Torah Study Blog

The High Holidays are a time when we admit to not being our best selves. One thing we do that causes us to fall short is when we make a vow that we fail to uphold. This week’s Torah portion includes a passage from Deuteronomy 23 that says: “When you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not put off fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will require it of you, and you will have incurred guilt; whereas you incur no guilt if you refrain from vowing” (Deuteronomy 23:22).

According to that passage, it is better not to vow at all, than it is to vow and fail. According to Ecclesiastes 5, a vow must be filled without delay and we must not shirk responsibility by saying something like “Oh I didn’t really mean it.” If you try to get out of your commitment, “God may be angered by your talk and destroy your possessions” (Ecclesiastes 5:5).

Throughout the Bible we read about a wide variety of vows humans make with God. Jacob vows to build a place of worship for God if God keeps him safe on his journey (Genesis 28:20-22). Hannah vows to dedicate her son to God, if he will give her a son (1 Samuel 1:11). A more common vow could be, “God, if you do this for me, I will sacrifice my finest calf to you.”

This is the ancient understanding of how the world works. God is in charge, but people can bargain with God. The belief that you can promise to God and get something in return would have given people a sense of control in a scary world. But it is not only the ancient people who do that. There are many people today, maybe even yourself, who will say, “God, if you do this for me, I will ...” whatever that may be.

A different type of vow, a covenant or brit, is one made between two people where they call down the wrath of God if they fail to hold up their end of the bargain. An example of this is from 2 Kings 6 when the speaker says, “Thus and more may God do to me...” (2 Kings 6:31) if I fail to do as I say.

In the ancient world it was common to accompany a vow with the curses that would befall you. Either God will extract revenge for your failure, or demons will extract revenge on behalf of God. There are actually demons in the Bible. Think of the Destroyer that comes to kill the first born in the Passover story. That was not God killing the first-born; it was the demon Destroyer on God’s orders.

The ancient rabbis developed a legal system for getting out of a covenant made with another person. A vow to God had to be upheld, but you could bring your case to the rabbis for why a vow you made with another person was rash, or terribly done on your behalf. If the rabbis agreed, they would give you dispensation.

But we can imagine that our ancient ancestors, although legally freed from obligation, continued to worry about the demons that might not care what the rabbis said. To the demons, a vow was a vow and you failed to uphold your end – so you are fair game!

The rabbinic court can nullify the vows that you make to another human. But the vows you make to God can never be broken. However nothing that is said by the rabbinic court will negate the impact of the curses. Which is what the song Kol Nidre is all about. Kol Nidre is the song we sing on the first night of Yom Kippur. At our synagogue we have a beautiful cello solo to begin our first repetition of Kol Nidre. When we sing, the words are actually a dry, legal formula releasing us from the curses we had originally agreed to heap upon ourselves – but now we need protection from those curses.

Imagine that you have already appeared before a court of rabbis and received dispensation. But you still want to ask God to release you from the curses. The rabbis in the 9th century said that the singing of Kol Nidre was a folkloric custom that should be abandoned. The rabbis had already released you – there are no demons coming to curse you!

But the people were not willing to let it go. In fact, this one song we sing has become the name of the entire service. Another thing people do on Kol Nidre is to wear a tallit. Normally, a tallit is not worn at evening services. But folklore tells us that the knots at the corners of the tallit, the tzitzit, are

tied in a certain way to ward off evil spirits. So we sing to keep the demons away, and we wear a prayer shawl to keep the demons away, too.

Now that we know the origin of Kol Nidre is folkloric magic, does that mean we will stop doing it? No! The ritual has psychological power. Our community likes to examine customs and to understand how or why things originated. Today, we can devise a way to weave a new narrative and still give it meaning. Perhaps by saying, “This is a time when I think about my inner demons keeping me from being the person I could be.” We can make it something meaningful for ourselves, and also get psychological relief for ourselves.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter