Word: kol
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...somber melody of Kol Nidre, the centuries-old prayer of atonement, resonated off the walls of Memorial Church Tuesday evening as more than 200 people marked the observance of Yom Kippur, Judaism's most sacred...
...really knows where the text of Kol Nidre originated, but throughout Jewish history, the legal loophole has been a useful one. The service for Kol Nidre was put to use in medieval Spain, for example, when recently Christianized Visigoths began "encouraging" Jews to convert to Catholicism--and threatening them with death if they declined the offer. Facing these appealing options, many Jews publicly converted while continuing to live secretly as Jews. Faced with the fact that so many of them had made false vows before God, Jews took advantage of the Kol Nidre formula, knowing that if they appeared...
...late medieval period, non-Jews in authority who learned about Kol Nidre found further ammunition against the Jews, arguing that their religion exempted them from keeping legal promises. But Kol Nidre only annuls vows taken between man and God, not vows involving others. Today, Kol Nidre forces us each year to confront our weaknesses, to remember all of the private promises made and not kept and to remember the power of words to destroy us and restore...
...bearing on their school life. While enough students were Jewish at my pubic high school to merit school closing on Yom Kippur, whatever other people from school were doing on that day off was completely irrelevant to me. I would just come home from school on the afternoon of Kol Nidre, and at my home and synagogue--the only places I went that day--it was the Day of Atonement for everyone...
...remember Kol Nidre night of my first year, when I wandered around the Yard on my way back from the service. Groups of people in suits and dresses returned early, walking in clumps toward the Yard, while students in jeans slipped past them on their way to the library or the Square. I suddenly realized that between the evening's shadows and the cancelled vows, the night had visually divided students by their clothing into those who were observing the holiday and those who were not. This is diversity in action, some might say. Yet it is the sort...