Absolved, remitted, cancelled

Yom Kippur begins at sundown tonight and continues until dusk tomorrow. It’s the culmination of the Days of Awe in the Jewish calendar, and the time for a sort of moral Spring cleaning—the Day of Atonement, when you’re meant to rummage through your behavior over the previous year, acknowledge your shortcomings with respect to your fellow humans, apologize (to those they’ve trespassed against and to God) and resolve to do better.

Then—having cleared the slate, so to speak—you’re good to go for another year.

Well, 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.

In recent times, people have taken to issuing blanket apologies for transgressions, presumably in the hope that anyone who’s actually suffered at their hands will happen by at the time the apology emerged, and will catch it in passing. And, of course, SoMe has amplified this impersonalization of what should be a very personal act of contrition.

I have never subscribed to the one-size-fits-all approach to giving or receiving apologies, but that’s just me. I mean—in the Roman Catholic Sacrament of Reconciliation, we’re meant to hawk up actual things we’ve done, say them out loud to the confessor and accept the penance we’re given. (Toughest priest I ever knew wouldn’t give you any generic Hail Marys or Our Fathers; no, no. If I’d been pissed off at my family, he’d tell me to go back and be specially nice to them. Killed me, he did.)

Protestants generally have no truck with confession and atonement. That may be because, being based on the teachings of John Calvin, they’re guided by the tenets of Predestination: God decided long before your birth whether you’re saved or damned, and nothing you can do here will change that. Therefore there’s not much point in calling out your transgressions, or promising to make amends—you’re headed where God sends you.

(Okay—there’s a lot of talk in some fundamentalist circles about repentance and forgiveness. But that seems largely to apply to Republican elected officials and some preachers who’ve been caught doing something that they can’t wriggle out of on account of the video and the forensic evidence. I take no notice of this.)

But I digress. This post is about Yom Kippur and the mindful inventory of one’s transgressions with a view to amending one’s trajectory in the New Year.

In synagogues and communities around the world just before sundown tonight, someone will be singing “Kol Nidre”, a call from the Ashkenazi tradition of Judaism. 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.)

Both Al Jolson and Neil Diamond sang “Kol Nidre” in their appearances in The Jazz Singer (1927 and 1980, respectively). Johnny Mathis and Perry Como have also recorded it, which seems passing odd to me. But I’m giving you Cantor Julia Kadrain of the Central Synagogue (a Reform shul in Midtown Manhattan) leading it for Yom Kippur 5776 (nine years ago).

May your name be sealed in the Book of Life.

 

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