Sermon – Kol Nidre: A beautiful oops

Written by Rabbi Hannah Kingston — 13 October 2024

Every night, when I put my son to bed, we read a story. Very high brow titles that we both enjoy, such as Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and my personal favourite, The Gruffalo.

One of the books on his shelf is titled, ‘Beautiful Oops.’ it is one of his favourite books to read. It has flaps, different textures, and an incredibly fun pull-out section. Each page details a mistake you might make whilst crafting, spills and splatters, bends and tears.

What this has to do with Kol Nidre, is a fascinating question. I am aware that it is probably rare, to hear about a book for a toddler, at the beginning of a Kol Nidre sermon. But every time I read this book I am struck by its profound messaging. Full of crossings out, holes, overlays, this book teaches us a valuable lesson, ‘when you think you have made a mistake, think of it as an opportunity to make something beautiful.’

It is a reminder to me, every time I read it, and an important learning for us all as we arrive here this Yom Kippur, a year older, in our practically imperfect states.

None of us are the exact people we thought we would be a year ago. We have made mistakes, accepted defeat, carried the weight of our standards.

At times we may have become trapped in our own personal failures. And we have also witnessed other people’s lives stay trapped in horror, as those in power refuse to admit their own failures. We have seen our world leaders fail to bring down the cost of living, to negotiate for peace, to return loved ones home for Rosh Hashanah with their family.

The wisdom of my toddler’s bedtime reading perhaps feels like something we could all do with hearing. ‘When you think you have made a mistake, think of it as an opportunity to make something beautiful.’

Have we been willing to own our own mistakes, take responsibility for our failures? Have we then seen those moments of shortcoming as an opportunity to make something beautiful? Or have we instead hunched over a little more in ourselves, attempted to shy away from the error, or from the perceived judgements of the world?

Have we always greeted our own moments of failure with compassion, have we been kind to ourselves?

Has each mistake been a beautiful oops?

We began our service this evening with the powerful and evocative music of the Kol Nidre. Our Kol Nidre prayer gives us the opportunity to erase our shortcomings and create a clean slate.

But the language is confusing, is it an absolution of the sins of the past year, or does it act as a prerequisite release for the sins of the year ahead? There are two different traditions. For those of us from Ashkenazi backgrounds, the Kol Nidre absolves us from the failures of the year past. For those of us from a Sephardi tradition, the Kol Nidre sets us up ‘Mi Yom Kippurim zeh, ad Yom Kippurim Ha’bah’, from this Yom Kippur, to the Yom Kippur in the year ahead, covering us for the oaths and commitments we have not yet made.

With either translation the intent of Kol Nidre can easily be misunderstood to deem us to be untrustworthy in our promises. It can be read as an absolution of personal responsibility, undermining our own integrity to commit.

If instead of viewing these words through a negative lens, seeing the Kol Nidre as setting us up for our inevitable failure, we read it as a conscious acknowledgement of our human shortfalls, the Kol Nidre can be urging us to pre-emptively practice self-compassion and forgiveness. We allow ourselves the opportunity for renewal, flaws and all.

Kol Nidre sets an internal narrative for us in the year ahead. By acknowledging that we will fail, we can cast the emotions of failure aside, rather than carrying like a weight with us. The words of the Kol Nidre are calling us to put into place an emotional strategy to equip us for our failure, so that they do not leave us immobile, but rather offer us opportunities for growth.

Rabbi Nicola said on Rosh Hashanah:

‘We don’t have to be perfect either – and we should not expect perfection in others.  Every one of us is flawed, and that’s OK.  Every one of us can learn to recognise our shortfalls, and work to improve.’

She spoke about our how the ancestors of our Jewish tradition are not saints in our narratives, but rather we tell their stories ‘warts and all’. Because in Jewish tradition, mistakes are part of our own creation narrative, with sin being practiced before the act of creating the world is even completed.

Rabbi Yohanan bar Hanina teaches in Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b) that just ten hours after humankinds initial creation we had failed by eating from the tree of knowledge. Yet we are not wiped out at this point. God still declares us good, and goes on to rest the next day.

We are flawed, and we will fail. The key is, how do we do it well?

Over the next 25 hours we will be faced with our shortfalls many times, referred to by different terminologies, but each a recognition of our human failures nonetheless. These different metaphors express how we have failed in many ways, each causing us a different visceral reaction that we need to grapple with in order to ask for forgiveness.

We read in the bible that sin is a stain. We plead in psalms (Psalm 51:4), ‘Wash me thoroughly of my iniquities and purify me from my sin.’

We also read that sin is a weight, that we need to carry. The Hebrew term, ‘Nosa Avon’, literally translates to carry iniquity and we will read tomorrow of the Goat of Azazel, who bears away all our iniquities by having the weight of our sins symbolically placed upon him. It is only through the contact transfer that the goat assumes this burden, it can carry out its responsibility.

Sin also holds the narrative of a debt, as we read in Jeremiah (16:18) ‘I will pay them in full, doubly for their iniquity.’ Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav takes this further and teaching that all sin leads to debt that we need to repay, and we do so through teshuvah.

These different metaphors matter. In all three of these cases, we talk of failure as a physical state that feels like a burden. We wear its mark, carry its weight with us and it hangs over us like money owed.

The physicality of each of these metaphors, shows that we are unable to just brush off our own iniquities, we can be left feeling trapped, in a frozen state, unable to move forward. And when we have also had to bear the failures of those in power, when we have witnessed so much pain in our world, when our people are still missing and war rages on, it is no wonder that each of us came into this room so greatly changed from the last year. For, how are we able to walk in lightly, when we physically bear so much pain?

The Sefer ha-Hinukh, a thirteenth century Spanish exposition of the commandments, warns people that ruminating on their mistakes and failures can distract them from performing mitzvot in the current moment. Bearing the emotions of guilt, or shame, that we often feel when we make a mistake can misdirect our positive trajectory, stopping us from reaching our potential to do good in the world. It can leave us frozen in failure, unable to move forward.

Perhaps, one of the most common terminologies for failure, or sin, in the Hebrew Bible and throughout our liturgy, the word ‘Chet’, can offer us more insight into how to deal with moments of failure.

Although this word is commonly translated as sin, what it truly means is missing the mark, or missing an opportunity. So if our objective each year is to become the best versions of ourselves, to reach our fullest potential, failure is the moment when that objective remains unmet.

Classical musician, conductor and master teacher, Benjamin Zander, suggests an approach to failure that is rooted in the idea of missed opportunity. He acknowledges that success and failure go together like the front and back of your hand. But he suggests that if we approach each failure with a light-hearted manner, we can focus more on the success.

Zander teaches that every time his students make a mistake they should throw our hands up in the air and exclaim, ‘How fascinating’. When the weight of mistakes normally draws us down, this action physically breaks us out of the downward spiral, by causing us to instead throw ourselves upwards.

Then, once we have been broken out of our frozen states, it allows us the opportunity to ask the next questions, ‘what went wrong? What can I do better next time?’ With this thinking, our failures begin to lose their power over us, and instead begin to feel like a gateway to the next moments of our lives, they hold infinite amounts of possibility.

Author Elizabeth Day, and host of the podcast ‘How to fail’, based on a series of interviews with successful people about what they had learned from things going wrong, writes ‘lessons bequeathed by episodes of failure were ineffably more profound than anything I had gleaned from its slippery shadow-twin, success.’

Moments of failure are an inherent part of humanity, and when approached with they right mindset, can lead to huge opportunity.

There is a very famous story from midrash (Genesis Rabbah 8), about the creation of humankind, imperfections and all. It teaches:

When God came to create Humankind, the ministering angels divided into various factions and various groups. Some of them were saying: ‘Let them not be created,’ and some of them were saying: ‘Let them be created.’

Kindness said: ‘Let them be created, as they perform acts of kindness.’

Truth said: ‘Let them not be created, as they are all full of lies.’

Righteousness said: ‘Let them be created, as they perform acts of righteousness.’

Peace said: ‘Let them not be created, as they are all full of discord.’

While the ministering angels were busy deliberating with one another, the Holy One created Adam.

God said to them: ‘Why are you deliberating? Adam has already been created.’

We were intentionally created perfectly imperfect, put into this world to make mistakes. It is how we recover from those moments of failure, that is most telling.

It is true that there will be some failures of the next year will be too raw to talk about – failures of our bodies as they stop working in the way the used to, or are unable to provide for us as we wish, failures of relationships, as they breakdown, or we are just not able to form them, failures of a larger system, something we are out of control of, something that happens to us.

There are failures that will not feel like a moment to exclaim ‘how fascinating’. We will not just get over them, deeming them as opportunities of learning – they may be painful, filled with loss and grief. And as we said on Erev Rosh Hashanah it is ok for us to feel those emotions, to hold them present in our lives.

But for those moments that we are in control of, for the mistakes we make through knowledge, or the failures that occur through acts of our own, let us not see them as weights to bear, but instead as gateways to growth and development.

James Joyce wrote in Ulysses; ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.’

If we believe that mistakes are part of our story, we know they are going to happen, then our human failings no longer hold us back but instead become part of the process, the learning that ultimately leads to fulfilling our own vision and potential.

We must acknowledge that this change in mindset will not come to us easily. To have this outlook is not just a feeling but a discipline, it takes a conscious effort to turn the moments that might have formerly pulled us down into the moments that can prop us up.

May the words of the Kol Nidre ring in our ears, not as an absolution from our failures, but instead as an acknowledgement of our human condition.

Over the next year may we not fear failure as a calamity from which it is impossible to recover, but instead build up our emotional resilience, ready to take on the year, failure and all.

And may we attempt to exclaim ‘how fascinating,’ to see each failure as an opportunity for growth, even if it is not immediate.