The Holiest Moment of the High Holy Days : Sung to a haunting melody, the Kol Nidre prayer marks the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It helps Jews all over the world to reconnect with their families, their culture and their history.

Cantor Laurie Rimland-Bonn remembers her childhood feelings as her cantor sang Kol Nidre, the prayer chanted in Yom Kippur services tonight at the most solemn moment of the Jewish year.

“It didn’t matter what the words meant,” says the musical leader of Temple Emanuel in Burbank. “What I got was the feeling that oozed out of him when he sang it. It was awesome. It felt like God was actually going to come into the room and scoop us up.”

“It’s the one thing everyone can identify. It’s been heard generation through generation,” says Rimland-Bonn about the prayer, which is chanted just before sundown to begin the Day of Atonement and brings more Jews to synagogues than on any other day of the year.

“They all cry. They weep. It touches them. I know because I used to watch my grandma cry. The first notes would come out and she’d be bawling.”

The prayer also connects Jews to their history.

“When people hear it, they are somewhere else,” says Rabbi Richard N. Levy, executive director of the Los Angeles Hillel Council for college students. “They are back 2,000 or 5,000 years ago. They are at the Western Wall. They are in Spain during the Inquisition. Or they’re in their grandmother’s or grandfather’s little shuls (synagogues). It’s tied to memory.”

Kol Nidre is a short, dry, legalistic prayer, prosaically written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the language of Palestinian Jews at the time of Christ. It has survived centuries of opposition not only by enemies and detractors of Judaism but by eminent rabbis, who challenged its basic concept of a blanket annulment of sacred vows, scholar Herman Kieval has written.

Many Jews--and most Gentiles--don’t understand its purpose, which is to ask God’s forgiveness of promises they are unable to keep. The prayer deals with vows to be more forgiving, charitable or loving--in fact, any covenant to improve an individual or community. But it refers only to promises made to God. Vows to people can only be forgiven by the other party.

“The meaning has to do with confronting your failures,” says Rabbi Edward M. Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom synagogue in Encino. “You are saying ‘These are all the things I tried to do this year and didn’t get to do, and I ask your release from my promises.’

“There’s a sense of getting another chance. If you are willing to make a step toward God and say ‘I admit I failed’ and ask forgiveness, God is willing to forgive. But the law says you have to try hard to fulfill your promises.”

The prayer, which will help draw about half of Southern California’s 660,000 Jews to synagogues tonight, remains a unifying force for Jews around the world. “It’s a mysterious, mystical thing that thousands of Jews who have no other connection to their faith come to temple on this holiday to hear this prayer,” Feinstein says.

The prayer’s power comes from its haunting melody and long, if unproven, association with Jewish martyrdom, rabbis say. It has been chanted for centuries in a solemn, moving ceremony at the opening of Yom Kippur services and reconnects Jews to their families and to a history entering year 5755.

It also helps create a “transcendent sense of being in the presence of God,” Feinstein says.

To make sure they hear the prayer at the sundown services, workers often leave jobs early. Many join extended families in a reflective meal before traveling to the synagogue.

“You enter the synagogue on the holiest day of the year,” says Rabbi Carole Meyers of Temple Sinai in Glendale. “The congregation stands. The lights are dimmed. With great ceremony, the ark where the Torah is kept is opened. The Torah is dressed in white, which it is not on other days of the year. It’s a symbol of the purity we’re hoping to achieve during the High Holy Day period.

“The Torah is removed from the ark. In some synagogues the Torah is carried around the congregation so the members can kiss it and begin the process of asking forgiveness. In others, leaders hold the Torah while the congregation sings.”

At this point the cantor chants Kol Nidre three times: first, very softly, like one who hesitates to ask God for a favor. Then, again, in a somewhat louder voice. And finally, with a raised, confident voice, like someone accustomed to being a member of the king’s court. Many in the congregation quietly hum, but otherwise the synagogue is quiet. The focus is on the Torah and the cantor’s voice.

The chant is sung in perhaps the most haunting melody in Jewish music. “The melody captures sadness, faithfulness, suffering, hope, promise--the saga of Jewish survival over the millennia,” says Levy.

Meyers says the melody, composed by a cantor in 16th-Century Germany, “is intended to break your heart.”

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A chant so eagerly anticipated by the congregation places a heavy responsibility on cantors.

“It almost feels as if it doesn’t matter how you do anything else during the rest of the year,” says Cantor Joseph Gole of Congregation Mogen David in West Los Angeles. “There’s a certain nervousness and trepidation.

“Because you start your service with Kol Nidre, it isn’t something you build up to. You definitely have to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally to start on that high pitch. It’s the last thing I rehearse with the choir before I walk into the service.”

Cantors must ask God to forgive all previous vows so members of the congregation can start over, adds Rimland-Bonn.

“You wear a white robe for Rosh Hashanah, but when you start putting on the white robe for Yom Kippur, it’s a little different. It becomes awesome,” she says. “You’re the person leading the congregation and you’re there to motivate them and help them attain spiritual heights. I go with much trepidation.

“I think of myself like a little piece of lint on the floor and here’s me and here’s God,” she says.

“Sometimes I like to close everything off and go in blankly so I can just concentrate on the moment.” That requires quiet before the service. “There’s usually a lot going on and I try to be by myself. I go in my office and shut the door.”

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Many hearing the prayer will be thinking about medieval Jewish martyrs who swore allegiance to another religion to save their lives and chanted Kol Nidre to ask forgiveness of those vows. This tradition “has wound itself into the meaning, the emotion of the prayer,” even though it is unproven, says Levy.

Nevertheless, medieval enemies and detractors used Kol Nidre to vilify Jews in Christian Europe. Jewish law clearly stated that God could forgive only vows to God, not between people, but enemies insisted that Jews could perjure themselves in dealings with Christians and clear their consciences merely by reciting Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur, Kieval has written.

Many Jews were uneasy about Kol Nidre for the same reason. In 12th-Century Spain, a critic “declared the recitation of Kol Nidre to be dangerous, since ignorant Jews might erroneously conclude that all their vows and oaths were annulled through this declaration,” Kieval says.

A dispute also arose about whether Jews should ask to be released from past or future vows. Sephardic Jews ask forgiveness of promises made over the past year; Ashkenazi Jews seek annulment for vows to be made over the next 12 months.

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This year Kol Nidre will be especially poignant to many, says Feinstein. “We have all been through the trauma of the earthquake. We have a better sense of our lives in the balance. We all looked inside of who we are and what we want to do in life. This traumatic experience fits in with the theme of the prayer.

“On another level it seems to me the dominant theme in the media and culture this year has been responsibility: Who is responsible for what, and are people ever held responsible for what they do? That also is part of our holiday.

“Finally you have a real prospect of peace in Israel. We have been running for 1,000 years and for the first time there is the possibility of security, safety and peace. I look at myself as part of a long chain of history, and that is what I felt when I saw Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat.”

The peace process may demonstrate the importance of Kol Nidre, says Levy.

“A lot of vows were exchanged. Maybe some were harder to keep than others. Once again, reality fights vows. It shows that it’s important to keep struggling, to keep hoping, to keep working. Serious vows may take longer than a year to fulfill.”

Seeking a Fresh Start With God

Here is an English translation of the Kol Nidre prayer:

“All vows, bonds, promises, obligations and oaths (to God) wherewith we have vowed, sworn and bound ourselves from this Day of Atonement unto the next Day of Atonement, may it come unto us for good; lo, of all these, we repent us in them. They shall be absolved, released, annulled, made void and of none effect; they shall not be binding nor shall they have any power. Our vows (to God) shall not be vows; our bonds shall not be bonds; and our oaths shall not be oaths.”

--”The High Holiday Prayer Book” (1993)

Compiled by Rabbi Morris Silverman