By Mark Mietkiewicz, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

It’s one of the pivotal moments of the Jewish calendar. Worshippers, many dressed in white, flock to synagogue and wait, often with trepidation, for the cantor to start singing Kol Nidre. But why has a prayer concerned with annulling vows and oaths become so famous?

While the concept of annulling vows dates back to the Mishnah, the first references to Kol Nidre are found in the eighth to 10th centuries.

As explained in Jewish Heritage Online Magazine, Babylonian scholars did express discomfort that vows could be annulled retroactively “from the previous Day of Atonement until this Day of Atonement.”

Although that version took hold, authorities in early medieval Europe amended the text to refer to future vows made “from this Day of Atonement until the next Day of Atonement.” Both wordings can be found in modern prayer books (http://bit.ly/nidr01).

Kol Nidre has also generated controversy outside the Jewish community. It doesn’t take long to stumble on non-Jewish websites alarmed by the existence of this prayer and what they feel is a license to lie and deceive. Explaining Kol Nidre goes through the prayer line by line and clarifies that it applies exclusively to personal vows made by an individual to God and not between individuals (http://bit.ly/nidr03).

Stephen Butterfass writes that “Reform Judaism initially banned Kol Nidre from the High Holiday prayer books as an embarrassment and as a symbol of all that Jews represented to the modern gentile world.”

It was not officially reinstated into the liturgy until the 1978 edition of the Gates of Repentance.

“If some of the ancient rabbis were correct, that ethical and legal objections are outweighed by the need to forgive ourselves for unfulfilled promises in order to attain the necessary state of atonement during Yom Kippur, then Kol Nidre will be with us for a long time (http://bit.ly/nidr04).”

The memorable melody was first notated in 18th-century Berlin but it is not known when it was first sung. The Protestant German composer Max Bruch (1838-1920) arranged Kol Nidre into the cello concerto that is familiar today. However, Chazzanut.com points out that Bruch “did not consider his Kol Nidre to be a Jewish composition, but just an artistic arrangement of… a folk tune (http://bit.ly/nidr05).”

There is no shortage of gifted singers who have performed this incredible prayer. A search in YouTube will deliver you to versions by Moshe Oysher, Mordechai Ben David, Neil Diamond and yes, Perry Como. As well, there are many moving instrumental performances including one by Jacqueline du Pré (http://bit.ly/nidr06).

Other versions merit mention. There is the classic by Al Jolson (http://bit.ly/nidr07) and a wonderful performance by the magnificent Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt (http://bit.ly/nidr08).

While on that page, read the fascinating New York Times story about the man who has made it his mission to restore Rosenblatt’s recordings.

Max Bruch doesn’t have a monopoly on Kol Nidre. Jerusalem’s Jewish National & University Library presents other melodies recorded in Jerusalem, Italy and Morocco (http://bit.ly/nidr12).

And for something very different, you can listen to short excerpts of Nicolas Jolliet’s reggae version using sitar, surbahar, tabla, oud and dumbek (http://bit.ly/nidr10).

For 20 years, Curt Leviant tried to unravel a Kol Nidre mystery. As he writes in Forward, Leviant chanced upon a man named Moshe Ashbel, a Russian immigrant to Israel who told him how before leaving Russia, he had a copy of a Kol Nidre scored by composer Mikhail Erdenko.

“As Ashbel explained it, in 1910, Leo Tolstoy told Erdenko that the Jews had a beautiful, age-old Yom Kippur melody, and Tolstoy asked the violinist and composer to arrange a version for violin and piano. When Ashbel finally realized his dream of making aliyah, the Soviet authorities confiscated his sheet music at the Moscow airport. Now he wanted another copy.”

Follow Leviant as he tries to track down this elusive version of Erdenko’s Kol Nidre (http://bit.ly/nidr13).

Judy (Weissenberg) Cohen will never forget the Kol Nidre that “happened in a place where, we felt, it was appropriate that instead of we asking forgiveness from God, God should be asking for forgiveness from us.”

In 1944, Weissenberg was 15 years old and a prisoner with 800 other women at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. On Yom Kippur, some of the older women asked permission to do something to mark Kol Nidre. They received a candle, a siddur and 10 minutes to pray (http://bit.ly/nidr11).

But instead of praying, the women burst into tears. “I never heard either before or since then such a heart rendering sound. Even though no one really believed the prayer would change our situation, that God would suddenly intervene — we weren’t that naive — but the opportunity to cry and remember together helped us feel better.

It reminded us of our former, normal lives; alleviated our utter misery, even for a littlest while, in some inexplicable way…That is the Kol Nidre I always remember.”

Mark Mietkiewicz can be reached at highway@rogers.com.