All vows

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins Sunday at sundown. It’s the day when Jews prepare for the New Year by fasting, considering their actions over the past months and making efforts to acknowledge and amend the wrongs they’ve committed. Kind of like steps four through nine of the AA 12-step process.

The deal is that God opens the Book of Life on Rosh Hashanah and inscribes your name in it, but doesn’t close-and-seal it until the end of Yom Kippur. You have those ten Days of Awe to get your ducks in a row.

I really like this concept: devoting serious time to reflect, measure, acknowledge transgressions and resolving to do better. We all need to be reminded of this, to go through the cycle at regular intervals and to take steps to maybe not keep doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results.

In honor of this holiday, today’s earworm is Max Bruch’s “Kol Nidre”, arranged for cello and orchestra. Kol Nidre is from the Ashkenazi tradition of Judaism; it’s sung in the synagogue just before sundown on Yom Kippur. It’s a mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew, declaring null any oaths or commitments made to God from one Yom Kippur to the next, and asking for pardon for shortcomings in fulfilling those vows. The idea, as I understand it, is to mitigate the sin of failing to fulfill a vow that might have been made rashly. (It also annulled any vows associated with forced conversion to Christianity, which was a thing for a long time.)

Cellist Mischa Maisky performs with and conducts the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra in this recording.

May your name be sealed in the Book of Life.