Kol Nidre: A Talisman of Refusal

That we could come together and recite Kol Nidre during our Yom Kippur services is because,

despite the different attempts across history to ban this prayer, our ancestors,

in the broad sense of the term, didn't renounce it. Rabbis in Europe

during the 19th century were trained by European imperial states to act as representatives

of their communities and were expected to prove that their community members were worthy of assimilation,

meaning that they were ready to renounce their community's moral tools, of which Kol Nidre

is one, and be abided instead by imperial laws. In a world imperially fashioned,

a community's freedom to re-examine its choices and void those vows which it deems harmful