In this week’s Torah portion, Shmini, the Israelites are given instructions on how to atone for their sins. In order to receive God’s forgiveness for their transgressions, very specific sacrifices must be made. These are what God requires in order for him to bestow forgiveness.
But, our tradition actually tells us a variety of things with regard to granting forgiveness.
Isaiah tells us, “Remember not the former things. Consider not the things of old.”
The prophet felt that forgetting and forgiving is part of the circle of repentance. He taught not to dwell on the past. And, he asked us to focus instead on the future as the thing that illumines the present.
The Talmud says, “The quality of forgiveness is one of the finest gifts God bestowed on our ancestor Abraham and his seed…and it means forgiving before someone has even asked for forgiveness.”
Moses Maimonides had a different idea about forgiveness. He said that for sins committed against another person, one is never pardoned unless that person compensates his or her neighbor and makes an apology.
In Rabbi David Cooper’s book, God is a Verb, forgiveness in the Kabbalistic tradition is described as God’s most excellent gift for each of us to utilize. Cooper explains that, “for the Kabbalist, forgiveness does not mean we need to embrace someone who has done a despicable act against humanity. Rather, it is focused on the degree to which we hold on to our anger or our negative feelings."
Even our liturgy has weighed in on the topic. In the bedtime Shema, to be recited every night before retiring, we say “I hereby forgive everyone who offended me or angered me or sinned against me today.”
In his book Seven Prayers that will Change your Life, Leonard Felder says we grant forgiveness every evening in case, God forbid, anyone who may have sinned against us will not be able to make full atonement. We should not take such forgiveness to the grave – and we never know when death will come upon us.
But, in contemplating the duplicity of my father or the disloyalty of my ex-husband, none of these forgiveness instructions resonated with me. And, then, not too long ago, I came across Rabbi Karyn Kedar’s book, The Bridge to Forgiveness, and the forgiveness fog that plagued me finally lifted.
In her poem The Bridge, Rabbi Kedar says:
Forgiveness is a path to be walked.
There are steps along the way:
loss, anger, acceptance, learning,
So, just as Elisabeth Kubler Ross introduced us to the stages of grief, finally acknowledging that grieving is a process, Rabbi Kedar tells us that forgiveness, too, is a journey. She says that “Forgiveness is not condoning the wrong in the world or the offenses we experience in our lives. It is not forgetting. Rather, it is a state of mind. Forgiveness is actually a decision about how to live. Forgiveness is regaining control over your life. You acknowledge the loss of innocence, trust, faith, inner light. You rage against the crime that was committed. And you accept, with self-love, the story that has become your life.”
Back in our parshat Shmini, we watch as Aaron’s son’s are consumed by fire having presented God with the incorrect sacrifice. What this tells me is that the God of this portion was still struggling with the stages of forgiveness and, that we, too, need to accept where we are on the quest. As Rabbi Kedar says, “Forgiveness does not spontaneously bubble forth, erasing all evil and wounds. It involves intention, purpose, vision. It is a path to be discovered, an expectation that there is another side to the pain and diminishment that we have suffered….It is always about finding what you have lost, restoring a sense of wholeness.”
We need to remember that forgiveness is a paradigm shift that may take hours, days, years or a lifetime…and it is completely individual depending on person and circumstance. May we each journey on the path to forgiveness, in our own way, and ultimately find a bridge that leads us to restoration and peace.