Meaning of "Kol Nidrei" (Column 246)

With God's help

On the eve of Yom Kippur, after "Kol Nidrei," I spoke in the synagogue and suggested an explanation of why the day's prayers open with "Kol Nidrei." Here it is.

Who is a "ba'al teshuvah"?

In today's common jargon, a ba'al teshuvah (a newly observant or repentant Jew) is a person who changed his worldview. He was secular and became religious. He was an atheist and became a believer, or at least thought that Jewish law was not binding and came to the conclusion that it is. But such a person has not returned anywhere, and so it is not plausible to call him a "ba'al teshuvah." He has not returned in two different senses. First, he was never in the place to which he has arrived, so there is no return here. Second, in the past, when he did not believe, his sin was under compulsion (he was compelled by his convictions), and so there was no real transgression here. One need not return from that in the full sense of the term. He has now arrived at a more correct position, but even in the past it is not plausible to view him as a transgressor.

And indeed, in the Talmudic sense, and in the conventional meaning found among commentators throughout the generations, a "ba'al teshuvah" is not a person who changed his worldview but a person who returned to proper conduct. We are speaking of a person who, in the past, when he sinned, held the same view that he holds now. Even then he knew that his act constituted a sin, that is, an improper act, and nevertheless he failed and did it. He had a "weakness of the will." When such a person returns to proper conduct, that is, aligns his actions with his worldview, it is justified to call him a "ba'al teshuvah," in both respects described above: he returns to the proper behavior that has been his all along, and he also returns from the transgressions he had committed.

The phenomenon of weakness of the will: the difficulty

In columns 172 I dealt with the phenomenon of "weakness of the will" (weakness of the will), and pointed to the difficulty that many philosophers find in it. A person who believes in a value system X is supposed and expected to act in accordance with it. I do not mean here a normative claim (that he ought to act in accordance with what he regards as proper), for that is a trivial claim. My point here is on the psychological plane. A person who believes that act A is improper will not do it. Why would he do something that he himself thinks is improper?

Our feeling in such situations is that we have failed, meaning that our impulse overcame us and therefore we did something that we ourselves do not believe in. But as I explained there, this is a problematic claim. If the impulse is a drive that cannot be conquered, that is, one I could not withstand, then there is no sin here. I was under compulsion. And if I could have withstood it, then why did I not do so? Presumably because I did not want to, or did not want to strongly enough. If so, I still did exactly what I wanted. I preferred momentary pleasure to the value consideration (in the long run), and therefore I did it. If so, even when I sinned I acted in accordance with my desires and my value system. There is no failure or weakness of the will here; rather, the desire to act properly was not the only desire in my value system. What I did was a weighing of all my desires and values, and what I did reflects precisely that weighing. In the final analysis, I did exactly what I believed in and what I wanted.

Notice that this description implies that there is no "ba'al teshuvah" at all in the sense I described. A person who sinned believed in what he did. If he now thinks that it was a sin, then he has changed his system of beliefs. In other words, repentance is a change of worldview and value system, not a return to acting in accordance with the value system that has been within me all along.

The phenomenon of weakness of the will: the solution

And yet it is hard to deny the clear feeling that we do have failures, that is, weak will. Each of us feels, after sinning, that he in fact did not do what he himself thought it right to do. I explained there that this appears not only in religious contexts, but also in moral ones, or in decisions about dieting and the like. In all these cases, when we "sin" (for example, by eating something fattening), we have the feeling that our will was weak, that is, that we acted in a way that we ourselves did not want. We did not overcome the difficulties, and that caused us to do something that we ourselves did not want. The difficulty I described above remains in force in all those contexts, but it is not plausible to give up the sense of sin. Our intuition tells us that there is such a thing as sin. If sin is indeed defined this way, then the term "ba'al teshuvah" can likewise be defined accordingly. A ba'al teshuvah is one who returns to conduct in the way he himself thinks is right (and not one who changed his worldview). The question is how, and whether, such a state is possible at all.

In column 173 I proposed an explanation of the matter. I argued there that we have two planes of choice, one above the other. We have a decision whether to choose, and after we have decided to choose there is a decision what to choose. The problem of "weakness of the will" is formulated in the context of the second plane. If a person chooses, he will certainly do what he himself thinks is right, unless he is under compulsion in some way. But there is also the first plane: the decision to choose, or to be a chooser. At times a person decides to let the reins slip from his hands and allow the horses (the inclinations, the drives) to lead the wagon. He decides (!) not to be a chooser, that is, to be passive. Such a decision expresses weak will. A person who decides not to choose does not attend to the consequences of that decision (namely, that as a result he will eat something fattening, desecrate the Sabbath, or steal). And when the "horses" take him, they cause him to do those acts. That is how a person finds himself doing things that he himself thinks should not be done and that he himself would not want to do. He does not decide to do X when, in his eyes, X is an improper act that he does not want to do. He decides to shut his eyes and let go of the reins. It is the "horses" that lead him to do X.[1]

According to this, repentance is returning and taking the reins in hand, that is, returning to being a chooser. Not relinquishing the reins at any moment of life. To maintain control over my actions, and thereby ensure that I always do what I myself want to do. Therefore a "ba'al teshuvah" is indeed, in its Talmudic sense, a person who returns to conduct as he himself always thought and wanted to conduct himself.[2]

A source for this in Parashat Nitzavim

Maimonides devotes two chapters in the Laws of Repentance to matters of choice (chapters 5-6). The question is why he places this discussion specifically there. This is not a legal discussion, and in any event it belongs equally to all contexts of Jewish law. A person has to choose to recite Grace after Meals, to honor parents, or to observe the Sabbath. If so, Maimonides could have placed his discussion of choice in the laws of Grace after Meals or in the laws of the Sabbath. Why did he place it specifically in the Laws of Repentance?

It seems to me that the reason is that in every other legal context, choice is a prior foundation, a condition for fulfilling the commandment. In order to fulfill the commandment, you must first be a chooser and then recite Grace after Meals or observe the Sabbath. But in the matter of repentance, choice is not a condition. It is the essence of repentance. The whole point of repentance is to return to being a chooser. Therefore the discussion of choice should be located specifically in the Laws of Repentance.[3]

According to Maimonides there is no commandment to repent (there is only a commandment to confess when one repents, positive commandment 73), and the reason is that the essence of repentance is to return to being a chooser, and one cannot command a person to be a chooser. His being a chooser is a condition for his being commanded. Or, in another formulation, if he does not choose, he will not choose even when he comes to decide whether to fulfill this very command.

It is possible that Maimonides' source is the Torah itself. In Parashat Nitzavim, at the beginning of chapter 30, the Torah refers to repentance (verses 1-10):

And it shall be, when all these things come upon you—the blessing and the curse that I have set before you—and you take it to heart among all the nations to which the Lord your God has driven you, and you return to the Lord your God and heed His voice, in accordance with all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your captivity and have mercy upon you, and He will again gather you from all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you.…And you shall return and heed the voice of the Lord, and you shall perform all His commandments that I command you today. And the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your land, for good; for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, as He rejoiced over your fathers—if you heed the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes written in this book of the Torah, when you return to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Although the plain meaning of the verses deals with national return and return to the land, the Sages and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) saw here a source for repentance on the personal plane as well. Thus, for example, those who enumerate a commandment to repent (such as Nachmanides) rely on these verses and see in them the command to do so. But Maimonides too, who as we saw does not count a commandment to repent, sees these verses as a promise that Israel will ultimately repent, as he writes in chapter 7 of the Laws of Repentance, halakhah 5:

All the prophets commanded repentance, and the Jewish people are redeemed only through repentance. The Torah has already promised that in the end the Jewish people will repent at the end of their exile, and they will be redeemed immediately, as it is said: "And it shall be, when all these things come upon you… and you shall return to the Lord your God… and the Lord your God will restore…"

Later in the chapter (verses 11-14), the Torah discusses a commandment that according to many commentators is the commandment of repentance:

For this commandment that I command you today is not too wondrous for you, nor is it far away. It is not in heaven, that one should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us and let us hear it, so that we may do it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, that one should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us and let us hear it, so that we may do it?" Rather, the matter is very near to you—in your mouth and in your heart—to do it.

And at the end of the chapter the Torah moves on to discuss choice (verses 15-20):

See, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil: in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His ordinances; then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not heed, and you are led astray and bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not long endure on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, so that you and your offspring may live, by loving the Lord your God, heeding His voice, and cleaving to Him—for He is your life and the length of your days—to dwell on the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.

The Torah too places the issue of choice within the section on repentance, and perhaps this is the source of the arrangement chosen by Maimonides. We should note that, of course, none of those who enumerate the commandments counts a commandment to choose. It is impossible to command a person to be a chooser. But the point of repentance is to take the reins in hand, that is, to be a chooser.

The meaning of vows

When a person sins against a command of the Torah, one may wonder whether at that moment he did not want to obey the Torah's command, or whether he wanted to but had a weak will and failed. The command comes from an external source (God), and therefore it is possible that this is a person who did not really want it. His own desire was not to fulfill the Torah's command, and therefore he violated it (sinned). The only exception in Jewish law regarding which this cannot be said is a vow (and an oath). A vow is the person's own decision. A person who violated a vow cannot say that he simply thought otherwise. After all, the vow is his own decision, and therefore it is clear that this is what he himself thought and wanted to do. And when he violated the vow, this certainly stemmed from weak will, that is, from failure. He deviated from what he himself wanted to do. Thus, offenses involving vows are the clearest offenses of weak will. When one wishes to define an act of repentance in the sense I described above, the natural context for doing so is vows. When one tells a person to repent in the sense of taking the reins in hand, that is, to keep control and decision over his actions in his own hands, one says it to him through the section of vows. Your vows you must fulfill. If you do that, it is an indication that you are not letting go of the reins, that is, that you do not have a weak will. At that point you are also not expected to sin in other legal contexts (and if you nevertheless do so, it is probably because that is what you really want. That is, you are compelled by your convictions).

This is the meaning of "nidrei zeruzin" (vows of self-encouragement; despite the term, the intent is usually an oath rather than a vow). These are vows that a person takes in order to bind himself and do what he himself wants to do. So why is there any need to vow at all? In order to make sure that he does not fail and really does what he decided. The vow comes to deal with weak will and strengthen it. Therefore failure in keeping vows is even more problematic, and expresses weakness of the will even more sharply.

Incidentally, "nidrei zeruzin" also have another meaning that is relevant to our discussion. The rule in Jewish law is that an oath regarding a commandment does not take effect. In principle, this does not apply either when one swears to fulfill a commandment or when one swears to nullify a commandment, for he is "Already sworn and bound from Mount Sinai" (already under oath from Mount Sinai; see Nedarim 8a and elsewhere). But an oath to fulfill a commandment does take effect (see there), as Maimonides writes in his Laws of Oaths, 11:3:

A person is permitted to swear concerning a commandment that he will perform it, in order to spur himself on, even though he already stands sworn to it from Mount Sinai, as it is said: "I have sworn, and I will fulfill it, to keep Your righteous ordinances."

The reason is exactly the picture I described above: this is a way in which a person wants to spur himself to fulfill the commandments. On its face this is puzzling, because if a person swears regarding something optional, one can understand that he is creating here a strong reason to do the thing, one that would not exist without the oath. But when he swears regarding a commandment, we are dealing with something he is obligated to fulfill even without the oath. If he does not fulfill it, he violates a prohibition in any case, so what does the oath help? Is such a person willing to violate one prohibition but not two? That is strange. But in light of what I described above, this can be understood. In "nidrei zeruzin," a person turns the commandments from God's desire into his own desire. Now, in order not to fulfill them, he must reach a state of weak will. If he transgresses, he is no longer under compulsion but bears full responsibility for it. Therefore "nidrei zeruzin" provide a significant incentive for fulfilling the commandments.

From the Yom Kippur that has passed to the coming Yom Kippur

This may perhaps provide an explanation for the annulment of the vows that were made in the past. When I violated vows that I had taken in the past, it was due to weak will. But what about the vows of the coming year? Why, in "Kol Nidrei," do we annul in advance even the vows of the coming year? To be sure, the halakhic decisors disagree about future vows (and also about those of the past). Some hold that this is of no use at all, some hold that it helps only for vows that we do not remember, and some hold that it does not help for future vows. And indeed, in the various liturgical versions we find all three formulations (see a summary here). Thus, for example, in the prayerbook of Rav Amram Gaon (and likewise in most of the versions that were accepted in Western Europe), only past vows appear.

Even with regard to past vows there is room for similar questions. If we really sinned out of weak will, why is the correction to annul those vows? We should have repented for having violated them, not annulled them. Perhaps, as part of repentance (taking the reins in hand), we cancel the transgressions we committed out of weak will, and we do so by annulling the vows that we violated. But with regard to the future, in any case, this is not clear. And perhaps that is why, in the versions mentioned above, there does not appear any annulment of future vows.

According to the approach that "Kol Nidrei" is of no use at all on the level of Jewish law, one might perhaps say that the purpose of this prayer is not the annulment of vows but rather a literary form of repenting for the sins of vows. If so, that is exactly what I said above. At the opening of Yom Kippur we repent for the sins of vows as a basis for general repentance, whose point is to return to being a chooser (to take the reins in hand).

But perhaps this can also explain the view that "Kol Nidrei" is literally an annulment of vows. We saw that when a person repents, he becomes a chooser, a person whose control over his actions is entirely his own. In such a state, vows are not needed. We saw that the purpose of vows is to force me to do what I myself want. They are an expression of weak will. Once I have repented, there is no need for the mechanism of the vow. I am supposed to control my actions even without making vows. If so, as part of that repentance I declare that all my future vows are void. I do not want them and do not need them. The fact that I nevertheless took a vow expresses a decline back into a state in which I need help because I have a weak will. Therefore, each year we return and annul the past vows even though they were annulled in the "Kol Nidrei" of the previous year. The forward annulment was based on my present state as a ba'al teshuvah, but during the year I once again become weak and therefore take vows. At that point, the annulment that was done on the previous Yom Kippur is no longer relevant, because I am no longer in a state in which I do not need vows. Therefore a new annulment will be required on the next Yom Kippur for the sins of vows of that year.

Well, perhaps there is something to all this. For your consideration…

[1] I noted there that a full solution to the problem of "weakness of the will" also requires an explanation of why one cannot ask the same thing about the first plane, but I will not go into that here.

[2] For a fuller discussion of this, see the audio lecture series, Studies on Repentance – 5779.

[3] In those lectures I distinguished between two mechanisms of repentance. Choice is the essence of the mechanism that I there called "essential" or "great" repentance. See also my article on repentance.