Rabbi Laurence Elis Milder
BTS Chapel Service 3/15/2000
Thank you for inviting me to speak here today. It is a great honor. It is a rare treat for a rabbi to preach to a Christian congregation, though rabbis are occasionally confused with ministers. A few years ago, I overheard the following comment at a public forum, where my name was listed in the program as "Laurence Milder, Congregational Rabbi". The woman in front of me turned to her husband and said, "I didn’t know the Congregationalists had rabbis!"
Speaking here, however, is like being on theological common ground. We have much that we can learn from one another. I hope to share with you one of the teachings from my tradition which may be significant to you during this season of Lent.
This is, for you, a season of repentance, very much akin to the Ten Days of Repentance observed by Jews prior to the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Like Easter, Yom Kippur marks our spiritual rebirth. Our concept of repentance, which we call Teshuvah, means turning, and refers to the reorientation we undertake in our lives during our holiest season. Though our timing may differ, our beliefs about what should take place during our holy seasons are very similar.
In Judaism, Yom Kippur is the day we ask God to forgive us for our sins. If we have been brave, we have also confronted our friends, relatives and associates, and asked them to forgive us for whatever hurt we have inflicted upon them. There is no mistaking our duty on Yom Kippur: It is to apolo-gize to those we have harmed.
Now, it is difficult enough to admit to someone that we have been at fault. But sometimes, we find it is even more difficult to be on the other side, to forgive someone for the pain they have caused us. They may muster the courage to apologize, but that does not mean that we are always willing to forgive.
What is our obligation to forgive? Do we always have to accept someone’s apology? What if someone did something to you which you believe you cannot forgive? What if a loved one betrayed your trust? What if a parent was hurtful to you? What if a stranger caused harm to someone you love? Must we always forgive, just because an apology has been offered?
If it is our obligation to say that we are sorry, one might argue, then it stands to reason that we have the concomitant duty to accept the apologies of others. Indeed, how can we stand before God and say, "Forgive us the sins we have committed against You," when there are those whom we refuse to forgive? Do we mean to say that we can judge the sincerity of an apology better than God? Or that we can pick and choose which sins we will forgive, even though we ex-pect God to forgive all of ours? Certainly, there is a hint of hubris in the refusal to forgive.
Maimonides offered this opinion about our duty:
We should be slow to anger and easily appeased. And when our forgiveness is re-quested, we should grant it with a whole heart and a willing spirit; we should not be vengeful or bear grudges even for a grave injury.
"This," he said, "is the way of the upright Jew."
But, for many of us, it is just not that simple. A few summers ago, I was working with a group of high school juniors at summer camp, whose task was to compose a covenant for their unit of campers. When they presented the draft of their covenant to their fellow campers, there was unanimous agreement on most of its terms. Until they got to the line that read:
"Forgive and forget." This suggestion generated considerable controversy. It was a question of rights. The covenant, some said, could delineate behavioral expectations, but we are all entitled to our feel-ings. Furthermore, you can never forget, so why say it? I might forgive you for an insult, or an act of selfishness, but I’ll always think of you in a different light because of it. So maybe we should amend the provision just to say "Forgive," and let’s forget about forgetting.
These campers raised a difficult issue. Just what does it mean to forgive someone? When Maimonides says that we should not bear a grudge, does he mean that we should "forgive and forget?" Certainly, forgiveness cannot mean that we have to wipe our memory clear of the events of our lives. It must mean to nullify the emotional weight that those events carry. Or, if not the events themselves, than the impact those events have in shaping our relationship with the indi-viduals involved. To forgive means that, though you hurt me, and though I may still bear a wound, I no longer see you through the lens of that event. You have become three-dimensional for me, not a person bound by the parameters of the hurt you once inflicted. In the sense that I have nullified the emotional charge that your actions once carried, I have "forgotten," I have wiped it clean, de-magnetized it.
Forgive and forget? In some respects, forgiving is forgetting. But there is also such a thing as a zealousness to forget, a desire to patch things up that exceeds the conviction to atone on the part of the other. We so badly want the other to say that he or she is sorry, that we are willing to forget everything.
Take, for example, the incident of President Reagan going to Bitburg. The President went to a German ceme-tery, one harboring soldiers of the SS, those entrusted with the task of carrying out the war against the Jews, to show America’s "forgiveness" toward the German people. He hoped to dem-onstrate our spirit of reconciliation. Many Americans were outraged. Elie Wiesel spoke to the President, and urged him, "That is not your place." But many Americans were also eager to ac-cept President Reagan’s explanation: These young men, too, were victims. If the SS were vic-tims, who, then, we ask, was guilty? Was one man alone guilty of the murder of six million Jews? Does no one else bear the blame? Surely, we should hold these SS soldiers accountable. There is such a thing as being too eager to forgive.
It is easy to agree that forgiveness ought to follow a sincere apology, and not preempt it. It is more difficult to determine if forgiveness is necessary, following a sincere apology. Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi-hunter, tells the following story in his book called The Sunflower. As a prisoner at a concentration camp during the war, Wiesenthal spent a day assigned to a work crew at a local hospital. There, a nurse pulled him away from his work to come to the room of a dying man. The man lay on his bed, face entirely wrapped in bandages. As Wiesenthal listened, the dying man told of how he had joined the SS, and participated in one particularly horrible mas-sacre of Jews. He had felt revulsion for his own actions, but followed the orders of his superiors. Now, on his deathbed, he sought to confess his sins before a Jew. He admitted his crime, and took full responsibility for his actions.
Wiesenthal listened to the dying SS man’s confession, and without saying a word, left the room. Wiesenthal neither forgave nor condemned. His response was silence. But his own si-lence, in the face of sincere repentance, troubled him. Perhaps he should have forgiven, redeemed one soul who had seen his own errors and owned up to them. What would you have done? Wie-senthal asked this question of some two dozen prominent theologians, authors, and politicians: "How would you have reacted?"
Perhaps, if there was some response which was universally recognizable as a moral re-sponse, a rational response, a response which balances the conflicting demands of justice and mercy, there would have been some consensus among those who answered Wiesenthal’s question. But there was no consensus. Some said, with Maimonides, that forgiveness was an obligation, no matter the depth of the crime. Some said that forgiveness was not obligatory, under the circum-stances, but that to forgive would have been an expression of exceptional virtue. Others claimed that no one could stand in judgment of a person like Wiesenthal, that no one had the right to judge any Jew asked to forgive, while death at the hands of the Nazis still seemed imminent. Some said that Wiesenthal could not offer forgiveness, as he himself was not one of the victims. Only the dead were entitled to forgive, and therefore the dying SS man was condemned to bear his guilt to his grave, regardless of his repentance. And there were those who argued that forgiveness was itself a sin, an insult to the martyrs, an affront to God’s equally important command to pursue justice.
Justice and mercy. God’s twin qualities, God’s dual demands of us. They pull us in op-posite directions. We see the other who has caused us pain and ask: Has he made an effort to re-pair the damage done? Is she truly repentant? Has justice been upheld, or merely trod upon, like the memory of martyrs trod underfoot in the cemetery of Bitburg? And we look at ourselves, and ask: Is our desire not for justice but for vengeance? Do we seek to fill the damaged place in our lives with the pain of another? Have we buried our capacity for compassion underneath our pride?
The Talmud teaches that Yom Kippur absolves us of sins against God, but sins against another are not forgiven by God until we have reconciled ourselves with those we have harmed. What hope, then, is there for us, should those we have hurt refuse to forgive us? Do they control our lives, holding forever the tools that will remove from us the burden of our guilt? Is God’s power to forgive in their hands? No, says the Talmud. The authors of the Talmud recognized that there are those who will not be able to forgive, or will refuse to forgive, and that a person de-serves an avenue of repentance that is not entirely contingent on the power of others. One is ob-ligated to apologize, but no more than three times. After we have humbled ourselves to another, and not just once or twice, but repeatedly, we eventually reach a point where it is possible to nul-lify our guilt by virtue of our own repentance.
The Talmud bases its view that three apologies are all that is required, on the case of the crime committed by the sons of Jacob against their brother Joseph, when they sold him into slav-ery. The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas calls this the "prototypical offense," the exploi-tation of one human by another. Joseph’s brothers threw him in a pit, and sold him to a passing band of slave traders. They covered his many-colored coat with blood, and brought it home to their father Jacob. Jacob mourned the apparent death of his son, whom he believed had been torn apart by wild beasts.
Years later, the brothers found themselves in Joseph’s presence. Joseph had since risen to the position of Prime Minister of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. In tears, Joseph revealed him-self to his brothers, and they are reconciled. But the fear on the part of the brothers lingers on for years, concerned that Joseph may have ostensibly forgiven, but in reality not forgotten what they had done to him. The crisis comes to a head after the death of their father Jacob, when, presumably, Joseph might have felt more inclined to exact revenge. The brothers, for their part, beg Jo-seph for forgiveness, expressing their plea three times, hence the Talmud’s judgment that this is the most that Joseph could fairly have expected from them. Joseph’s response is instructive. "Have no fear," he says, "Am I a substitute for God?" Do I, Joseph seems to say, hold the tools that will remove your burden of guilt? I forgive you, but I am no substitute for God. You must plead your case before the Almighty! And so Joseph models the humility that must accompany forgiveness. If we expect God to forgive us, we cannot control forgiveness as though we are God.
But what of Jacob? Did he ever forgive his sons for their deception, for the lie that they maintained for all those years? When Jacob’s sons returned from Egypt with the news that Joseph was alive, Jacob asks "Is my son still alive? I must go to see him," and he immediately departed for Egypt. But not a word is ever mentioned of Jacob’s feelings toward his other sons, and what they did. It is a long ride from Canaan to Egypt, and I imagine Jacob sitting in silence the entire way, unwilling to speak to his sons. He will not forgive them. But if his own son Joseph has forgiven them, at least he will not rebuke them. He cannot share in the exceptional grace which Joseph afforded his brothers. But if Joseph has forgiven, can he, Jacob, bear a grudge? Like Wiesenthal, I imagine, he responds with silence.
Must we forgive others for the deep and lasting hurts of which they are guilty? If Jacob was silent, what, then, is our obligation to forgive? I am afraid to answer that ques-tion. I fear to pass judgment over people, like Simon Wiesenthal, who may be justified in their silence, over people who may have lived for years with the cruelty or deceit of those close to them. Who can say that they should be magnanimous? But I also fear silence. I fear the answer that there is no answer, the possibility that the collected wisdom of our respective religious traditions is itself mute in the face of this most human of dilemmas. No, silence is no answer. Judaism, and Christianity, are a voice, not a void.
God, we read in Exodus, is merciful and gracious, endlessly patient, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. It is our privilege to have been cre-ated in God’s image, and therefore it is the highest expression of our humanity to imitate God. At the risk of seeming insensitive to those who have suffered cruelty and abuse, I can think of no greater ideal than humility itself. We usually think that it takes humility to say you are sorry, but to forgive requires humility as well. To for-give another the wrongs done to us frees both them and us. If we relinquish our right to resent, we can then feel justified that we, too, will be forgiven; that we can live free of our guilt, even when others withhold their forgiveness from us. But if we maintain our right to withhold forgive-ness, then so may others. In holding on to that privilege, the privilege not to forgive, we may find our own souls held captive by the grudge of another.
In one sense, those campers debating that covenant were correct. If I forgive, I need not forget. But I must let go of the emotional weight that I have attached to someone else’s role in my hurt. If they have truly repented, their slate should be wiped clean in my eyes, no matter how long the wound lingers, just as we ask God to wipe clean our slate, no matter how deep the transgression.
The hurt we will not forgive becomes a realm of silence in our lives.
Each unforgiven hurt is like a brick in a wall we build around ourselves. The more hurts, the deeper the silence, until we find ourselves walking through life in deafening isolation. Perhaps Jacob died estranged from his sons. Justified silence is silence nonetheless, and a terribly lonely path to walk in this world. It is only human to feel the twin demands of justice and mercy; our capacity to exercise both is what makes us fully human. But we must choose a path in this world, and I choose to err on the side of mercy. If anyone must balance the scales on the side of justice, let it be God. During our holiest season, for-giveness and mercy should be our song, cutting through the silences of our lives, clearing a path for us through the debris of our collected hurts. Then, perhaps, God will find us, and hear our prayer, our song of forgiveness.