Rabbi Tracee Rosen
Congregation Kol Ami – Salt Lake City Utah
(c) 2006, Rabbi Tracee L. Rosen. All Rights Reserved.
In the days of ancient Israel, in the seasons when the rains should fall, if there happened to be a drought, the entire community would be required to fast, for it was understood back then that God would withhold rain based on the collective sins of the community.
In one such year, as the days passed and the rain did not fall, the community turned to Rabbi Eliezer. One of the greatest legal minds of the generation, he was fierce in his adherence to the law, and so persuasive in argument, he had once caused a river to run backwards and a heavenly voice to proclaim him in an effort to win an argument with his colleagues. Such a person was surely the right one to petition on behalf of the community.
Rabbi Eliezer prepared himself intently. He composed extra blessings for the central prayer, the Amidah, specifically to petition and cajole the Holy One to favor the land with rain, and on the appointed day stood at the bimah and invoked his prayers. Twenty four blessings, the regular eighteen of the weekday service, and six specially composed to beseech that rain be sent. Each one he offered with tears and supplication, each one he carefully chanted knowing that every word was like a key needing to unlock the skies.
He reached the end of his prayer, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the synagogue. But outside, his words were met with a long, dry silence.
As the silence inside and out grew deafening, Rabbi Eliezer’s colleague and friend cried out from his place in the sanctuary: Avinu Malkeynu, eyn lanu melekh ella Ata. Avinu Malkeynu, assey imanu l’maan sh’mecha: Our Father, our King, we have no Sovereign but You; our Father, our King, for Your sake have mercy upon us. And says the Talmud, the rains began.
When the other rabbis began to question why it was that Rabbi Eliezer’s prayers were not heeded, a Heavenly Voice spoke up, declaring that the prayer of Rabbi Akiva was answered, not because he was greater than Rabbi Eliezer, but because Rabbi Akiva was willing to forgive his enemies, and Rabbi Eliezer was not.
When we stand before the Holy Blessed One in true teshuvah, in repentance, we must examine our own actions and ask ourselves, just as we seek the forgiveness of God and other people, have we been equally forthcoming in granting forgiveness to others, whether they have sought it or not?
But for all the talk we do each year about asking for forgiveness, how often do we focus our individual or communal attention on being the ones to grant forgiveness?
Mamonides talks about the imperative to grant forgiveness in this Laws of Repentance:
It is forbidden for one to be harsh and non-appeasing. One should rather be forgiving and slow to anger, and whenever a sinner asks one for forgiveness one should grant it wholeheartedly. Even if the sinner had distressed one considerably and sinned against one a lot, one should/may not take revenge or bear a grudge, in the manner of a true Jew, and not like that of idolaters, who always bear grudges. (2:10)
The granting of forgiveness is not just a human phenomenon, but we remind ourselves and God all throughout our Yom Kippur liturgy, of God’s promises to forgive us, even when we have been at our worst.
After the twelve spies return from scouting out the Land of Israel, and deliver their disheartening report on the seeming impossibility of the task, God is so angry and hurt, and threatens to destroy and disown the people, and begin again with Moses. And once again Moses successfully argues with God to continue the covenant with the Israelites. Somewhat appeased, God responds. Vayomer Adonai, salacti kidvarecha. And God said, “I have pardoned as you have asked.”
This verse from the Torah may sound familiar. That’s because earlier this evening we joined with the choir in reciting it three times at the very conclusion of Kol Nidre. As we conclude our asking of God’s forgiveness for any sins we may have or are yet to commit against the Holy Blessed One, we conclude by reminding God of God’s own promise to forgive.
But just as so many of the attributes we use to describe God are also reminders to us about how to act in this world, so too is the act of forgiveness. Or in the immortal words of William Shakespeare, while to err may be human, to forgive is divine, or an act of imitatio dei, emulating God.
But we all know, that saying that we forgive and really forgiving are two different things, and while we can generally easily forgive the person who cut us off in traffic, or accidentally elbowed us at the TJ Maxx sale, there are some offenses that are too horrible, to hurtful to ever be able to forgive, aren’t there?
After all, can we ever really forgive the person who physically battered or sexually assaulted us? Can we forgive the drunk driver who killed our beloved child? Can there ever really be forgiveness for those who have perpetrated murderous terrorist acts, who have participated in the numerous acts of genocide in the last century? Come on, rabbi, don’t be naïve.
And yet, working with people who have suffered tremendous hurts and losses is exactly the focus of a series of studies being conducted over the past 10 years through the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, including Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland who have lost loved ones due to violence and civil conflict there. And you know what they found? That people can learn how to forgive, they can transform their own lives away from being victims to becoming the heroes in their own stories of courage and triumph in the face of pain and tragedy.
Before we can understand why the act of forgiving is so important, we need to look at just what happens to us, when we can’t forgive. Dr. Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good, and co-founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project defines the steps which happen when we create a grievance or a grudge. First, something either happens that we didn’t want, like an act of violence or hurt or embarrassment, or something we wanted fails to happen – we are passed over for a promotion, we aren’t chosen for a part in a play or to be on a sports team. Most of these situations arise from someone breaking what Luskin calls our “unenforceable rules.” These are all of the “shoulds” in our minds. When we expect people to behave in certain ways because that’s what should happen, even though we really have no way to make our expectations come true, then we are trying to enforce unenforceable rules, and when that happens, we are almost certain to be disappointed or worse.
Then, when we blame someone else for making us feel bad, hurt or rejected, we create a grievance story, which we share with anyone who will listen that shows how we were the victims in these events. Every time we retell our grievance story, we experience the same pain, shame, anger, hurt that we did at the time the original event occurred, and this causes our brains to release stress chemicals into our bloodstream. These chemicals make our bodies think they are under attack, even though the threatening event may have occurred years ago, and initiates in us the flight or fight syndrome. People with high levels of anger and hostility experience higher rates of high blood pressure, heart disease, increased depression and hopelessness. These stress chemicals also make it less likely that we can think clearly about a situation or make good decisions.
So, maintaining a grudge actually does much more harm to us than the person we are angry at. When we carry a grudge, what we are effectively saying is that something went wrong in the past and we won’t be satisfied until the past is made right. However, that can’t happen. Rabbi Mel Glazer, a grief recovery therapist teaches that “forgiveness means giving up hope for a new or different YESTERDAY.”
When we maintain a grievance over long periods of time, we give the perpetrator more power over our lives than the ability to impact us at the time the original event happened. Dr. Luskin describes this as renting out too much real estate in our mind to the perpetrator. When we do this, we deny ourselves room for other more positive emotions and energies, we get stuck in places of negativity and depression.
One other thing it is important to understand is what forgiveness is not. It does not require us to forget what happened or to “turn the other cheek.” It doesn’t require us to justify the wrong actions of someone else. It does not require that we reconcile with the other person. Reconciliation means that we reestablish a relationship with the other, forgiveness means we no longer blame them for our own long-held reactions and emotions. And forgiveness does no mean that we give up our claims to justice or compensation, because in the end, financial or criminal punishment still won’t assuage our feelings of being wronged until we are ready to let go of them.
Forgiveness, instead, “is the feeling of peace that emerges as we take our hurts less personally, take responsibility for how we feel, and become a hero instead of a victim in the stories we tell.”
Dr. Luskin describes nine steps toward being able to forgive. Among these are:
· Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK. Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience.
· Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else.
· Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes - or ten years -ago. Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings.
· At the moment you feel upset practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body's flight or fight response.
· Give up expecting things from other people, or your life, that they do not choose to give you. Recognize the "unenforceable rules" you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Change those rules into hopes or wishes. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace and prosperity and work hard to get them.
· Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you. Forgiveness is about personal power.
· Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive.
One of the greatest lessons of our Jewish textual heritage is that while the events of the past cannot be changed, the meaning we ascribe to them are completely in our own control. Viktor Frankl, in his classic work, Man’s Search for Meaning, describes as a concentration camp survivor the difference he found between those who survived the camps mentally and emotionally intact, and those who were broken by the experience. The difference, he wrote, was that those who assigned greater meaning to their lives, and chose their responses, instead of seeing themselves as merely victims to someone else’s tyranny, came out better in the end. We have the ability to choose, to assign meaning, and to become the heroes rather than the victims in our own stories, but we can only do so, if we can take back the power we have given others to control our emotions.
I know some of us are personally skeptical about this process, but it works and it has within it the power to give us back our lives. This process has worked with people from Northern Ireland who have lost family members on both sides of the conflict there, and is working in amazing ways in South Africa, where as a country they have instituted a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to aid an entire society in being able to move on in history and look toward a brighter future, without being endlessly mired in a horrific past. Rick and Helen Rappaport recently returned from a visit to South Africa where they met a man who now gives tours of a former political prison where he himself was imprisoned for many years. Asked how he can come to work each day and see his former captors still living in luxurious homes surrounding the prison site, he says, because I know that I am a much better person than they are, because I can forgive. He has cast himself as the hero in his own story, and it gives him the emotional strength to be a better person.
This year, let us remember the story of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva. As we seek forgiveness for others, let us remember that when we emulate the divine, by actively forgiving others, we will merit, too, to have our deeds forgiven by those we care about and love.
Gmar chatimah tovah. May we all be inscribed and sealed for a year of happiness, a year of life, and a year of true forgiveness, a year in which we too can say, salachti kidvarecha, I have forgiven as you have asked.