To Pray With Transgressors

Kol Nidre, 5784

בִּישִׁיבָה שֶׁל מַֽעְלָה וּבִישִׁיבָה שֶׁל מַֽטָּה

עַל דַּֽעַת הַמָּקוֹם וְעַל דַּֽעַת הַקָּהָל

אָֽנוּ מַתִּירִין לְהִתְפַּלֵּל עִם הָעֲבַרְיָנִים

By authority of the court on high, and by authority of the court below, with the consent of God and the consent of the congregation, we give permission to pray with the transgressors.

This is my favorite part of the Kol Nidre service. It is short, simple, and powerful. Before we begin our Yom Kippur services, before Yom Kippur even begins, we invite transgressors to come and pray with us. But this invocation also raises several interconnected questions. Who are the transgressors we are referring to? Why do we need to allow them to pray with us? Why do we say this right at the beginning of Yom Kippur, and not on other times of the year?

I went looking for the answers to these questions, and stumbled upon a recording of a shiur, or lecture, given 15 years ago by Rabbi Adam Mintz, who I found out is currently teaching my wife’s Talmud class. It’s a small Jewish world. In his shiur, he goes over the historical background of the phrase. “Avaryanim,” he notes, does not just mean “sinners,” because the assumption is that we are all sinners here. We have all made mistakes. And certainly, on other days of the year, we don’t feel the need to give special permission to sinners to pray, even though we most certainly are praying with sinners the rest of the year.

So who are the “transgressors,” the avaryanim? They are those who have been excommunicated, meaning those who no longer count in a minyan, who are normally forbidden to pray in a congregation. Historically, you might have been excommunicated for breaking a communal norm, denying a faith tenet of the community…or converting away from Judaism. It is this last version that has spurned the myth that these lines were added to Kol Nidre to welcome in the Conversos, or Marranos, who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition but still held onto their Judaism in secret. These lines would then let the Conversos know they were still welcome despite their public professions of Christianity.

And yet, while this is a beautiful idea, it’s not true. This text actually predates the Spanish Inquisition. They first appear in the writing of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, in the 13th century (200 years and half a continent away from the Spanish Inquisition), who wrote that we say these lines before Kol Nidre. He was basing this off of his teacher, Rabbi Eliezer ben Yoel HaLevi, who wrote that we welcome in excommunicates before Yom Kippur, since the Talmud teaches us כל תענית שאין בה מפושעי ישראל אינה תענית, “every fast that does not include the sinners of Israel is not a true fast.” Furthermore, says Rabbi Eliezer, we welcome in these excommunicates, regardless of if they asked. Which is why in Rabbi Meir’s wording, he says not “Permission to pray with transgressors,” but “permission to pray to transgressors.”

So, if these 12th and 13th century German rabbis are not referring to Conversos, who are they referring to? To people who converted to Christianity for monetary gain. To people who left their community because you could not get ahead in this world as a Jew. To people who sold their community out. And still, these rabbis say, we issue a proclamation ahead of Yom Kippur that they can come and pray with us. They don’t even have to ask because they probably wouldn’t ask. They wouldn’t want to ask. But still we welcome them to come and pray with us.

In my point of view, this truth is more beautiful than the myth. The Conversos wanted to pray, and the myth claims this invocation is meant to make them still feel welcome. But in reality, it was addressed at Jews who had left, Jews who had no desire to pray – and still, we welcome them. In the same manner that we open our Seder by saying “Ha Lachma Anya,” this is the bread of affliction, making a point that all are welcome at our Seder, we open Yom Kippur by announcing that all are free to pray with us. It doesn’t matter that the Jews who don’t want to pray aren’t here, and the Jews who do are. We are making a point. We are open. We want you here.

And we want you here so badly, we verge on Chutzpah against God to do it! Think about the audacity of the claim “By the authority of the court on high…with the consent of God!” How do we know that God gives consent? This is such a radical idea that one 17th century rabbi, the Bach (Rabbi Yoel Sirkis) states that God gives his consent only on the assumption that the transgressors will repent. For how else could we say that God consents? Who are we to speak for God? And yet we do. On Yom Kippur we welcome in all those who have turned their back on the community, and we claim we welcome them in with no less authority than God’s. Heaven and Earth, the Divine and the Mundane, all are open and welcoming on Yom Kippur.

But then why do we not say this line at every service? Why do we not throw open our arms at the start of every Shabbat? Because Yom Kippur is special, and hospitality is a two-way street. We say to those who have turned their backs on us “We are welcoming you in on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year!” but if they do not turn up, what are we to do? We cannot force people in. We can only be welcoming. So, on our holiest day of the year, the day when we begin our personal journeys toward self-improvement, we make an exception for those who would normally not be welcome. We say “start your journey here!” But the rest must come from outside of us.

So here is my challenge for you tonight. If you are not among the avaryanim, if you are a member of the community, it is to be welcoming to everyone. Not just tonight, but always. It is to recognize that there are people who might be coming back for the first time in a long time, and they have just as much a right to be here now. And if you feel that you are one of the avaryanim, those cut off from the community, and you find yourself here now, know that you are welcome and that you have just as much of a right to pray and be in community as anybody else. We want you here. We just declared before Heaven and Earth, by the consent of all of us here now, that you are welcome -- in our synagogue, as part of our community – not just tonight but throughout the rest of the New Year, and beyond.