Reflections on Kol Nidrei 5786 (2025)

I ate my the snack of my father. Thomas English muffins, toasted well and smothered in peanut butter while still hot so it melts into near liquid form. I remember my father when he was hungry in the evening after dinner satiating his appetite with this snack often accompanied by a large glass of milk. We look up to our parents, and I am no different. Over the years I've had many comfort foods but this remains my favorite.

And a fast was about to start, and I knew that I wanted some comfort food as I entered into Yom Kippur.

The day was longer than I wished it to be. A friend is in the hospital, something that brings to mind many feelings and brings forward a part of me that wishes to protect and serve. This moment displaced my original dinner plans with my college roommate that were to usher me into the holiday. I relish my time with my college roommate, which happens too infrequently already, but which fills my cup every time. So in addition to missing out on the emotional support I regularly get from him, I was also missing out in the way of satisfying carbs and long-lasting protein (which fundamentally doesn't carry one through a fast, but emotionally, gives one an excellent start). I recalled, however, a moment where my father bedazzled in a tux and well into his cups put his arm around my college roommate and declared to all around him "This is Jay, my favorite Jew." Having had to turn Jay down for dinner last minute sparked this memory of my dad and subsequently tied me back to a comfort food that was my last meal before the start of the fast.

Incidentally, when I told Jay I was going to convert his first words were "welcome to the tribe"

Incidentally, being part of the tribe, I am coming to learn, is the central point of Judaism. It is something I relish deeply.

~~~

Though I will always have a deep fondness for Avinu Malkeinu, Oseh Shalom is a prayer that I find myself repeating in my head as I go through my daily routines. It's my personal prayer of choice when I am quietly reflecting or given a moment of silence. It is simple, and powerful: May the one who creates peace on high bring peace to us all and all of Israel, and to this we say: Amen.

Peace is a core value of mine. I wish to be a bringer of peace, a person who embraces kindness. I want to dedicate more and more time to the idea of Tikkun Olam. Though I know the old poem says we don't have to solve the worlds' problems, I sure as hell can't help but try.

Try. And fail.

Not only am I not solving problems in world-wide, world-peace sort of way, but failures also show up in the everyday interactions way. I've hurt people. I've said and done things I am not proud of and I am not comfortable talking about because they make me feel horrible within myself.

In short, yeah. I've really screwed up along the way, and continue to make mistakes big and small. I'm only human after all.

And I suppose that's why Yom Kippur exists in the first place.

~~~

I am new to all of this. Sure, I've been incorporating the holidays and studying the Torah and engaging with Jewish life for more than half a decade now. And I made challah my "covid skill" with a moderate level of success. But I'm still new. I think I will always feel a little new. One doesn't master more than five thousand years of history and culture with a few books of reading and a few classes and a couple meetings with a Rabbi. I imagine I will continue to experience these little moments of revelation along the way that continue to tell me this long winding path is the right one for me. Hashem has carefully crafted a world that is full of reminders of his wonders, and the more I open my eyes, the more I see. And the more I see, the more I self-reflectively realize how much I have not seen and have yet to learn.

Newness means I need to engage differently than folks who were raised Jewish. This year, I dove into more books about history and holidays and calendars than in years past. I also promised myself I'd engage deeply with the prayers that inspired me to attend Synagogue more frequently (not frequently enough, mind you, but one must bank on many years of potential to change so as not to get lost in the lament of missed opportunities). I promised myself I'd get at least some of them down, so I watched a whole heck of a lot of Youtube videos. If I were hoping to get the most out of my holiday this year, I needed to really dig in and study more.

One particularly wonderful finding appeared in a wonderful hand-me-down book provided by my Mother-in-law, Peg, called the Jewish Holidays, A Guide & Commentary by Michael Strassfeld. The first thing of note in this book is the location of Yom Kippur within its pages (hint: it's not the second holiday in the book, despite being the second holiday of the year. In fact, it appears on, get this, page 111). There are a variety of interesting things of note, but the one that was most important to me was the title of the chapter: Yom Kippur: Day of At-One-Ment.

~~~

Over the last several years I've been focusing on Yom Kippur as the day of atonement, the day that Jews seek collective forgiveness for their collective sins. There is a certain severity to the holiday, a somberness that is somewhat overwhelming. Even the aforementioned book shares historical traditions including prostrating yourself before the door of the synagogue to receive lashings. This is a holiday that calls for fasting for 25 hours, not showering, not doing much of anything but be in the synagogue. This is a holiday that is about admitting failure on a grand scale. This is not the happy-go-lucky holiday of the calendar (that honor belongs to Purim, a holiday which pretty explicitly tells you to get drunk). Yom Kippur has held the place of most intense holiday on the calendar, most severe in my heart.

And this is a holiday that starts with a very formal prayer to unravel the threads of the contracts and promises you have made over the last year, one that you speak early in the service as if needing to let the universe know any time you "swore to god", well, you un-swear it. This first service of the holiday is Kol Nidrei, and it is the most beautiful song made up entirely of legalese you will ever find. Thus starts the holiday on this first night. A beautiful, complex, legal dissociation of our obligations to others that certainly reminds you that the holiday is one of deep reflection and intense inner exploration.

Admittedly, though, I was bringing some of my history into the holiday that starts with this prayer. I was imposing a level of severity that perhaps was tied to my upbringing outside of Judaism rather than inherent in the holiday itself.

~~~

Growing up Catholic, the confessional was this thing that you just flat fear. You're there, in a box, telling a priest every little bad thing you've done. And according to Catholic doctrine, you have to do that at minimum every week (with all the requisite hail mary's and our fathers) or you're not allowed to take the eucharist.

Sure. Almost no Catholic in the United States follows those rules. But that doesn't change the fact that it was the rule, and the whole concept of being Catholic is tied to the Catechism. You follow the rules or you go to Hell. Period. End of story. So buck up, get in the box, tell the priest all the horrible things you've done, get assigned your penance, and get cleansed.

The whole process was fraught with fear. It's very personal -- it's all on you. No one seems to like it no matter how much they repeat all the reasons it should be freeing and comforting and all that.

And to be clear, I lied in that box. Lies of omission mostly, but for sure I doctored up my own failings so I wouldn't have to admit fully the things I felt bad about. So in actuality, according to doctrine, I was a Catholic who never got out from under the oppressive thumb of a God that declared I needed to do this weekly to receive the honor of the host.

And for any Catholics that did or do, I hold no ill will, or disparage that practice. It just never sat right with me. I always struggled with this idea that my failure to personally confess all my failings and perform my penance of prayer would result in eternal damnation. The process was cumbersome and complicated and scary and too high stakes.

Real atonement was rare, then, because confession was hard. And I was imposing some of that fear and feeling into Yom Kippur. It was, afterall, confessing sins, right?

~~~

My Rabbi, Michelle Pearlman, made a distinction today between Christianity and Judaism. She said Christianity is about faith -- if you believe in the rules and the god, you're in. Judaism was way bigger because it had no central faith-based alignment (in fact, as I have learned over and over again, mostly what Jewish people agree on is disagreeing on things. It's one of my favorite features of the tribe). Rather, Judaism is community and food and tradition and history and shared experience and common traditions and family dynamics that weave together into a rich fabric of Judaism. Most importantly, she said, were "Jewish Ethics" which were the embodiment of that tapestry of culture and that sense of trying to live up to the wonder of the creation that God made. To take the burden and blessing of the Torah and the tradition and being part of this movement and passing it on meaningfully to our children.

This is pretty powerful for a number of reasons, but the one that was most important to me was that almost immediately after the actual prayer Kol Nidrei, you confess your sins. As Judaism is a religion built on community, those sins are shared. Any part of the community who has failed to uphold the law is showing that collectively we have failed to meet the obligation of living up to the potential god has given us. We speak personally about these failings in poetic fashion, declaring while banging your chest that we have done any number of horrible things for which we must confess. We declare and take ownership of every poorly spoken word and argument, every moment of disrespect and pain inflicted, every form of ethical lapse. But we do that together. We confess and own and commit together. We are not alone in our failings, we share them.

Incidentally, as I contemplated the idea of atonement being actually "at-One-ment" I realized that this group confession is really an admission of our collective responsibility. That is, I am my brother and sisters keeper. It's not the perspective of one bad apple spoiling the bunch as much as a rising tide lifts all boats. Its a means of saying "I understand, prince of peace, that we have made mistakes. But I commit, together with my community, that we will collectively do better."

And this is where the holiday made a pivot for me. It's not just feeling deeply sorrowful for failings and committing to do better. It's owning the responsibility to shepherd our fellow man with grace and kindness and integrity. It's realizing that the world is a better place if we continue to remind ourselves that we're in this together. And the only way we'll find peace is if we do it together.

~~~

Rabbi Michelle spoke many beautiful words from the Bima today, but one dialogue in particular really caught me. It was about peace. Though we wish deeply for it to be built more permanently, of stone, with a solid foundation, like a castle it is not. Perhaps peace is not meant to be something so enduring and lasting and permanent. Perhaps it is more meaningful because it is fragile. In fact, Peace is built like a sukkah, cobbled together quickly. Fragile despite its use and beauty.

I thought about that a lot on the drive home after services. Maybe peace is fragile because we are prone to all the downfalls of life and society, that it's hard to follow goodness. Maybe it's fragile because it is built by community and collectively, we are a collection of our failures, responsible in aggregate for them all. That perhaps it's hard to build peace given that tendency to look at the collection of negatives that build up over the year between one Yom Kippur and another.

But I found a certain wonder in this as well. I thought of it rather like the paper houses built in Japan, made not to withstand what nature brings, but to be easily rebuilt when the inevitable happens. I thought about the way communities would come together after earthquakes and storms to rebuild the homes for one another. I thought about how my dad used to say "it's not how often you're knocked over, Ricky, it's how often you get back up".

Getting back up is hard sometimes. Near impossible to do on a continuous basis. That is, if you're doing it alone. If you add in community -- the support of friends and family, the love of a partner who gets you and celebrates you, the kindness of strangers when you're in need, well it's a little easier.

If you think about the love of God. And if you think of the strength placed inside you as a human made by God, one made in their image. If you think about the awesome power of free will and choice. If you think about these things and have community, well, I think we can all get up. Rebuild that fragile peace and find some measure of wonder and joy in this whole thing. Maybe that's what Yom Kippur is, maybe that's what all the confession and seeking help really is all about. This has been a year of storms, and we need to just roll up our sleeves and put the house back together.

~~~

Our synagogue sings this beautiful song at the beginning of services that I feel echo in me on the regular and tonight took on some deeper meaning.

The lyrics are simple and repeated:

return again

return again

return to the Land of your Soul.

Return to who you are.

Return to what you are.

Return to where you are born and reborn again