As Yom Kippur evening falls around the Jewish world, the most sacred of holidays begins with the annulling of vows.
The ritual of Kol Nidrei, performed right before the Yom Kippur evening service, is a dramatic recitation of a legal formula that cancels vows we’ve made to God; that way, fallible humans do not suffer the consequences of having broken them. This ritual, which involves taking all the Torah scrolls out of the ark and reciting the formula three times, has so caught the Jewish imagination that the whole evening service is now called Kol Nidrei, meaning “all vows.”
But what exactly are we doing when we perform the ceremony of Kol Nidrei? Which vows are we annulling, and why?
We use many terms that mean “vow” in the Kol Nidrei prayer, but there are essentially two kinds of vows we’re annulling: nedarim, usually translated as vows, and shevuot, usually translated as oaths. A neder, a vow, relates to an object that is separate from us, as in “that orange is forbidden to me.” A shevuah, an oath, is a declaration related to the self, as in “I will not eat this orange.”
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A shevuah is much harder to dissolve than a neder. The Jerusalem Talmud states that “the people fear oaths more than they fear vows.” Nedarim are relatively easily dissolved by a court, but shevuot may be dissolved only under extenuating circumstances. There’s a weight an oath has because it sits at the level of the soul, as Nachmanides suggests in his commentary on oaths. And yet we dissolve both on Kol Nidrei.
We might apply this teaching to our own teshuvah, our own work of transformation. Maybe it’s easier to ask for forgiveness about something that feels like it was outside us: a mistake we made due to some circumstance that wasn’t really about us. It’s much harder to ask for forgiveness for something that feels like it was part of us. If I snap at someone because I’m running a fever, that’s one thing. If I do it because I’ve built up a pattern of venting steam over a lifetime, it might be more difficult to admit or talk about. It also might be much harder to change.
Maybe a piece of wisdom we might take away from Kol Nidrei is that while dealing with one of these things might be easier, both can be addressed. Even something deep-seated can be examined and, over time, unraveled.
How could this unraveling occur? Consider that in the kabbalah, teshuvah is understood as a kind of rebirth. According to the mystical text Shaarei Orah, Gates of Light, written by ibn Gikatilla in 13th century Spain, the aspect of God known as Divine Mother is also called Binah, understanding. Binah is also the realm of teshuvah, of turning and transformation, because in the mystery of the Divine Mother, we can be reborn in new ways. Binah is the realm of the call of the shofar, and it is also the realm of the annulment of vows, because all these things relate to the rebirth of human beings.
In the sphere of Binah, all beings, and even the Author of the sacred cosmos, can regret and be moved to something different. So perhaps we too should have faith that we can transform. Shaarei Orah says that the word for vow, neder, should be read as nun dar, the letter nun abides. The letter nun signifies faith. Our vows, and our undoing of them, are made in faith that the Source of the Universe can support us in building new lives.
There’s a long-standing Jewish disagreement about Kol Nidrei that we might factor in here as we think about our own transformation. According to Rabbeinu Tam, an Ashkenazi authority of 12th-century France, the vows we annul on Kol Nidrei are future vows. According to Saadya Gaon, a Jewish philosopher of Egypt, Israel and Babylonia in the 10th century, the vows we annul are vows we’ve already taken.
There are advantages to both positions. Rabbeinu Tam seems to feel that it’s problematic to annul vows we’ve already promised. Because why not reach forward in time and dissolve them before they even exist? Saadya Gaon may reason: We can’t annul vows that don’t already exist because we haven’t made them yet. It makes more sense to reach back in time and undo the knots we’ve already made in history.
Both of these views involve a kind of time travel. In one, we are able to affect our future. What we do and say now will change the things we do months and years from now. In the other view, we can change our past. The kind of teshuvah we do in this moment can reach back and touch past moments we wish had been different, alter their meaning. Either way, teshuvah is an act of faith that the intentions we set in this sacred season can alter our larger reality, both where we’ve been and where we are going. We can transform what we’ve touched and will touch, and even what we’ve been and will be. Perhaps this is the essence of the rebirth that happens at this season.
When the Jews of Eastern Europe went to synagogue on Kol Nidrei, their prayers were lit by huge candles made with wicks that had been laid around graves in the cemetery. Through this practice, called kneytlach-leygn, the women who made the candles imbued the wicks with the spirits of ancestors. (Learn more about the practice here.) Each of these thick candles was a ner neshamah, a soul-candle. In this way, the community brought in the prayers of those who had gone before, asking the souls to pray for the living community.
When they got home, people found waiting for them a ner chayyim, a life-candle, representing the souls of the living, so that their lives would be preserved in the year to come. We might say these candles represent past and future. The past is written, the future is unknown, but in the present, Kol Nidrei teaches, we may set heart-intentions that change them both. That’s a powerful ritual, and a chance at rebirth. And it’s as much time-traveling as any of us is ever likely to do.
This essay initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on September 19, 2026. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
