A lost Europe is mourned in this version of Kol Nidrei

The composer Alexander Goldscheider wrote this instrumental setting of the prayer to reflect, as it should, on individual and family history.

He writes:

Tonight starts the highest Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, synonymous with the famous prayer Kol Nidre. I wrote my music version 25 years ago, upon the death of my beloved father František, and recorded it with our son Chris, who plays the violin and viola, and beautifully so. The video (in the Czech version of this text below) is very recent and it is not really linked to Yom Kippur, but it is very much connected with the life of my dad, his family and with millions of other families within European Jewry. The very end of the video is also, in a very different spirit, linked to the family of our daughter Lisa, whose three wonderful boys resemble the trio that peacefully prays at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

I find the setting, and the embedded images, exquisitely moving.

Share if you agree.