Kol Nidre Sermon 5784

 YK Sermon 5784 -- Forgiveness -- Kol Nidre

“The most influential person in your life is the person you refuse to forgive.” A couple of months ago, someone I know shared a picture of this sign from the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Manhattan on Instagram. There is a lot of wisdom in that sign.

I mentioned in my remarks at our joint Selichot service that my late father’s last remaining cousin passed away recently in New York. My brother went to a shiva minyan at the home of her daughter, our second cousin, and told me that our other cousin wasn’t there because he and his sister have not spoken to each other in five years. Neither my brother nor I know what is at the root of this family dysfunction and alienation but it’s hard for me to imagine that whatever one sibling did or said to the other, it justifies that kind of alienation and refusing to go to your sibling’s home even for shiva.

Many of us are familiar with the Talmudic teaching that while Yom Kippur atones for offenses we have committed against God, it does not atone for offenses we have committed against another person until we have apologized to that person and tried to fix whatever harm we have caused. But Moses Maimonides in his commentary on this teaching, says that we don’t only have an obligation to seek forgiveness from someone we have wronged. We also have the obligation to forgive those who have wronged us once they have taken responsibility for the wrong they have committed and asked forgiveness. In fact, Maimonides says, once a person has asked our forgiveness three times, they are automatically forgiven even if we refuse to forgive them. On top of that, the guilt for what that person originally did is now transferred to the one who refuses to forgive.

Because today is Yom Kippur, many of us may be more inclined to believe that there is an actual divine accounting of guilt and forgiveness than we would the other 364 days of the year. But Maimonides was not primarily concerned with divine accounting; he was concerned with what being unwilling to forgive and carrying a grudge does to our own souls. Carrying the burden of unforgiveness is like carrying a heavy chain that shackles our souls. When we hold onto grudges, anger, and resentment, it consumes our thoughts, poisons our hearts, and creates a divide between us and others. Unforgiveness can lead to bitterness, hatred, and a cycle of hurt that perpetuates pain across generations.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, in her recent book “On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unrepentant World '' points out that there are two different words for “forgiveness " in Hebrew: mechila and slicha. Mechila might be better translated as “pardon.” It has the connotation of relinquishing a claim against an offender; it’s transactional. It’s not a warm, fuzzy embrace but rather the victim’s acknowledgment that the perpetrator no longer owes them, that they have done the repair work necessary to settle the situation. You stole from me? OK, you acknowledged that you did so in a self-aware way, you’re in therapy to work on why you stole, you paid me back, and you apologized in a way that I felt reflected an understanding of the impact your actions had on me — it seems that you’re not going to do this to anyone else. Fine. It doesn’t mean that we pretend that the theft never happened, and it doesn’t (necessarily) mean that our relationship will return to how it was before or even that we return to any kind of ongoing relationship. With mechila, whatever else I may feel or not feel about you, I can consider this chapter closed. Those pages are still written upon, but we’re done here.

Slicha, on the other hand, may be better translated as “forgiveness”; it includes more emotion. It looks with a compassionate eye at the penitent perpetrator and sees their humanity and vulnerability, recognizes that, even if they have caused great harm, they are worthy of empathy and mercy. Like mechila, it does not denote a restored relationship between the perpetrator and the victim (neither does the English word, actually; “reconciliation” carries that meaning), nor does slicha include a requirement that the victim act like nothing happened. But it has more of the softness, that letting-go quality associated with “forgiveness” in English.

Forgiveness is a serious challenge. Forgiving someone who has wronged us deeply can feel like an insurmountable task. We may ask ourselves, "How can I forgive when the pain is so real?" It is essential to recognize that forgiveness is not the same as condoning the wrongdoing. Instead, it is an act of releasing the hold that hurt has on our hearts. It is a process that brings healing and restoration. When we forgive, we free ourselves from the chains of bitterness, allowing us to move forward with grace and peace. Forgiveness does not erase the past, but it enables us to create a brighter future. As the great Rabbi Harold Kushner once said, "Forgiveness is an act of letting go of a hurt."

One of the most profound meditations I have read on forgiveness was published recently in the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith. It was written by my former Hillel colleague Mindy Sue Shapiro. Fifty years ago her father, a Baltimore businessman and politician, was murdered by two former employees he had fired, shortly before Mindy’s Bat Mitzvah.

Mindy and I are the same age, and she reports that like most fathers of his era -- and like my father -- he spent little time with his family. Since he was murdered shortly before her Bat Mitzvah, she did not really get to know him very well. But because he was a public figure, the trial of the two people who murdered him became a public spectacle -- during which she learned, at the same time everyone else did, that her father had an affair with his secretary.

As her father’s fiftieth yahrzeit approached, Ms. Shapiro asked herself some questions. “Where did the years go? Why am I still traumatized? Why am I not at peace? Why do some people find it easy to forgive when inside I still feel twelve? In my research, I have discovered there might be good reasons.” She began reading and studying about forgiveness and listening to a podcast called the Forgiveness Project. She writes that she learned a few things:

1. Shame is defined as  when wrongdoing is found out–there is public disgrace

2. Shame associated with trauma prevents trauma from washing away

3. Forgiveness allows one to detach from trauma 

4. Forgiveness—letting go of bitterness and anger—gives one freedom of mind and heart

5. What does one hold onto when they do not forgive? A story– is it true? Is it a feeling?

6. Hurt people, hurt people. As I learned in my Mussar studies, we all have a burden and when we are hurt it is helpful to recognize that the person who hurt us is operating from their own burden. 

She also sought out friends of her father so she could see him in a different light. She writes that “All of the discussions and learning made me think deeply about my father from different perspectives.  I realized that all of this time I expected him to be a perfect father and I have been disappointed for 50 years that he was not. But of course he was not perfect. No one is perfect, and while that might sound like not a big insight, for me it was everything.”

Rabbi Ruttenberg writes that “Maimonides’ concern about the victim being unforgiving was likely at least in part a concern for their own emotional and spiritual development. I suspect that he thought holding on to grudges was bad for the victim and their wholeness. That is, even if we’re hurt, we must work on our own natural tendencies toward vengefulness, toward turning our woundedness into a power play that we can lord over the penitent, or toward wanting to stay forever in the narrative of our own hurt, for whatever reason. And perhaps he believed that the granting of mechila can be profoundly liberating in ways we don’t always recognize before it happens.

[…]

If you are still so resolutely attached to the narrative that you were forever wronged, you are harming yourself and putting a kind of harm into the world. Try to respond to those who approach you sincerely — and who are sincerely doing the work — with a whole heart, not with cruelty.”

Forgiving others is an act of compassion and empathy. It requires us to see the humanity in those who have wronged us, recognizing that they too are flawed beings. Just as we seek forgiveness from God, we must extend the same gift to our fellow human beings. By forgiving others, we break the cycle of hurt and sow the seeds of reconciliation.

Equally important is the act of forgiving ourselves. We are all imperfect beings who make mistakes. Yom Kippur reminds us that we have the capacity for change and growth. By forgiving ourselves, we embrace the opportunity for self-improvement and a renewed connection with God.

May this Yom Kippur be a day of forgiveness, a day of transformation, and a day of profound connection with the Divine. G'mar Chatimah Tovah—may you be sealed for a good year, marked by forgiveness, love, and peace.