Kol Nidrei at Neshamah: A Moving Melody and a Good Enough Apology

Every year, Yom Kippur begins the same way and still it takes my breath away.

Our Kol Nidrei opens with an instrumental performance of that haunting, ancient melody on cello and piano. If you were there, you felt it. The cello carried the ache and longing of generations, and the piano held it gently underneath, like a hand on a shoulder. No words were needed.

The music said what all of us were feeling as we stepped into the holiest night of the year: we are here, we are imperfect, and we are ready to begin again.

Prayers at the Ark

Then came one of my favorite moments of the entire High Holy Days. We opened the ark and invited families to come forward together and offer a personal prayer for the new year.

Parents stood with their children. Couples stood side by side. Grandparents leaned in close to grandchildren.

Some prayed in Hebrew, some in English, and some in silence. I watched a little one whisper something into a parent’s ear before they both closed their eyes. They said it together, standing before the Torah, at the very start of 5787.

At Neshamah prayer is not something performed for you from a distance. It belongs to you, and the ark is open to every family who wants to stand before it.

Forrest and the Good Enough Apology

My sermon for Kol Nidrei was about a kid named Forrest and what he taught me about apologizing. Read the sermon here:

https://niboca.org/when-mediocre-is-good-enough/

Here is what I have come to believe. So many of us wait to apologize until we can do it perfectly. We rehearse the words. We wait for the right moment. We worry that if we cannot fix everything, we should not say anything at all. And so the apology never comes.

But Yom Kippur does not ask us for perfect apologies. It asks us for real ones. A good enough apology is honest. It names what happened. It takes responsibility without excuses. And it leaves the door open for repair, even if the repair takes time.

Carrying It Forward

I left Kol Nidrei with that cello melody still in my ears and those families’ faces still in my heart. And I left with a question I am still asking myself: who is waiting for my good enough apology?

Maybe you have someone like that too. The Days of Awe are behind us, but the work of teshuvah, of returning, continues all year long. It is never too late to reach out.

If you would like to talk about what this season stirred in you, I would love to hear from you. Everything at Neshamah starts with a conversation. We’re here. whenever you’re ready.

With love & blessings,

Rabbi Amy