Spanish Inquisition Undemonized Hoffman

All These Vows: Kol Nidre, by Lawrence A. Hoffman. 2011

KOL NIDRE Does Cover Promises Made to Other People. Author Shows Fairness to Christianity RE: Spanish Inquisition

As per the title of this book, KOL NIDRE is Aramaic for KOL HAN’DARIM “all the vows”. (Hoffmann, p. 7). This work is a fascinating study of this much-misunderstood subject.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF KOL NIDRE

[As a Judeorealist, I criticize Jews when such criticism is merited owing to its pertinence to issues surrounding Polish-Jewish and Christian-Jewish relations, but am careful to avoid making false or groundless accusations against Jews. I have not seen convincing evidence that Jews use KOL NIDREI to lie to gentiles, at least not in modern societies. For this reason, I do not support such accusations.]

However, it is not correct, as sometimes asserted, that KOL NIDRE only potentially covers promises made to God, and not those promises made to other human beings. Rabbi Hoffmann comments, “KOL NIDRE annuls these varieties of sacred affirmation, either MISREPRESENTATIONS OF FACT (I swore that I knew nothing about a shady business deal, when in fact I did) or AFFIRMATIONS OF BEHAVIOR—Promises of what I would or would not do, made to myself, to God, or to other people. Some versions stipulate promises made in the past (from last Yom Kippur to this one); others denote the future (from this Yom Kippur to the next one).” (p. 7. Emphasis is in original).

The very-real problems with KOL NIDREI cannot forever be avoided and, for this reason, they have motivated the creation of modernized versions in recent times. Rabbi David A. Teutsch quips, “The Ashkenazic formula for KOL NIDRE anticipates vows made in the coming year, thereby creating doubt about the reliability of Jewish promises. Perhaps, then, the release aims only at vows made under duress, such as under the Inquisition; or perhaps, the referent is vows that are unintentionally forgotten. BUT THE WORDS OF THE RELEASE SUPPORT NEITHER OF THESE EXPLANATIONS, and this failure to explain KOL NIDRE away has resulted in the development of several KOL NIDRE variants…Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan…moved to a version of the release that covered past vows rather than prospective ones—a return to the original intent, still in use in parts of the Jewish world.” (pp. 124-125; Emphasis added).

THE SPANISH INQUISITION: NOT BLACK-AND-WHITE

Rabbi Marc Saperstein takes issue with the common Jewish misconception that KOL NIDREI was widely used, under Christianity, owing to the need for Jews to be released from oaths that they had been compelled to make (as in forced conversions). He states that, “Iberian Jews lived under the shadow of the Inquisition not for centuries but for fewer than thirteen years, from its establishment in January 1480 until the Expulsion; officers of the Inquisition did not enforce baptism, but rather enforced faithful observance of Christianity by those who had been baptized; torture was used not to punish deviations from Christian practice but for refusal to confess such deviations.” (p. 35).

Rabbi Saperstein then refers to the research conducted by Ellis Rivkin, who had taught Jewish history to two generations of rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Saperstein writes, “Rivkin presented an alternative picture of the Iberian converso and the Inquisition: not all Jews who accepted baptism in the wake of the 1391 riots were compelled to do so, and many who converted in subsequent years did so voluntarily; by the 1470s and 1480s, three or four generations later, most of the ‘New Christian’ conversos were quite content to be accepted into Christian society and retained Jewish folkways more out of family tradition than out of a secret Jewish loyalty; accusations documented in Inquisitorial records had to be read skeptically; some of those who were burned at the stake died proclaiming their faithfulness to Christianity, insisting that the accusations of Judaizing were slanders.” (p. 37).

TWO SIDES TO JEWISH-CHRISTIAN ANTAGONISMS

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffmann exhibits refreshing candor as he writes, “Similarly, the ALENU (a Rosh Hashanah prayer composed in late antiquity and used since the fourteenth or fifteenth century to close every service) once included a phrase categorizing other faiths as ‘praying to emptiness and vanity and to a god who cannot save them.’ However much the line originally denoted pagan polytheism, Jews in medieval Europe were convinced it meant Christians. So again, we got rid of it, this time, perhaps, because we were afraid of retaliation by the church; today, however, reprisal is not an issue, yet except for some ultra-Orthodox prayer books, our liturgy still omits the line simply because it is not something we wish to say.” (p. 5).