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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.