DECEMBER 29 • 2022 | 39
me in proper respect. My dig-
nity has been restored.
There is a classic example
of appeasement in the Torah:
Jacob’s behavior toward Esau
when they meet again after a
long separation. Jacob had fled
home after Rebecca overheard
Esau resolving to kill him after
Isaac’s death (Gen. 27:41). Prior
to the meeting Jacob sends
him a huge gift of cattle, saying
“I will appease him with the
present that goes before me,
and afterward I will see his
face; perhaps he will accept me”
(Gen. 32:21). When the broth-
ers meet, Jacob bows down
to Esau seven times, a classic
abasement ritual. The brothers
meet, kiss, embrace and go
their separate ways, not because
Esau has forgiven Jacob but
because either he has forgotten
or he has been placated.
Appeasement as a form of
conflict management exists
even among non-humans.
Frans de Waal, the primatolo-
gist, has described peace-mak-
ing rituals among chimpan-
zees, bonobos and mountain
gorillas. There are contests for
dominance among the social
animals, but there must also
be ways of restoring harmony
to the group if it is to survive
at all. So, there are forms of
appeasement and peace-mak-
ing that are pre-moral and
have existed since the birth of
humanity.
Forgiveness has not. Konstan
argues that its first appearance
is in the Hebrew Bible, and he
cites the case of Joseph. What
he does not make clear is why
Joseph forgives, and why the
idea and institution are born
specifically within Judaism.
A NEW FORM OF
MORALITY
The answer is that within
Judaism a new form of morality
was born. Judaism is (primari-
ly) an ethic of guilt, as opposed
to most other systems, which
are ethics of shame. One of
the fundamental differences
between them is that shame
attaches to the person. Guilt
attaches to the act. In shame
cultures when a person does
wrong, he or she is, as it were,
stained, marked, defiled. In
guilt cultures, what is wrong is
not the doer but the deed, not
the sinner but the sin. The per-
son retains their fundamental
worth (“the soul you gave me is
pure,
” as we say in our prayers).
It is the act that has somehow
to be put right. That is why in
guilt cultures there are process-
es of repentance, atonement
and forgiveness.
That is the explanation for
Joseph’s behavior from the
moment the brothers appear
before him in Egypt for the first
time to the point where, in this
week’s parshah, he announces
his identity and forgives his
brothers. It is a textbook case of
putting the brothers through a
course in atonement, the first
in literature. Joseph is thus
teaching them, and the Torah
is teaching us, what it is to earn
forgiveness.
Recall what happens. First,
he accuses the brothers of a
crime they have not commit-
ted. He says they are spies. He
has them imprisoned for three
days. Then, holding Shimon
as a hostage, he tells them that
they must now go back home
and bring back their youngest
brother Benjamin. In other
words, he is forcing them to
reenact that earlier occasion
when they came back to their
father with one of the brothers,
Joseph, missing. Note what
happens next:
They said to one another,
“Surely, we deserve to be pun-
ished [ashemim] because of our
brother. We saw how distressed
he was when he pleaded with
us for his life, but we would not
listen; that’s why this distress
has come on us” … They did
not realize that Joseph could
understand them, since he
was using an interpreter. Gen.
42:21-23
This is the first stage of
repentance. They admit they
have done wrong.
Next, after the second meet-
ing, Joseph has his silver cup
planted in Benjamin’s sack.
This incriminating evidence
is found, and the brothers are
brought back. They are told
that Benjamin must stay as a
slave.
“What can we say to my
lord?” Judah replied. “What can
we say? How can we prove our
innocence? God has uncovered
your servants’ guilt. We are now
my lord’s slaves — we ourselves
and the one who was found to
have the cup.
” Gen. 44:16
This is the second stage of
repentance. They confess. They
do more; they admit collective
responsibility. This is import-
ant. When the brothers sold
Joseph into slavery it was Judah
who proposed the crime (Gen.
37:26-27) but they were all
(except Reuben) complicit in it.
Finally, at the climax of the
story Judah himself says, “So
now let me remain as your
slave in place of the lad. Let the
lad go back with his brothers!”
Gen. 42:33
Judah, who sold Joseph
as a slave, is now willing to
become a slave so that his
brother Benjamin can go free.
This is what the Sages and
Maimonides define as complete
repentance, namely when cir-
cumstances repeat themselves
and you have an opportunity to
commit the same crime again,
but you refrain from doing so
because you have changed.
Now Joseph can forgive,
because his brothers, led by
Judah, have gone through all
three stages of repentance:
• admission of guilt
• confession
• behavioral change.
Forgiveness only exists in a
culture in which repentance
exists. Repentance presupposes
that we are free and morally
responsible agents who are
capable of change, specifically
the change that comes about
when we recognize that some-
thing we have done is wrong
and we are responsible for it,
and we must never do it again.
The possibility of that kind of
moral transformation simply
did not exist in ancient Greece
or any other pagan culture.
Greece was a shame-and-hon-
or culture that turned on the
twin concepts of character
and fate. Judaism was a repen-
tance-and-forgiveness culture
whose central concepts are will
and choice. The idea of for-
giveness was then adopted by
Christianity, making the Judeo-
Christian ethic the primary
vehicle of forgiveness in history.
Repentance and forgiveness
are not just two ideas among
many. They transformed the
human situation. For the first
time, repentance established
the possibility that we are not
condemned endlessly to repeat
the past. When I repent, I show
I can change. The future is
not predestined. I can make it
different from what it might
have been. Forgiveness liberates
us from the past. Forgiveness
breaks the irreversibility of reac-
tion and revenge. It is the undo-
ing of what has been done.
Humanity changed the day
Joseph forgave his brothers.
When we forgive and are
worthy of being forgiven, we
are no longer prisoners of our
past. The moral life is one that
makes room for forgiveness.
The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
served as the chief rabbi of the
United Hebrew Congregations of the
Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teach-
ings have been made available to all at
rabbisacks.org. This essay was written
in 2011.