Anger and Kol Nidre

We live in a time where great anger pervades our society and impacts communal and individual interactions.  Judaism recognizes the destructive power of anger, and Kol Nidre, perhaps surprisingly, offers us a way of relating to anger as we enter the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. Kol Nidre is not just about annulling vows that we could not keep but is about confronting the anger that makes us commit to doing bad things. Join Elana Stein Hain as she explores what we can learn from Kol Nidre about confronting the role that anger plays in our lives.  

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Ritual and Emotion: Exploring the High Holiday Season
Many Jews find it hard to connect to Jewish ritual, and yet, Jewish ritual has the potential to deepen our emotional lives. In her three-part series, Elana Stein Hain explores three rituals and how each one might strengthen our capacity to express and harness emotions, like anger, joy, or grief. Elana takes us through the High Holidays by examining three key moments of the season. The course opens with Kol Nidre, a central ritual of Yom Kippur, moves into Sukkot as a ritualized expression of joy, and concludes with the rituals of avelut or mourning, reflecting the consciousness of mortality that hovers over this period.

Other sessions in this series:

• Joy and Sukkot
• Sadness and the Rituals of Mourning

This program is part of Ideas for Today, curated courses by Hartman Institute scholars on the big Jewish ideas we need to think better and do better.