Parashat

Nitsavim-VaYelech

Rav Haim Lifshitz

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Jewish Forgiveness and Christian Forgiveness

 Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

Childish forgiveness is one that is an external expression, from the lips outward, a sort of code in a game of role-playing, in which the kindergarten teacher determines the rules of the game.

Very gradually, the expression of forgiveness undergoes a process of deepening and of internalizing within the personality of both sides.  The forgiveness of the adult has a social function, which deals with the area of person-to-person relations more than of person-to-self.  This forgiveness deals with the connection rather than with the substance.  One who requests forgiveness is not expressing a wish to repair the injustice, but rather to repair the connection with the victim who has been harmed. 

This is the Protestant forgiveness.  Christianity does not believe in repair at all.  Catholics do not believe in the human ability to repair ever since the Original Sin.  At best, man is able to recognize his wretched and shameful situation, and to deepen his dependency upon his lord, and this is all his lord expects from a creature as miserable as he.

Protestants do not speak, as Catholics do, of confession, of making one’s guilt known and recognizing man’s wretched situation.  Rather they speak of man as an egocentric, egoistic center, who recognizes his dependency upon the Creator of the universe, and who therefore sees himself as important and as the principal factor, and also the Creator agrees with him, and blesses him with success, meaning as follows:  If I am successful, my success is the sign of God’s loving me.  Therefore I deserve it, and the fruits of my success are mine alone, and I am not required to bestow of my success upon, or share of my success with – anyone. 

I request forgiveness for a failure that risks spoiling my relations with the Creator of the universe, and therefore the making of an apology is the expression of a request to repair a connection, and not to repair the sin, or my own self.  This too is from the assumption that man has lost the capacity for repair.  “Distorted beyond repair” is this utterly wretched organism, and he is slave to his arbitrary fate.  Only repair of the relationship with the Creator of the universe holds out the chance for improving the condition of the connection, and of all the abundance entailed in that connection.

Jewish forgiveness touches the infrastructure of the Godly quality that is in a human being.  The one who asks forgiveness is expressing a consciousness of sin, and a consciousness of the need for repair, and a knowledge that that repair has two sides to it, which are both connected to the covenant: It is ben adam laMakom, between oneself and God, in mutual guarantee, and it is, needless to say, between the harmer and the harmed, when it involves relations ben adam la’havero, between oneself and one’s fellow human being.

Therefore the meaning of forgiveness is that after admission of guilt comes the will to repair the damage done, both baheftsa, at the objective level, and bagavra, at the subjective level, on both sides.  At the level of the condition of the quality of the self, for it is there that the roots of repair are embedded, in one’s midot, and in repairing the heftsa, the objective damage done – done also to the one who committed the sin, and not only to the one who was harmed.  In addition to this, there is the will to repair the relations between them, but this is not the main issue of forgiveness.

Group Teshuva and Private Teshuva.

In the Tanach, individual Teshuva is not specifically mentioned.  Hazal go deeply into a description of the introspective thoughts of teshuva experienced by Kayin.  By Lemech.  By David.  The text itself deals with teshuva, in which the people were influenced to  undertake the return to teshuva by a king, by Moshe, by a prophet (Eliyahu in the mountain of Carmel), at the covenant in Arvot Mo’av, and by the kings of Yehuda, Yeho’ash and Yoshiahu.  Yehoyada HaCohen brings the people back to repentance in the name of the king who was only seven years old.  In Divrei HaYamim the subject is brought of bringing the public back to teshuva, in the days of Ma’acha and in the beginning of the period of Asa, king of Yehuda. 

This is a functional teshuva, out of distress.

The teshuva of the object / the teshuva of the subject.  (Regret, and shofar.)  A dialectic  of the absurd exists between the group and the private individual.  (Two scriptures, and the third scripture.)

A teshuva of the absolute object means a transforming of the subject, of the self (the self’s capacity) into an absolute object, by attributing an absolute capacity for repair to the subjective human being – the absolute height of optimism.  An absurdity, it transforms the absolutely subjective into the absolutely objective.  Such is the mysterious substance of – and the key to – the Jewish teshuva.

Guilt Feelings:  A blurring of the distinct and unique self.  An emphasis upon what is common to all causes imitation and guilt feelings.  Guilt feelings are the source of anti-teshuva: Pessimism, limitedness.  Immortalizing limitedness by competitive comparison.

Connection between the previous year and the coming year: Continuity, renewal, separating out the food from the waste, asking forgiveness for the waste and requesting reward for investment.  “Let a year and its curses cease, let a year and its blessings commence,” a year impoverished at its beginning, wealthy at its end.

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