Kol Nidrei: "The Anti-Semite's Favorite Jewish Prayer"

Every year in October people like Michael Weiss (see below) and a slew of other rabbinic apologists spin Yom Kippur's Kol Nidrei (also spelled "Nidre") absolution of vows into a "context"-based confutation of assertions that it allows Talmudists to cheat in business, politics and religion by permitting them to break their future oaths and promises; which indeed it does, a fact made plain by the belief and more importantly -- the record of behavior throughout history of not only the am-ha'aretz ("ignorant Jews"), but the theological, governmental and commercial elite among the adherents of Orthodox Judaism.

Unquestionably, the public relations-savvy Reform Judaism --the equivalent of Unitarianism in Christianity--has eschewed Kol Nidrei, since they regard it as too blatant an indicator of rabbinic deceit to be salvaged.

In my book Judaism Discovered, on pp. 965-980, I refute every major defense of Kol Nidrei: that it refers only to past vows, oaths and promises; that it constitutes only pious penitence for failing to keep these; or that the nullification of oaths and vows is confined to the realm of the "personal" (as Weiss asserts - as if lying on only a "personal" basis is somehow exculpatory).

Despite the employment of a Biblical text by Mr. Weiss, the fact is that even the Mishnah admits there is no Biblical basis for Yom Kippur's Kol Nidrei liar's rite. Weiss alludes to a supposed Kol Nidrei-like process in "ancient Israel," without telling his readers that this process was founded on the corrupt oral tradition of men, not the word of God as found in the written Torah.

What is perhaps most interesting about the Talmudic defense of Kol Nidrei is the thought cop stigma which is attached to those who dare to reject Judaism's own story concerning it. If you think independently of Judaism and the Michael Weisses of the world and believe, based on the evidence, that Kol Nidrei is a license to lie, you are automatically an "anti-semite." More