D’var Torah – Exploring Forgiveness

Last Shabbat 5767

GIVE CREDIT TO MELISSA FOR HER WORK ON THIS ISSUE IN RJ, AND FOR TEACHING ME AND SHARING IN
CONVERSATIONS THAT STIMULATED IT FOR ME.

1. Season of Forgiveness – What exactly is forgiveness?

a. Is it withholding punishment? That’s how the Abrahamic

religions often depict God’s forgiveness. Judgment is passed
and deserved punishment decided, but certain actions on our
part can “avert the severe decree.”
i. U-tshuvah, u-tfilah, u-tzedakah ma-avirin et roa ha-
g’zayrah. Repentence, prayer and righteous actions
annul God’s severe decree.
ii. Example: after the golden calf, God pardons the people
and that = God not destroying them. “The Eternal said
to Moses, ‘I see that this is a stiffnecked people. Now,
let Me be, that my anger may blaze forth against them
and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great
nation in their place.’” … [Moses pleads.] “And the
Eternal renounced the punishment that God had planned
to bring upon God’s people.”
b. Is it ending the wish that the person who harmed you be
punished for their actions? Example from the bedtime Shema:
“let no one suffer punishment on my account.”
c. Is it choosing not to be angry anymore?
d. Is it something we don’t choose, but rather something that
emerges upon us or within us, and that we realize has
happened?
e. Is it deciding that we release someone who has harmed us
from owing us anything? A cancellation of a debt?

2. What are some examples from Torah of forgiveness

between people?

a. Jacob and Esau’s reconciliation. Can you forgive and choose

to avoid being in relationship for your own safety?
b. Joseph forgives his brothers. Can you arrive at forgiveness
ethically by manipulating the ones who harmed you into a test
to see if they’ve changed?
3. During the Yamim Noraim, we not only ask God to forgive
us our wrongs, but we pledge to try to avoid committing
future wrongs. Is it our fault that we were created as
morally mixed beings? What kind of world is it that God
wants from us? How good does God expect us to be?

a. Midrash – Genesis Rabbah:

i. Abraham said to God, Ribbono Shel Olam, if you wish to
maintain the world, strict justice is impossible; and if you
want strict justice, the world cannot be maintained. You
cannot hold the cord at both ends at once. You desire
the world – and You desire justice. Take one or the
other. Unless you compromise, the world cannot
endure.
ii. This season culminates in Yom Kippur, Yom Din, the Day
of Judgment. Can we argue our case before God as
Abraham did in the Midrash? Can we ask God to forgive
us to some degree because the world that God created
is a world whose moral physics doesn’t permit strict
justice? To what extent do we need to cultivate
acceptance – and perhaps ask God to cultivate
acceptance – of our moral imperfection? At what point
does cultivating acceptance of our moral imperfection
cross the line into becoming moral laziness and an
excuse for not striving to be morally better than we are?

4. Returning to the initial question: what is forgiveness,

especially the kind that we are asked to give one
another? Melissa’s work with RJ.

a. Describe her work a little bit.

b. Hannah Arendt: “Forgiveness is the key to action and
freedom.” Is forgiveness about freeing ourselves from staying
preoccupied with a wound or loss we received, so that we can
move forward with life and be open to new goodness? Is
forgiveness primarily something we do for ourselves, or at
least as much for ourselves as for the party who harmed us?
c. Melissa did a presentation at OSP with a group of inmates
taking a class on RJ. The presentation included various
exercises exploring this complex question of forgiveness.
(Read the questions).
d. CLOSE BY INVITING THE COMMUNITY TO SPEND TIME
REFLECTING ON THESE QUESTIONS & DISTRIBUTE HANDOUT.