Anticipating Kol Nidre, Michael Weiss has written an article in Slate discussing the controversy that surrounds this facet of Yom Kippur:
For observant Jews, Kol Nidre represents the liturgical kickoff for Yom Kippur (opening services are named for the prayer, which means “All vows”), a repetitive and crescendoing piece of Aramaic recited before sunset on the Day of Atonement. For anti-Semites, it’s evidence that Jews are duplicitous and two-faced. The trouble has to do with a misconstrued doctrine of pre-emption.
…From its inception, Kol Nidre never attained universal sanction or appeal. Five of the heads of the Babylonian rabbinical academies rejected it outright, claiming that it undermined both the sanctity of personal vows as well as the necessary custom for canceling them. Nevertheless, the prayer gained traction in the other lands of the diaspora. It came in handy on the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition when Marranos—Spanish Jews who pretended to convert to Christianity to escape persecution—were forced to make bogus professions of faith in public and needed the winking dispensation of God to do so.
Read the full article here.