As We Approach this Holiday Season

My little congregation that I serve in a local retirement community asked me to speak to them about repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, in honor of this holiday season. I wrote about repentance in my last entry here, and how the Hebrew word for it, t’shuvah, really means ‘returning’. It’s an interesting concept – returning over and over again to the right path. As we enter the final week of the month of Elul and find the High Holydays upon us, I thought it would be a good time to enlarge on these topics.

Judaism teaches us that the foundation of all of these concepts – repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation – is the fact that mankind was given free will. Within each of us is a Yetzer Ha-Tov, an inclination toward the good, and a Yetzer Ha-Ra, an inclination toward the evil. Our minds are torn as we battle our impulses and try to make wise choices. Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life…” There are consequences to the choices that we make, but we do get to choose at each crossroads which path we will follow.

My Jewish Learning point out that the Hebrew word for Jewish law, halacha, is related to the verb lalechet, to walk. So Jewish law is a path to be followed. Similarly, the word for sin used the most often in the High Holyday liturgy is chet, which literally means to go astray (it’s used in modern Hebrew today when an arrow has missed its target). Thus, a sin is more of a straying from proper behavior than it is a willfully evil action. The concept is that we’re all human and we’re all going to miss the mark now and then. We are supposed to evaluate our own performance, determine where our shortfalls were, and try the next time to do the right thing. If we have committed a sin against God (failed to follow one of the commandments that are just between each person and God) and repent sincerely, God will forgive us – remembering that “repentance” in the Jewish religion carries on this same metaphor and refers to turning back to the correct path.

Ah, but what if the thing that we did and now regret had to do with our treatment of another person? We hurt somebody’s feelings, we didn’t follow through on a commitment, we gossiped about somebody, or in general we did something that was wrong and of which we’re now ashamed. God will not pardon such sins unless you have first gone to the person involved and gotten his or her forgiveness. The Jewish Virtual Library points out that several steps are involved: You must be truly sorry for what you did; you must apologize to the person and ask forgiveness; you must make amends in an appropriate way (replace the item you broke, for example), and you must resolve not to do this again the next time an occasion arises in which you could behave the same way.

Just as you have to humble yourself and seek forgiveness from the person you have wronged, that person is supposed to grant you forgiveness. There is a fair amount of poetry and other writings about the injury somebody is doing to himself or herself by not granting you forgiveness – there isn’t much peace of mind gained by clutching to your heart a litany of wrongs done to you, and it takes a lot of energy to sustain all of these hurts as well. But sometimes the person feels the wrong you did was egregious and he or she just isn’t able to forgive you at this point. You are supposed to ask for forgiveness three times, after which it is considered that you have done your duty and that God can pardon these misdeeds if you have met the rest of the criteria.

Reconciliation, of course, is what one hopes for in approaching people whom he or she has hurt in any way. The repair of the relationship is of great importance – so much so that this is why God will not forgive you for wrongs you’ve done to others that you have not tried to right.

I find it very interesting that the confession of sin that takes place during the High Holyday services is communal in nature. The whole congregation recites out loud and in unison pleas for God to forgive them for an entire list of sins (many of the lists in fact are alphabetical!). This is far less embarrassing than having each person recite out loud the specific sins for which he or she wishes to be forgiven – if we say them all together, we’ll capture the ones that I may have done and also those that you may have done, and nobody need be the wiser, so there does not have to be any public shame in this communal confession. This is so humane in my point of view.

I wish to those of you who will be celebrating these holidays a joyous and productive holiday season with family and friends, and may you and your loved ones all be inscribed for a wonderful year ahead.