Memory and forgiveness. You can’t have one without the other. But we need patience too. Patience with others. Patience with ourselves. Patience with G-d. ”Patience. It’s a virtue,” is a common American phrase. I use it a lot, especially when stuck in traffic. Usually at a stoplight. Stoplights in Illinois seem to be longer than anywhere else I have lived! I have no patience, especially at stoplights. In Israel you hear people say, “Savlanut!” which is the modern Israeli equivalent. “Patience.” What the Hebrew in the Thirteen Attributes really says is that G-d is slow to anger, therefore patient. It doesn’t say that G-d never gets angry. G-d does get angry—with society in the time of Noah, with Sodom and Gemorah, with Pharaoh, with the Amalekites, with Moses, with Miriam and Aaron and with the people of Israel. However, it takes a long time for G-d to get to the boiling point, G-d is slow to anger. As a Bar Mitzvah student said recently, G-d doesn’t want to punish people. It has to be for a really big mistake.” Once G-d does punish people, the way it is spelled out in the Torah, it seems that G-d’s anger dissipates quickly. G-d does not seem to hold onto anger, does not hold grudges. In fact, G-d says that we should not hold onto grudges. As part of the famous verse in Leviticus, part of the “Holiness Code,” we learn, “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18).

Rambam teaches that when a sinner asks for forgiveness and is denied, “If they still won’t forgive he must ask him two or even three times. If they still won’t forgive him he should leave him alone and go away. This person who did not forgive is now the sinner.” These are important thoughts. G-d is patient and awaits the return of a sinner until the day of his or her death. Repenting and forgiving take patience. Sometimes we have to wait—at a stoplight, for a house to be ready to move into, for someone to come around and see things from our point of view. Sometimes, it takes patience for the healing necessary to move on with our lives. Patience with others, patience with ourselves and yes, even patience with G-d. How are you patient?