This year, as I do each year, as I prepare for the High Holy Days, I look for new interpretations of the prayers in order to make them spiritually fresh for me as I try to bring new meanings and interpretations to the texts.

The interpretation given the Kol Nidrei in Kabbalist literature, more than any other, seems to offer some explanation for the amazing survival of Kol Nidrei down to the present day and its prominent position in our Yom Kippur service.

The passage from Tikkunei Zohar, which is reprinted in the Siddur Yabetz and in many editions of the Mahzor just before the Kol Nidrei itself, makes only passing allusion to the Kabbalist conception of this prayer. The premise on which the Kabbalist school has based its view of the Kol Nidrei, is that the practice of invalidating vows actually has no specific legal basis in the Torah. However, they realize that Israel's very survival and deliverance is based upon the cancellation of a vow, though in the mystical interpretation, the vow was not made by a man but by God Himself in His wrath. It is explained in the Talmud with reference to Psalm 95, verse 11, Asher nishbati v'api, therefore, I have sworn in my wrath that they shall not enter My land of contentment.

It was a vow made by God to punish the people of Israel for its mutiny in the wilderness. In like manner, as told in the Talmud and in greater detail in Exodus Rabbah, Moses, too, managed to persuade God to nullify His threat to eradicate the people of Israel after their sin with the Golden Calf. Finally, one Aggadah by Rabbi Bar Bar-Ghana relates that a voice called out from Heaven, lamenting, Alas, that I have swore (to send My children into exile). But now that I have done it, who can render it null and void? The Kabbalist school holds that it is to this statement that Kol Nidrei has reference.

On the eve of that day on which Israel seals its atonement with God in the presence of all the congregation, the Kol Nidrei most solemnly and in an immemorial melody of most fervent yearning, proclaims it three times over that, actually, the invalidation of certain vows is quite in accordance with the Law of the Torah, even as it is done now on the most sacred day of the Jewish year in the presence of the entire nation. This symbolic legal act subtly implies the fervent entreaty addressed by a downtrodden nation to its Father in Heaven, pleading with Him that He, too, may do even as Israelis are doing at this very moment and annul the vow which He Himself has taken and by which He exiled not only Israel but His own Shechinah, as well.

Israel beseeches Him to relent and to put an end to the sufferings of its Galut even as, long ago, He acceded to the pleas of Moses and annulled His vow to destroy Israel, saying that He had indeed forgiven -- Salachti Kidvarecha -- those words which He uttered on that day, the 10th day of Tishri, in the wilderness, have remained the magic formula, as it were, inherent in Yom Kippur.