Kol Nidre: Law, Magic, and Controversy

Kol Nidre “on one foot”: Kol Nidre is a prayer said at the beginning of evening Yom Kippur services. It asks God to forgive us for promises we make in the coming year which we might not be able to keep.

The Irony of Kol Nidre, Harry Freedman

The other geonic objection to Kol Nidre was that it was superstitious. The concern was based on the form of the declaration; a string of ten words, all of which have a similar meaning to vows. The words are all in Aramaic, the language that was spoken in Babylon where the geonim lived. Archaeologists working in the area have found similar lists of words inscribed around the edges of bowls, known as incantation or magic bowls, that they discovered buried face down in the earth at the entrance to ancient dwellings.

Dozens of magic bowls have been found buried in the ancient Babylonian earth. Their surfaces are crammed with closely spaced, tiny words setting out spells and incantations. Some bowls seem to have been written to protect the inhabitants of the house they were buried in front of. Others were placed there by malefactors hoping to curse the dwelling’s residents. The similarities between the Kol Nidre formula and the wording on the magic bowl is intriguing. It has been suggested that rather than being a formula to annul vows, Kol Nidre was originally a formula intended to annul spells or curses. If so, the purpose of reciting it on Yom Kippur was to cancel spells cast by the person reciting the declaration, maybe in error or in anger, over the past year.

What's in a Bowl? Babylonian Magic Spells and the Origin of Kol Nidre, Rabbi Dalia Marx, PhD

Spells... have been unearthed in various locations in Mesopotamia, especially in the Babylonian city of Nippur (today’s Iraq). They were written in 300–700 CE on clay bowls, buried in and around domestic environments, sometimes in graveyards. The incantations are composed of recurring phrases, words, verses, and various types and styles of formulae, to call upon different names of God and angels, who were believed to have positive powers (though occasionally also malignant ones), and to protect against the demonic as well. The bowls were usually buried upside down under the floor in and around the house, to prevent the powers that they held from escaping as they worked their magic promoting prosperity, health, and protection, especially for the young. They represent the vivid popular culture that is only partially reflected in the contemporary Rabbinic sources.Scholars have shown interesting similarities between some texts of these magic bowls and Kol Nidre, both in vocabulary and style. For example:

"Overturned are all the vows [kol nidre] and curses and spells and sorceries and curses and sorcerers and evil knocks that may lodge in this man."

The pronounced parallel to Kol Nidre (“All vows, obligations, oaths,” etc.) and the shared vocabulary in general are remarkable because Kol Nidre is known to us only from much later sources, from the geonic literature of the ninth century. Not all the words typical of Kol Nidre are found in the bowls, but we do have interesting similarities that go beyond just the actual words kol nidre. In some bowls, we see long chains of annulment and banning phrases, just as in Kol Nidre: for example, “Bound, seized, attached, pressed down, trashed, exorcised are all [the evil powers].”2 Both the bowls and the prayer use certain key Aramaic nouns and verbs, such as “vow,” “swear,” “bound,” and “annulled,” and both utilize a com- mon style and syntax. We cannot help but conclude that formulae quite similar to our liturgy were in Jewish use centuries before the appearance of Kol Nidre in the liturgy, even if they were composed and used in a completely different context.

... To sum up [the differences], Kol Nidre has both personal and communal aspects, in that it negates individual oaths but only from its communal ritual setting. It corresponds to annual calendrical time and relies on no special technical knowledge. The magic bowls were dependent on individual whim; they were made by experts for private and domestic use in order to fulfill personal needs.

If the differences between the two practices are so great, however, what is the use of comparing the two? What can be learned from their relationship and possible common origin?

Taking vows was considered a serious act with cosmic ramifications, binding on both human and supernatural beings, who share a common world of cause and effect. Most importantly, the two practices exhibit profound features of human nature, especially when confronting the unknown. Both reveal elemental concerns rooted in human vulnerability, the sense of ultimate helplessness in a world that is beyond our control or comprehension. Both reflect anxieties in a reality that is beyond the human ken, and a craving for control in a world that is all too often out of control. Like prayer, both Kol Nidre and the magic bowls are ways of using speech formulaically to achieve certain ends. But neither one is actually a prayer. Both appeal to law more than to God, in that the bowls access the arcane laws that govern hidden forces of nature, while Kol Nidre has its place in the legal context of Rabbinic Judaism. The bowls obey magical laws that banish evil forces from one’s immediate universe; Kol Nidre prescribes a legal means to prevent one’s own ill doing through vows made in error or in haste.

For many Jews, Kol Nidre provides the sound of atonement that is the core experience of Yom Kippur and that could not otherwise be put adequately into words. Nevertheless, progressive Judaism, which began in nineteenth-century Germany, started overwhelmingly without Kol Nidre. As we shall see, the tune remained, but without the familiar words, which were reintroduced only with the American prayer book Gates of Repentance in 1978.

Classical Reform of the nineteenth and early twentieth century sought to justify Judaism to modern Jews and to the society in which they lived. It was deemed important to say only those prayers that could be recited honestly, without offending the enlightened, rational, scientific mind. The entire notion of annulling vows was anathema to modern ethical consciousness. In addition, the Ashkenazi version of Kol Nidre requests freedom from vows that might potentially be made in the year to come, not those already made in the year just ending - a ntion that makes little sense logically. It had come into being as a halalkhic response to the Talmudic objection against a wholesale annulment of vows in the past, but Reform Jews questioned the domination of halakha. So morally, logically, and theologically, the text of Kol Nidre seemed objectionable to Reform Jews, who sought, therefore, to eliminate it...

Classical Reform Judaism, however, did not succeed in this effort to abolish Kol Nidre. Faced with its obvious popularity, the rabbis sought means of including some form of it, while obviating the difficulties caused by the difficult text with which they had no sympathy.