(Communication to the Editor)
Sir:
I was very much interested in reading in your issue of October 7th, that the Synagogue of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism had abolished the Kol Nidre formula and substituted for it the 130th Psalm. As this is the morning after Yom Kippur, and as I am in a very happy mood, I wish to make some comment on this change. I congratulate the Society. I agree with the reasoning of Rabbi Mordecat M. Kaplan, that “when we gather in our Synagogue on Yom Kippur Eve. we ought to have an opportunity to give vent to our deepest religious yearnings.”
The music of the Kol Nidre, he conceives as most appropriate. But of the text he says, that “no text could be more inappropriate and less in keeping with the spirit of Yom Kippur than the text of Kol Nidre. It is a dry legalistic formula, couched in ancient Aramaic” etc. Then he goes on to say that “it is poor religious taste, to say the least, to resort to a legalistic formula, when we have ready at hand so divine a poem as the 130th Psalm, which opens with the outcry, ‘Out of the Depths have I called Thee, O Lord.'”
I am glad to know that Rabbi Kaplan and the Society for the Advancement of Judaism have come to this conclusion. I have often criticised Reform Judaism from within. But I have always maintained that its spirit was right. That is why we made changes in the ritual. For example, we do not pray for the restoration of animal sacrifices in a Temple in Jerusalem. An that is why we have abolished the Kol Nidre text.
As a matter of fact, the selection of the 130th Psalm was made by the writers of the Union Prayer Book. We have been opening the Kol Nidre Service in Reform Temples for over a generation with this psalm, and we have used the Kol Nidre melody for it. So I am glad that another Jewish Congregation will have the benefit of our idea. The idea therefore, is borrowed from the Union Prayer Book. So I would say in the spirit of Akiba, in the third chapter of the Pirke Aboth, it is good to borrow an idea from the Union Prayer Book. It is still better to make known that it is borrowed.
Once more congratulating the Society and Rabbi Kaplan, and wishing everybody a good year. I beg to be
Sincerely yours, SAMUEL SCHULMAN. Rabbi. Temple Beth-El. New York, Oct. 7, 1927
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
