Yesterday I went to the Chicago Board of Rabbis meeting. It was a text study session. I really enjoyed looking at the Book of Daniel in depth and seeing its connections to Yom Kippur. That could be another blog at some point. But I was really challenged by a session led by Rabbi Josh Feigelson, the director of the i-center. He used a text by Vladimir Jankelvitch, Forgiveness, originally published in French as Le Pardon in 1967. Jankelvitch makes the point that “in order to forgive it is necessary to remember.” (p.55 of the English edition). What does that mean? So often we are told “forgive and forget”. But here we have just the opposite.

I think that there is a strong connection between forgiveness and memory. From a therapeutic standpoint we know that in order to forgive (and forgiveness is not always the goal) we first need to remember. It isn’t always easy to remember the pain, however, it ultimately helps. Jankelevitch continues that “Forgiveness undoes the last shackles that tie us down to the past, draw us backward and hold us down.”  I fought this sentence in the group at first. I didn’t want congregants to feel that if they don’t forgive they will always be stuck or think they are bad somehow because they are shackled. But look carefully at the language as others pointed out to me. First it is in the plural, “that tie us down.” This is a communal issue not a personal one. Second it says “the last shackles.” Forgiveness is a process that happens over time not all at once.

It reminds me of a story that Rabbi Harold Kushner tells in his book, How Good Do We Have To Be, “The embarrassing secret is that many of us are reluctant to forgive.  We nurture grievances because that makes us feel morally superior.  Withholding forgiveness gives us a sense of power, often power over someone who otherwise leaves us feeling powerless.  The only power we have over them is the power to remain angry at them. There may be a certain emotional satisfaction in claiming the role of victim, but it is a bad idea for two reasons.  First, it estranges you from a person you could be close to.  (And if it becomes a habit, as it all too often does, it estranges you from many people you could be close to.)  And secondly, it accustoms you to seeing yourself in the role of victim—helpless, passive, preyed upon by others.  Is that shallow feeling of moral superiority worth learning to see yourself that way?”

Kushner counseled a woman still angry with the husband who left her years ago.  He said, “I’m not asking you to forgive him because what he did wasn’t so terrible; it was terrible.  I’m suggesting that you forgive him because he doesn’t deserve to have this power to turn you into a bitter, resentful woman.  When he left, he gave up the right to inhabit your life and mind to the degree that you’re letting him.  Your being angry at him doesn’t harm him, but it hurts you.  It’s turning you into someone you don’t really want to be.  Release that anger, not for his sake—he probably doesn’t deserve it—but for your sake, so that the real you can reemerge.”

What I take away from these two writers is that we need to remember in order to forgive and we need to forgive but not forget, slowly over time, not because it is good for the one we are forgiving but because it can be better for ourselves. These are two important themes for the Days of Awe. Memory and Forgiveness. You can’t have one without the other.