f
(
Marriages, parent-child connec-
tions and meaningful friendships all
require hard work. Spirituality takes
no less.
Jewish tradition begins by suggest-
ing that there are at least two sorts of
forgiveness we need to request.
• The first is for offenses we've
committed against other people. This
forgiveness must come from people,
not from God. No synagogue service,
no sermon, no guilt-ridden beating of
our breast can erase the hurt we've
inflicted on other human beings. We
need to approach them, the Mishnah
says, to tell them we're sorry, to beg
their forgiveness. Indeed, Yom
Kippur can do nothing to grant us
atonement for the hurt we've caused
until the people we've wounded have
forgiven us themselves.
There's nothing facile or trite
about this work. It's easy to ask for
forgiveness when the people we're
asking know that we never meant to
hurt them. But what about the peo-
ple we did mean to hurt? Our spous-
es whose feelings we sacrificed
momentarily to extract ourselves
from a bind? The colleagues we
betrayed so the job could get done,
so we could advance? Can we sum-
mon the courage to approach them,
to tell them it was wrong, to tell
them we are pained by the pain we
caused?
Lots of Jews go to services on Yom
Kippur. Very few genuinely ask for
forgiveness. Why?. Because sitting in
shul is easy. Making ourselves vulner-
able isn't. Part of the reason we often
need the whole day is that finding
the courage to admit these wrongs to
people we genuinely love is too
painful to come easily. So, we're
allowed a full day's work to find the
resolve to do it.
• In some ways, the second sort of
repentance, asking God for forgive-
ness for the rest of our sins, seems
easier. After all, we know that God is
not going to cry, to recount the hurt
and the abandonment. God will not
look wounded, making us relive the
guilt all over again. God will be
silent, invisible, for many of us, com-
fortingly absent.
Which raises the question, when
we ask God for forgiveness, what do
we really want? What if we're not
sure that anything other than hurting
people is really wrong? What is ask-
ing God's forgiveness all about?
The rabbis of the Talmud seemed
to understand that repentance could
seem mechanical or artificial, so they
upped the ante. Repentance they
said, is sometimes about giving life
meaning. Consider this passage from
the Talmud (Eruvin 13b):
"Our rabbis taught: For two and a
half years the schools of Shammai and
Hillel argued, one asserting that it
would have been better for man not to
have been created than to have been
created, and the other maintaining that
it is better for man to have been created
than not to have been created. They
finally took a vote and decided that it
would have been better for man not to
have been created than to have been
created, but now that he has been cre-
ated, let him investigate his past deeds
or, as others say, let him examine his
future actions."
What a strange argument! And
why would the rabbis have ultimately
"voted" that it would have been bet-
ter for us not to have been created?
Perhaps the rabbis understood what
we all feel. The pain of human life
can be enormous. They knew that if
we evaluate life as a balance sheet of
joy and pain, the pain usually tips the
scales.
Of course, we experience joy
and accomplishment, success
and hope. But too often,
even the greatest joy
seems to subside rather
quickly, while mourning
can color our days for
months on end. The
exhilaration of the most
wonderful wedding fades
in days, while the sadness
of a death saps our energy
and optimism for months,
even years.
For many of us, after a
day filled with some good
things and some frustrat-
ing moments, we lie in
bed and the frustrations seem to
crowd out the joy. If life is a simple
balance sheet, the rabbis said, we
can't win. On that level, it would
have been better for us not to have
been created.
S
o what should we do? The
answer, our rabbis tell us, is
self-examination. Particularly
for those who said we should
examine our future actions, the issue
in forgiveness isn't so much making
an accounting of what we've done
wrong, but resolving to live lives that
mean something.
The repentance we do before God
on Yom Kippur needs to start with a
litany of the things we've done that
we regret, but almost more impor-
tantly, it needs to progress to the
things that we haven't done. To the
relationships we haven't yet built, to
the time we haven't yet devoted to
making space for transcendence, for
God, for a relationship with some-
thing beyond us.
That, perhaps, is the key to asking
forgiveness. It is for specific acts,
true, but also for much more. It's
for not having made the effort to
make space for God in
our lives, and for then
wondering why we
sometimes feel so
empty. It's really not
God who is absent; it's
us. We're the heirs to a
tradition that tries to
build God's presence
into our lives, but we
haven't paid the inheri-
tance much attention.
Ultimately, it's not only
God we've hurt, we've
cheated ourselves, too.
When we gather on
Yom Kippur - to request
forgiveness, we're in
A Yom Kippur
reflection
on the sacred work
ahead.
part asking God to forgive us for the
ways we've diminished our own lives.
Perhaps we'll know we're "forgiven" if
we take from Yom Kippur the convic-
tion to begin to do things differently,
to let Jewish life help make God part
of our lives.
That, too, is work, but it's sacred
work. And if we're fortunate, it can
be work — unlike the work that
occupies most of our days — that
transforms us, elevates us, and as the
sun sets on Yom Kippur, fills us with
the sense that this year, something
really will be different.
If we feel even some of that as we
depart and head to our homes, we
can rest assured that in some real
way, God's forgiveness has already
begun. ❑
About The
Author
D
r. Daniel Gordis,
author of "Begging
Forgiveness," is a lead-
ing Jewish educator
and writer.
Fie is vice president of the
University of Judaism in Los
Angeles, and dean of its recently
founded Ziegler School of rab-
binic Studies. The Baltimore
native's newest book is Does The
World Need The Jews? Rethinking
Chosenness and American Jewish
Identity, published by Scribner.
The . Conservative rabbi's book
on Judaism and spirituality, God
Was Aiot In The Fire, was just
released in paperback by
Touchstone.
.Dr. Gordis lives in Los s eles
with his wife and three ch
"We know the High
are critical Jewish moment
all too often we leave the e.:,
ence wondering what was sup
posed to happen, and if an
did," he said. "Sometimes it
seems that we struggle in part
because we don't bring lo
issues like foregivene.ss, creat
and sin to a lev r o
that speaks to u
"I hope," he added,' that tlx1
essay will help at least song
.
:
10/10
1997
75