Rabbi Alan Lew:

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. 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.

From another sermon:

. . . way back in 1970, my first year in California, I was about as distant from Judaism as it was possible to be. How distant? It was Erev Yom Kippur and I had no idea that it was. But the TV was on in the living room of my house in Gualala, California, and I just happened to be walking through the room when a news broadcast caught my attention. They were doing a feature about Yom Kippur. Someone was playing Kol Nidre on a cello. It went through me like a knife. That melody struck a deep chord. It went all the way in. It went straight to my soul.

When we recite the Kol Nidre, God calls out to the soul, in a voice the soul recognizes instantly because it is the soul’s own cry. You may have come here for other reasons. You may not have come here because you knew your soul needed to hear this. Nevertheless, here you are, sitting in your body and suddenly your soul hears this music and it gives a jump, and it startles you to feel this. Your soul is hearing its name called out, and its name is . . . pain — grief — shame — humiliation — loss — failure — death, or at least, that is its first name. That is the name the first few notes of the Kol Nidre calls out.

. . . the thing about the Kol Nidre is that it starts at this moment of heartbreak. This moment is the ground of its being. And it comes on so suddenly, so abruptly. There is no buildup whatsoever. It’s the very first thing that happens. It happens even before we have a chance to sit down.

No, excuse me; there is something that happens first. But if you came in even fifteen seconds late you may have missed it. Before we recite the Kol Nidre, we convene a Beit Din, a rabbinical court — these [three] people standing on the Bima with the Torahs — and they give us permission to pray "Im (with) Ha-avaryonim." But what does this mean? Who are the avaryonim and why does a court need to convene in order to give us permission to pray with them?

To learn the answer, read the rest.

In Your hand is the soul of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind.
The soul belongs to You,
The body is Your creation,
Oh, have compassion on Your handiwork.
Soul and body are Yours,
God, act for Your name's sake.
We come trusting in Your name,
for You are called a great and merciful God.
For your name's sake,
Pardon our iniquity, for it is great.