One thing about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur has always bothered
me. And that is forgiveness. In the way we teach it – everything is about teshuvah. Teshuvah is returning, teshuvah
is repentance. For wrong-doings, sins,
committed bein-adam-limkomo, God and People, God forgives if we
atone. Bein-adam-l’chavero,
between People – we must atone to them.
How do we do teshuvah? We
must recognize we’ve erred, we must find the proper way to truly fix the mend
in the relationship, seek out the offended party, and when placed in the same
position not sin again – and only then have we done Teshuvah
properly. We can’t send a blanket email
“hey sorry if I was a jerk this year.”
Most likely, we can’t even just say “sorry” for the stuff that really
matters. And yet we are all aspring to
do teshuvah.
But the other side – the forgiving, that I feel is never addressed
– unless I missed that day in rabbinical school. And that disturbs me because with as high a
standard for success as teshuvah requires, it seems obvious that a lot
of needed teshuvah never happens.
And then if you’re the person who was hurt – it seems like you’re
stuck. Can you forgive people who are,
by our definition, “still bad?” Are we
dummies for doing that? Are we letting
ourselves be taken advantage of or failing to help the wrong doer learn an
important lesson? Where is the lesson
plan about that?
Finally, I’m going to try and figure this out – that was my
thinking coming to today. Where is the
wisdom in our tradition that would guide us to answers for all these questions?
To begin with, all these questions point to something great about
Judaism. Forgiveness matters. Tremendously.
It is a treasure that can’t be given away for nothing. And it can be abused. It can lead to peace of mind; it can lead to
peace between aggrieved parties. And it
can also be a tool maliciously used by those who hurt and who fail to think of
others.
It
is perhaps one of the sources of antisemitism as well. We don’t forgive easily. Because sometimes justice is necessary, not
forgiveness. Our tradition believes
there is evil in the world. That evil
exists even in our failure to take things seriously if doing so leaves others
in the lurch or feeling neglected or overlooked. And so, “justice, justice” we must
pursue. Not, “forgiveness,
forgiveness.”
A
number of years ago, the store of a woman called Eva Korr became well known. She was a Holocaust survivor, a twin who
survived but whose sister didn’t. As an
elderly woman, she forgave all the Nazis for what they did. And a big deal was made of this. In part, I think, because this fit the
prevailing American, Western, Christian, way forgiveness is understood.
Vehemently,
I disagree with her. And I believe in
the maxim that any Holocaust survivor is entitled to any opinion about anything
related to God, religion, or evil that they want. But the statement she made, about which I’m
sure she did thoughtfully and with consideration, came across, at least in how
it was reported in a way that was wrong.
One simply cannot offer forgiveness to people for crimes they committed
against other people. And for every
Nazi, every collaborator, who murdered someone, halachah confirms for us there
can be no forgiveness, as the only one who could give it is dead.
Yet
on one point she was right. True to the
notion that bearing a grudge is like stabbing yourself and thinking you’ll
wound the other person, a woman like Eva Korr was on to something in doing what
she did. While I believe the extent to
which she went was wrong because she forgave even those she never knew and
whose crimes were committed directly against others if still indirectly against
her -- if what she did freed her from the death camp in which she had remained even
decades after having been liberated from Auschwitz, there was value in that.
There was righteousness in that for her, and that is no insignificant
thing.
As
we are told in the Talmud, if we can forgive others like this, “God in turn will dismiss our sins” (Talmud
Bav’li, Rosh Hashanah 17a). In a
modern context, that may well mean freeing us of whatever may stunt us and
embitter us, causing us to perpetuate problems.
And
our tradition also teaches, the one who strives to be a good person runs the
risk of injuring herself or himself if they seek too eagerly to punish even
those who deserve it.
What
then is there to learn from all this about forgiveness? It doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten very far at
all in learning anything knew.
That
it seems, is the point. Forgiveness is
an important value in Judaism. As we
started by saying, it can free us from burdens that were placed upon us and
that only hold us down – this is true regardless of what the one who has hurt
us does or doesn’t do.
Yet
forgiveness cannot, must not, be celebrated as the highest virtue, as the chief-most
virtue.
In
our tradition, justice must stand besides forgiveness. Not forgiving or withholding forgiveness
until the right time serves both justice and forgiveness.
Additionally,
our emphasis on teshuvah throughout the holidays supports this as
well. The individual may be ennobled,
may be freed, by an ability to forgive.
But a society cannot be. It must
not be cruel, but it must teach responsibility towards one another as the
cornerstone for survival, as the key that opens the way for God’s presence to
enter the world. That is what the
emphasis on teshuvah teaches us, as hard a lesson as it may be. We can only but live surrounded by others and
constantly in relationship to them.
We
Jews are called upon, at our best, to live lives of struggle with the highest
of human ideals. This understanding of
forgiveness, as important but not paramount, not when placed besides justice
and responsibility, that is the lesson we must live and teach through how we
live.
L’shanah
Tovah Tikateivu v’Tichatemu, Shabbat Shalom
No comments:
Post a Comment