Rabbi Friedman

 
I find it fascinating that all origins of the Kol Nidrei prayer remain shrouded in mystery.  It is unclear when the text was originally written, by whom, and where.  The origin of its now-familiar accompanying tune is equally untraceable.  Nonetheless, Kol Nidrei has become one of the most significant occasions in our entire liturgical calendar.  Its significance goes beyond the meaning of the text or the musical notes. 
 
Those who have studied anthropology or religious theory know that there are certain actions which take on a significance beyond their simple explanation.  So, then, it cannot be the specific words or the notes themselves that have meaning.  Rather, it is the experience of gathering annually on the same night, coming together in our sacred sanctuary, surrounded as always by those we hold dear, and being supported by our community.  It is in that context that Kol Nidrei becomes so powerful for us.  For me, the tune is the most significant aspect of this ritual.  The music is heard but once a year yet it is instantly recognizable, signifying that the Day of Atonement is once more at hand.
 
With the first three notes, I find myself recalling the generations that brought me to this point.  My late grandparents – and even my great-grandparents whom I never knew – are somehow present with me, like the Torah scrolls which have temporarily left the ark.  In fact, our sages teach that each time we stand before God to recite the Amidah we begin by calling upon the merits of our ancestors.  Their good deeds and acts of loving kindness allow us to approach God with equal measures of dignity and humility.  Our ancestors are thus called as witnesses, standing silent vigil and holding us accountable for our words and our actions.  It is during those all too brief moments of Kol Nidrei that the entire Jewish people stands united in time and space, generations linked through primeval language and mysterious melody.
 
May our words and our deeds make our ancestors proud.  And may we live to inspire future generations to embody the hope and the dedication of the Jewish people.
 

Cantor Sacks

My connection to tallit stems from my early Jewish experiences.  As a young girl growing up in a Conservative synagogue in the 1980s, the most remarkable thing about receiving my tallit for my Bat Mitzvah was how unremarkable the idea was. All of the men and most of the women in our synagogue regularly wrapped themselves in tallitot during services. 
 
From a very young age, I yearned to participate in the intimate ritual of unfolding the tallit, kissing both ends, and then swinging the sheet of fabric around your head until it rested comfortably on your shoulders. Although the synagogue that I attended with my family had only recently begun to include women in all aspects of public ritual, the relevance of gender to this particular piece of ritual garb was never a question. Why wouldn’t I wear a tallit for my Bat Mitzvah?
 
To this day, then, I cannot imagine participating in worship without my tallit – I feel incomplete without it.  Whatever my state of mind before I begin to pray, donning my tallit serves as a transitional moment – a physical manifestation of my choice to move from the realm of the mundane to the realm of the sacred. 
 
Each time I put it on, I sense past prayer moments.  I smell the lingering scents of the various spaces in which I daven.  I feel the softness of the front fringes, worn from fiddling with them during long services. My tallit both links me to those praying around me and serves as a shield for individual moments of prayer. As the years pass and the memories grow, I look forward to sharing my relationship to the tallit with future generations; to helping them understand how an instinctual action can carry such potency.