Kol Nidre is about speaking true - about the power of speech.

It is a gift to us from a time far back in our tribal consciousness when we seemed to understand these things better than we do now; when we seemed to understand the Biblical warning that we are absolutely accountable for -- cal motzei pie ha-adam -- everything that comes out of our mouths.

In fact, our ancestors took this so seriously, that they instituted the Kol Nidre service to deal with it. They realized that it was a very serious thing to say something and not carry through with it. So here at the holiest moment of the year -- here at the moment when the purity of our soul is a matter of life and death -- they instituted a ritual for the annulment of vows so that we wouldn't have to bear the guilt of abusing this extremely potent and sacred implement -- the power of speech.

The prominence of place given to speech in the Rambam's Hilchot Teshuvah is striking. [This is the same text from which Rabbi Scheinerman drew her 4-week teshuva program which we linked to throughout Ellul.] These are the first words of this code:

When we commit a sin, whether intentional or unintentional, and then we make repentance, we are obliged to make confession (vidui) before God, and this confession must be in words. Even in the days of the Great Temple, when we brought sacrifices for our sins, either intentional or unintentional, the sacrifice did not atone for these sins unless we did teshuvah, unless we made a verbal confession of them.

Later he writes:

And what is Teshuvah; we abandon our sin, and removes it from our thoughts, and resolve in our hearts that we won't do it anymore. We repent of the past, and proclaim before the knower of all purposes that we won't return to this kind of behavior again. And we need to make confession with our lips moving; to say these things out loud that we have resolved in his heart.

But the Rambam makes clear that these must not be empty words.

All who make a verbal confession and have not really resolved in their hearts to change, indeed, they resemble someone who goes into the mikvah with a sheretz (a trafe insect) in his hand; the mikvah has no effect until he casts the sheretz away. And not only does this confession have to be heartfelt, it needs to be specific, and it is praiseworthy to make confession in public as well.

So clearly, verbal confession - bringing our condition up to speech, connecting our speech to the deep and shadowy world of the heart - is basic to what we are doing tonight.

The liturgy gives us words - immense quantities of words - as guides to the confessions of our hearts. But the words can swamp our intentions to speak true.

What's difficult is knowing how to fill in the right thoughts and feelings between the lines of text, knowing what to think about and what to pray for as my eyes scan the words on the page. In a sense, the challenge for me today is the opposite of what it was 20 years ago, not how to stick to the words, but how to stray from them, how to let my mind digress and touch on all the things I want to pray for in the year to come.

. . . How do we possibly pray for everything? How do we decide what to really focus on? How do we give each prayer its proper dosage of thought and concentration without spreading ourselves too thin? It's an overwhelming task. During these High Holy Days, we spend so much time in shul - for many Jews, in fact, these are the only hours of formal prayer experienced all year - and yet in the end a few days hardly seems like enough time to articulate the many prayers we have.

That's how I felt as the Ne'ilah service proceeded: Wait! I'm not done yet! I have lots more Teshuva to do! Slow down!

I've been davening in the same place (sometimes in the same seat) for four years. (Mostly) same melodies. Mostly same shaliach tzibburim. All of which help create a base from which to further deepen my understanding each year.