol Nidrei, and therefore it becomes emotionally powerful by contagion. It just happened to be in the right place at the right time for everyone to feel terribly strongly about it.

Those are the theories so far, and clearly none of them works. 

So I want to show you something which I think is really dramatic, and which will solve the problem once and for all. But you don't need the mekorot yet, I'm sorry about this.

So I'm going to begin. (I don't need that mike, do I? Because I'm miked up in all directions anyway.) So we are going to do some excavations here, and we're going to go three layers deep.

So let me begin with the first layer, and here it is. There is something unique in Tanach that, I mean, I have not encountered it in any other religious literature, and I don't think it exists in any other literature, and that is the encounter between God and humanity in the form of a courtroom drama. And there is a technical name for this.

It is called the Riv, Reish Yud Beit, which means a law case. And in the Prophets, in most of the Prophets, with special emphasis on Hosea and Micah, the prophet envisages God saying, ‘I have a law case with Israel. I am summoning Israel to court, because we agreed on a deal at Mount Sinai, and they have not kept to the terms of the agreement.’

And that is the divine-human relationship constructed as a courtroom drama. It's very remarkable. What, of course, is most famous and most remarkable is where it's the other way around, where it is a human being summoning God to court, as Elie Wiesel said they did at Auschwitz.

This begins with Avraham Avinu. When Avraham Avinu, in the beginning of Vayeira, says, “HaShofet kol ha’aretz lo ya'aseh mishpat,” he is essentially challenging God on a point of law. God has just said, if you remember, “I've chosen Abraham so that he will instruct his children in his household afterwards that they will keep the way of the Lord doing righteousness and justice.”

And then Abraham says, ‘You want me to keep the way of the Lord doing righteousness and justice? Why don't you do righteousness and justice?’ ‘Maybe there are 50 or 10 innocent people in the town, you cannot destroy the whole town.’ Moshe Avinu summons God to justice. Jeremiah says, at the beginning of chapter 12, ‘God, I know when I argue with you a point of law, you always win, but still I insist on asking you, why are the wicked at ease? Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?’ And, of course, we have a whole book of the Bible in which somebody wants to bring God to court, and that is Sefer IYov.

So Judaism is the only religion which gives the courtroom drama central religious significance. 

Now, there was a phenomenon in mediaeval Jewish life, and since I'm not a historian, I didn't know about this until I read that wonderful book by a lady historian you probably know of called Yaffa Eliach. Remember, Yaffa Eliach wrote a little book called “Chasidic Tales of the Holocaust.”

Yaffa Eliach is an American Jewish historian who came from a little town called Eishyshok, four miles from Radun, where the Chafetz Chaim was. In the space of two days, I think in 1942, the whole Jewish population was taken out and shot, Rachmana litzlan, and there were maybe 20 survivors, and she was one, four years old, I think at the time. 

She was part of the President's Holocaust Commission when the Washington Memorial was being planned, and she was flying to deliver a lecture or something, and she suddenly realised that she was flying over the place, over Eishyshok. And she made an instant decision - and it took 17 years of her life - that she would go around the world gathering every piece of memorabilia, every photograph, every memory of Eishishok, and the photographs that she gathered are the photographs you see when you go to the Washington Holocaust Museum as you go up the staircase.

You remember it's called “The Tower of the Living.” Those are the photographs Yaffa Eliach put together from her little town called Eishyshok, and she wrote a wonderful book about this called “There Once Was a World,” an 800-year history of this one little place. 

From this book, I discovered something I really should have known, but it's not very prominently written about in Jewish law, and that is what is known technically as Ikuv HaKria, and it's a very interesting thing, that if you had a case that you had, you felt you had been dealt with unjustly by the Jewish community, or by the Beit Din, or that you had a case against X, and X would never come to court for the case to be heard, you could get up in shul, and just as they brought out the Sefer Torah, and they were just about to begin Kriyat HaTorah, you could get up and say, ‘I stop the Kriyat HaTorah, and you would get up in the middle of shul, and you would say, ‘I have a case, and I demand the right to be heard,’ and Ikuv HaKria, the Reading of the Torah, would be stopped until you had the chance of presenting your case. You then presented your case. 

Can you imagine what would happen if we allowed that in the United Synagogue? Maybe that's why nobody ever talks about it, but anyway, so what would happen is you would present your case, the Gabbai would hear the case, would announce there and then, would appoint there and then three borerim, a court of arbitration, to look into the case and report back to the community within a specified period of time, and that was part of the norm for Eishishok and places like it. 

In other words, a shul can be turned into a Beit Din.

It's a fascinating phenomenon. You can, in Jewish law, turn a shul into a court of law. Now what is the central act we do on Yom Kippur? Pardon? Confession.

Exactly. Vidui. We do it 10 times with every letter of the alphabet.

We do it. And unfortunately, if you get the new Machzor and you turn to the back, I've spelled out what each one means. I hate to… You needn't look, don't worry. If you don't want to feel extremely guilty, don't look. But if you feel like being guilty, it's the Jewish thing, then have a look.

So here it is. Is Vidui a prayer? When you get up and say, ‘I'm guilty,’ is that a prayer? No, it's a legal act. And it belongs in a court of law. It does not belong in a house of prayer. And the central act on Yom Kippur is not a prayer at all. It's a confession, which doesn't belong in a shul. It belongs in a court of law. 

And now we understand what Kol Nidrei is doing. It is signalling, at the very beginning of the day, that for the next 25 hours, this thing that we've always assumed is a shul is for 25 hours not just going to be a shul, it is also going to be a court of law.

The court is in session. We are on trial. God is in the seat of justice.

And we, having confessed, plead for mercy. And that happens only one day a year. The other days of the year, a shul is a shul. “Ki beiti beit tefilla lechol haAmim.” It's a house of prayer. 

But on Yom Kippur alone, uniquely of all the days of the Jewish year, it is actually a court. And what is about to be enacted is a courtroom drama, which turns out in Judaism not to be a secular thing at all, but a holy of holies which the prophets all spoke about.

And that is the first reason we say Kol Nidrei, to signal, by not saying a prayer, but instead saying a legal formula, that for the next 25 hours, we are sitting in a shul that has suddenly become a court. That make sense? Level one.

Now let's go a bit deeper. 

And here we hit the real question. Can you change the past? That's what we're trying to do on Yom Kippur, right? Can you change the past? Is it theoretically possible? I don't know, actually.

Looked for a few moments, for a few anxious days this year, as if it might be possible because somebody discovered in the Large Hadron Collider some particles that seemed to have travelled faster than the speed of light. If you can travel faster than the speed of light, you can travel backwards into the past because you're going faster than the past is reaching you. Are you with me? So you can actually travel back.

So everyone got terribly upset because if there's been one thing we've been sure about is you can't change the past unless you're Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future.” But other than that, you can't change the past. That's the asymmetry of time.

We can change the future. We can't change the past. And that is it.

However, Teshuva attempts to change the past. And you will see exactly why. 

Have a look at the first source. It's just one line, but it's a crucial line. “Amar Reish Lakish…” Reish Lakish, who was himself a Ba’al Teshuva, says, “Gedola Teshuva, sheZdonot na’asot kiShgagot,” great is Teshuva because sins that we committed deliberately become accounted as inadvertent sins. Yeah? As sins we committed without really thinking about it.

Yeah? Sins we committed without knowledge. That make sense? And he gives a proof text for it. This line from the Haftarah on Shabbat Shuvah, “Return Israel to the Lord your God for you have stumbled in your sins.”

Reish Lakish says, deliberate sin. And yet it says you stumble, which means you weren't doing it deliberately. You did it by accident, inadvertently.

Are you with me? So Reish Lakish is saying the power of Teshuva is that it turns deliberate sins into unintentional sins. Now, why should that make a difference? They are still sins. It turns out that this is the crucial difference.

Let me explain why. 

In the time when the Temple stood, if you'd committed a deliberate sin, could you bring a sacrifice and achieve atonement? The answer is no. Sacrifices, the sin offering, the guilt offering, could only be brought for a sin committed beShogeg, unintentionally or inadvertently.

“Nefesh asher yechta bishgaga.” Always, it specifies that this, in other words, a deliberate sin is too serious for it to be atoned for by a sacrifice. Don't deliberately sin and then come saying to God, I'm sorry. But if you sinned inadvertently, you bring a sacrifice and you can achieve kapara.

So Reish Lakish may be saying - sounds as if he's making a minor point, a big sin turns into a little sin. No, it is the crucial point. Because if we do Teshuva, our zedonot, our deliberate sins, are considered as inadvertent sins, that means they can be atoned for. Whereas if they really are deliberate sins, they can't be atoned for at all. 

So this is the crucial point. And indeed, we say so in our davening. What is the line we say immediately after Kol Nidrei? V'Nislach. It's there, your next source, right? “V’Nislach leChol adat Bnei Yisrael veLaGer haGar beTocham ki leChol haAm biShgaga,” It will be forgiven for all the congregation. Why? Because it was biShgaga. It was unintentional. 

So the whole heart of Teshuva is contained in that one principle of Reish Lakish. A deliberate sin through Teshuva becomes an inadvertent sin.

And now I return to my question, how can you change the past?

If you're going to have a hamburger in some treife restaurant on Shabbat which fell on Pesach and there was a rabbi watching, you know. I mean, if it was that deliberate, how can you go back six months later and say, ‘I'm terribly sorry,’ and get that past changed? Are you with me? What was, was. So there is a logical problem to Teshuva. 

It breaks logic. However, there is a solution. And the reason there is a solution is because in Jewish law, we have an institution called Hatarat Nedarim, the release of vows.

What happens when you have a vow released? You go to the Rav and the Rav says,’Tell me, why do you want the vow released?’ And you say, you know, because, you know, ‘I really, I didn't, you know, I didn't realise it was going to be impossible for me to do so. I said, you know, I come to shul to make a minyan every evening and I didn't realise that the office was going to have me transferred to some little town in the Midlands where I can't get to a Minyan,’ and so on. And the Rav will say to you, ‘If you had known that at the time that you were about to undertake the vow, would you have undertaken the vow?’ And you say, ‘No, of course not.’

And that is called charata. I regret, I have remorse. And that is the legal basis for knowing a vow.

Now look at what happens when you null a vow. It means that retroactively it has become clear that you didn't really intend to do that in the first place because what happened subsequently shows that you hadn't really borne that in mind at the time when you did the thing and therefore there wasn't complete assent when you said, when you undertook the vow. In other words, there is in the whole of Jewish law, only one piece of Jewish law which is retroactive and that is releasing a vow.

And how do you do it? By charata, by remorse. What is Teshuva? It's remorse. And what can you nullify by remorse? Not the act, but the mental element of the act.

The second you can nullify the mental element of the act, you turn a meizid into a shogeg, a deliberate sin into an inadvertent one, because the only difference between an inadvertent sin and a deliberate one is mental intent. So, if there is such a thing as the nullification of vows, then Teshuva becomes logically possible. And it is the only thing that makes Teshuva logically possible.

Are you with me? 

So, we now see there's a really profound reason why we release vows at the beginning of Yom Kippur. Because the whole basis on which we are about to do Teshuva for the next 25 hours is based on that retroactivity of the power of remorse to go back and cancel an intention, turning our deliberate sins into inadvertent ones which can be atoned for. And that means we're in business.

So, now we see why Kol Nidrei is there, because it provides the whole basis for Yom Kippur and for Kappara, the second level. 

But now, let us go really deep into the third level. And I want to ask a simple question.

Why is Yom Kippur on the 10th of Tishrei? That's when God forgave Moshe. Exactly so. The first time in history that God forgave was when Moses ascended the mountain after the Golden Calf, and he prayed with God 40 days and 40 nights.

And God changed his mind and forgave the people. Then Moshe Rabbeinu comes down and then he goes back up for 40 days and 40 nights and comes down with the second set of Tablets on the 10th of Tishrei. And that becomes the sign of divine forgiveness.

Now, you know that you can't always rely on having Moshe Rabbeinu there. But you can always rely on people committing sins. So, what do you do in order to make a one-off event a regular feature of the calendar? Well, the sociologist Max Weber called, trippingly off the tongue, he called it “the routinization of charisma,” which means, you know, how do you turn a one-off event into a regular feature? So, who was the specialist in one-off events in biblical times? The Prophet. But who turned up at the right time? The Priest. 

So, Hashem says, you know, you may not always have a Moshe Rabbeinu. So, I'm going to institute for you, on the anniversary of the day that Moshe Rabbeinu first achieved forgiveness for Israel, I'm going to institute on that day a regular annual thing and it will be done by the Kohen Gadol and that becomes the basis for Yom Kippur.

Now, we have a problem, which is, how come Moshe Rabbeinu was able to change God's mind? Are you with me? You know, your people have, you know, I'm going to wipe them out. Leave me alone, I'm going to get angry with them. And we know, God planned to destroy the people, even beginning again with Moshe Rabbeinu.

How does Moses get God to change his mind? Tell me something, did God change his mind? God doesn't change his mind. So, Moshe Rabbeinu must have had a pretty killer argument with him, right? Are you with me? I mean, this is, you know, this is, what's his name, Jonathan Sumption-type barrister work, you know, Roman Abramovich needs to win the case, he appoints Moshe Rabbeinu. What was the killer argument? What? Listen, listen, listen, listen.

Moshe Rabbeinu comes up and he says, ‘Ribbono Shel Olam, look, they're your people, I mean, forgive them, they didn't know, besides which, who gave them the gold in the first place, You told them,’ you know, all this stuff. And God says to Moshe Rabbeinu, ‘Moshe Rabbeinu, I've heard all you have to say, but I've just given you the Ten Commandments, second of which is, don't serve other gods. I can't retract that.’

In fact, the technical formula is, whoever worships other gods dies. 

And God says to Moshe Rabbeinu, ‘Look, I've already made this law, how am I supposed to break it immediately?’ What does Moshe Rabbeinu say to make God change his mind? Yeah, yeah, I mean, God says to Moses, ‘I'm going to wipe them all out and begin again with you,’ and he says, Moshe Rabbeinu says, you know, ‘I reject the deal 100%,’ but what gets Moses to answer God's claim that I have issued this law and I cannot be seen not to apply the law? Are you with me? Now listen, we are now going to read the most incredible Midrash you have ever come across in your life. And here it is, and it is mind-blowing.

This is from Midrash Rabbah, from Shemot Rabbah. The word that the Torah uses when it says, “And Moses prayed,” is not Moshe hitpalel, or did any of the other normal verbs that the Bible uses meaning prayer. It says “Vayechal Moshe,” and that is normally translated in English as Moses besought.

However, the Torah says in Sefer Bamidbar that if you vow a vow, “Lo yachel devaro,” you shall not break your word. You shall not break a vow. And look what the Midrash says.

I've given you a little bit of English translation, but if you can follow it in the Hebrew, much better. “What's this mean? Moshe Rabbeinu undid, nullified the vow of his Creator.” It's amazing, right? “How so? At the moment when Israel made the calf, Moses got up and tried to persuade God to forgive them. God said, ‘I have already sworn. Anyone who serves or worships other gods is destroyed. And if I have sworn an oath, I can't fail to keep that oath.’

Moses said, ‘Master of the Universe. Did You Yourself not teach me how to do Hatarat Nedarim? How to release vows? And You said to me, and here is the source of never break a vow in Sefer Devarim. If you vow or you take an oath, don't break your word.

That's the Torah SheBichtav. That's what the Written Torah says. And along comes the Oral Torah, Torah SheBa’al Peh. The person himself cannot annul his vow. But a Rav, a Sage, can annul somebody else's vow if they come and ask him.” 

Now listen to this.

“And any elder, Moses looking straight at God, he says, including You, who gives instruction, what do you have to do if you want others to accept that instruction?” You have to walk the talk. You have to practise what you preach. And you just taught me the rules of Hatarat Nedarim.

“So don't tell me there's no such thing. You just told me, right? Right? So anyone who wants others to follow it, he has to keep it first. And you taught me how to annul vows. But it's only logical that you allow me to nullify Your vow the way You've taught me to nullify other vows. Immediately Moshe Rabbeinu wrapped himself in a Tallit, which is the Jewish equivalent of a judicial wig, right? He's sitting as a Dayan in the Beit Din. He wraps himself in the Tallit. And he sits in front of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, like an elder. And God himself is standing, asking permission for Moshe to annul his vow.”

Is this not an astonishing midrash? You ever heard of anything like it? It's absolutely extraordinary. 

Sorry, can you look down the next paragraph, three lines down in the middle, where it's got Aleph Reish? Yeah? “Amar Rabbi Yochanan.” Rabbi Yochanan said, “Davar kashe, amar lefanav,” Moses said something tough to God. What did he say? “Do you regret ever having made that vow?” 

“Yes, I regret making a rule by which I am forced to destroy my own people. I regret it.”

Moshe Rabbeinu said, “At that moment, Moshe Rabbeinu said…” exactly as a Beit Din nowadays says when it wants to annul a vow - “Mutar lach, mutar lach…” Moshe Rabbeinu sat down, and annulled God's vow. And that is how God forgave Israel that first Yom Kippur.

And the only reason we have Yom Kippur is because God forgave the Israelites when Moshe Rabbeinu pleaded on their behalf. And the only reason he was able to forgive them was because of Hatarat Nedarim. 

And now you see the drama of Kol Nidrei on Yom Kippur.

We are standing up, the Chazan singing Kol Nidrei is exactly like Moshe Rabbeinu standing on Har Sinai and saying, ‘Ribbono shel Olam, forgive your people,’ the way you did in the days of Moshe Rabbeinu, because that is the whole basis of Yom Kippur. If you can forgive them then, you can forgive them now. Yom Kippur only exists because of Hatarat Nedarim.

And I don't know if you ever felt this, but intuitively I felt this, that the real drama of Kol Nidrei is not the words and it's not even the music. It's the fact that there is one man standing on our behalf pleading directly with Heaven. That's how it always felt to me.

And it suddenly disclosed itself that that's actually what it is. 

To summarise, there are three fundamental reasons why we begin with Kol Nidrei. 1. To show the shul has become a court of law. 2. Because on Hatarat Nedarim depends the very institution of Teshuva, which has the power of turning deliberate sins into inadvertent sins. And 3. For the historical reason that our Sages said that God was only able to forgive because Moshe Rabbeinu was matir neder. 

Now, you are going to ask yourself, this is crazy.

I mean, how could the Sages even think such a thing that a human being can come along and tell the Ribbono shel Olam to release His vow? 

So let me end with this most extraordinary other Midrash, which has got nothing to do with the first one but explains the whole business. You know that many psalms are headed with the word laMnatzeach, right? And I was just reminded, you know, you forget how many different meanings Hebrew words can have. You know, two years ago, I was in Yerushalayim with my brother.

The only time, I mean, for the first time, it was the World Cup Final. So we were watching the World Cup Final on television. Is that right? 2010, was that the World Cup? Yeah.

So we're watching the final on television in Yerushalayim and I suddenly realised, you know, you get a whole new take on football, you know. Somebody commits a foul. You know what that is? An aveira, he's committed a sin, you know.

So you immediately see the referee coming over. You've got to do Teshuva. Pardon? HaShofet.

Yeah, HaShofet. Shoot the ref. He didn't do Teshuva. You know, so you forget how many meanings a Hebrew word may have.

Now, laMnatzeach means ‘for the conductor.’ That's what it means. But, and of course, laNetzach also means ‘eternity.’ Netzach netzachim, it means eternity. But it also means ‘the winner,’ the victor. 

And if you have a look in the haftarah for Yom Kippur and, you know, really focus on that haftarah. It's a dazzling, dazzling haftarah from the book of Isaiah. And in the course of the haftarah, you will see the line is, can you see it on the next column? 

“Ki lo leOlam ariv…” There's that keyword. I will not bring a case against my people forever.

“Velo laNetzach ektsof,” and I will not be angry forever. “Ki ruach milfanai ya’atof,” because people could not bear it. If I was angry with them, they would faint away and they would die. “Uneshamot ani asiti,” and these are the souls that I made. So if I want my people to live, the people that I made, I can't be angry forever. Lo laNetzach. 

On this, the Midrash does an even more amazing about-turn. Pesikta Rabbati. Look at this. Can you see this? “Netzach l'mi sheMevakesh leHinatzeach.” God, who is lamnatzeach, the victor, is actually the ‘Man,’ is actually the ‘Person’ who wants to be defeated.

God wants to lose the match. “Kmo sheKatav,” as Isaiah writes, “Ki lo leOlam ariv velo laNetzach ektsof…” I will not bring a case against my people forever.

And the Midrash reads this, not, I will not be angry forever, but I will not be angry to the point of victory. Yeah? So, “Al tikarei ken, ella l'nitzuach ariv.” I will bring a case against My people, but I will want them to defeat Me, rather than Me to defeat them.

“Lama?” Why so? “Amar HaKadosh Baruch Hu,” The Holy One blessed be He said, “k'sheAni notzach, ani mafsid.” God says, ‘When I win, I lose.’

“Ukeshe’ani natzuach, ani mistaken,” but when I lose, I win. 

“Nitzachti et dor haMabul,” I won against the generation of the Flood. I won. I wiped out the World.

“Lo ani hifsadati?” Wasn't I the loser? “SheChechravti olami,” I destroyed my whole World.

“Everything that lived was wiped out. So with the Tower of Babel and the people of Sodom, etc. But in the days of Moses, when I was defeated, I won. Shelo kiliti et Yisrael. Because I didn't destroy Israel.” LaMnatzeach means God who wants us to defeat Him.

That is why Moses was able to persuade God to forgive His people, because that is the paradox of justice. 

If God wins and we lose, then God loses. Because we are His. We are His people. We are His children. 

Ribbono shel Olam, what are You destroying? You're not destroying someone else. You're destroying the very thing that You made, and that You loved, and that You brought into being. 

So when it comes to Yom Kippur, the great courtroom drama, when God is sitting with a claim against us, God wants us to win. Because we are His people. We are His children. At the end of the day, even before God is Malkeinu, he is Avinu. And no parent wants to lose a child.

So, we are seeing here this complex cluster of ideas, whereby in this great courtroom drama, where God seems to be summoning us all on trial, God wants us to persuade Him to forgive us. 

And that is the drama of Yom Kippur. 

I think it's an extraordinary cluster of ideas, and explains exactly why Kol Nidrei begins with a legal text, and with a legal act of annulment of vows, and recalling the great, singular moment when Moses, the humblest of men about himself, but the most assertive of men about his people, stood up and refused to budge, as God condemned His people, and said, ‘Ribbono shel Olam, You have taught me how it's done, and I am now going to do it. I am now going to annul Your vow.’

May God annul all our vows, forgive all our sins, and write all of us and all Israel in the Book of Life.

May I wish you all a Ketiva VeChatima Tova!