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Back in my callow youth, before I met my wife, I dated another Jewish woman. When she described Yom Kippur, I said something like, “you mean it’s a really serious, solemn day when you’re supposed to reflect on all your sins and moral shortcomings, and confess and atone for them?  That sounds depressing! Why would anyone want to do that?”

Since that time I’ve attended Kol Nidre (the evening service of Yom Kippur) for over a quarter century, mostly at Congregation Shalom in Chelmsford where I went tonight. “You don’t have to be Jewish to like Levy’s Jewish Rye”, and you don’t have to be Jewish to experience the cleansing benefits of reflection and confession and refreshed resolve.

Sometimes it’s a challenge - tonight I was melting in my suit. My wife suggested I dress casually because of the temperature, but the idea of attending a religious service in anything less than a suit and tie seems disrespectful. The synagogue was packed - I’ve never seen it so full. And I almost immediately acquired a new thought to atone for when a tall, gorgeous young woman wearing what I can only describe as a cocktail dress, revealing lots of beautiful thigh, sat in front of me.

The choir was very good and the cantor sang in an angelic soprano, but her voice was often forced to compete with this year’s solo instrument - a euphonium. To be fair, it was played well, but there was just a little too much of it for my taste. In the past we’ve had a cello, and more sparingly. I like that better.

Behind me sat a family with two little boys who fell asleep and snored in stereo during the rabbi’s sermon.

Rabbi Shoshana Perry’s sermons have gotten better and better. I used to prefer the previous rabbi - Terry Bard. His sermons were abstract and intellectual - he would take some point of Jewish tradition or liturgy and expand on it, discussing its history and meaning, like a college professor. I relate well to that, and when Rabbi Perry took over - 8 months pregnant - I found her sermons too maternal, or (dare I say it?) too female. She would reflect on her feelings while bathing her baby but I’m not a parent and I could only take her word for it all.

She still sermonizes about her personal experiences - tonight she confessed the dark and empty recesses in her thoughts while she’s alone in her car. But she’s much better at expressing their universality, in this case bringing it all around to the core Jewish identity of questioning and wrestling with the ineffable. Unlike bathing babies, this is something I can understand: the questions, the doubts, the struggle. Tonight she made me feel like a kindred warrior.

But I really wanted to talk about confession. Kol Nidre is about confession. And I’ve often said that this is where the Jews and the Catholics have an insight into human nature that most Protestant denominations lack. My family is Lutheran but, as kids, we went to a Congregational church because no Lutheran churches were handy.

It’s not that the Protestants don’t see the benefits of confession and the healing powers of forgiveness. But what the Jews and Catholics “get” is that people sometimes need a little encouragement to face their shortcomings and to confess. So it helps to institutionalize it in a prominent way, which the Catholics do through the Sacrament of Confession and the Jews do through Yom Kippur.

That’s why it was interesting to read in today’s Wall Street Journal that the Lutherans are reinstating it. In Confession Makes a Comeback, Alexandra Alter reports that in many Protestant churches and all over the secular web confession is the new black. I hope this is a fad that sticks.