Barbara E. Breitman - 2014
Minyan
Dorshei Derekh, Germantown Jewish Center, Philadelphia, Pa.
When
I was invited to speak on Yom Kippur, it was still summer and the war between
Israel and Hamas was raging hot. As I
thought about whether I might have something to say on this holy morning, I realized
how obsessed I was, not about geopolitics, but about questions having to do
with vengeance, trauma and forgiveness. I decided to take the responsibility of
this dvar as an opportunity to think
more deeply, very aware I was doing so from the comfort and safety of my home
in the United States.
These are my questions: How
will these people who have suffered so much at each others’ hands ever be able
to live together in any configuration
of peaceful co-existence? What enables
people to empathize with the humanity of the ‘other’ after such prolonged
violence? What can we learn from people
who have been able to forgive and partner with their enemies and work for
peace? Is there any wisdom in Judaism about forgiveness that might be helpful? What wisdom might there be for us when we
face questions about experiences of trauma and the challenges of forgiveness in
less catastrophic circumstances?
I
want to begin with basics from the Jewish tradition’s perspective on
forgiveness, recognizing that these principles were not meant for conditions of
war. But in order to ground us in a
foundation. Within the tradition,
forgiveness is consequent on repentance.
To become worthy of forgiveness, a person who has harmed another must
first engage in a process of teshuvah
which entails a number of steps:
1.
Acknowledge that one has done
something wrong
2.
Confess one’s wrongdoings to God and
community
3.
Express remorse
4.
Resolve not to transgress in this way
again.
5.
Compensate the victim for injuries
inflicted and do acts of charity for others.
6.
Sincerely request forgiveness by the
victim…with help from community or friends…and do so up to three times.
7.
Avoid the conditions that caused the
offense
8.
Act differently when confronted with
the same situation.
Once someone has done teshuvah, we are obliged to forgive. At the heart of the
tradition is the idea that forgiveness is an obligation and acting on the
demands of that duty enables us to live as a community worthy of God’s
presence. (see Elliot Dorff in Dimensions of Forgiveness) The
bonds of community are re-established through action rather than a change in
feelings. It is the preservation of
these bonds that is central to the traditional perspective. Forgiveness is not the private emotional
process we usually think of today. I
take from this a valuable principle: forgiveness is a practice. It is a choice and
a decision. It is not an emotion.
And yet we know….the practice of
forgiveness involves emotional challenges.
What makes it hard to ask for forgiveness?
It is an act of vulnerability. It means giving power to the other person by
needing something from them that might be refused. It means accepting our own capacity to do
harm. It takes humility and courage.
Why
are we motivated to forgive people who have harmed us?
We know we have harmed others and we
want to be forgiven when we are the ones at fault. Or we want to get past an incident and get on
with our lives, not continue to harbor anger and resentment.
What makes it hard to offer forgiveness?
Offering forgiveness is often the outcome
of a painful struggle, with rage, fear, ambivalence, and conflict. Forgiveness
involves overcoming feelings of hostility and vengefulness. It involves overcoming feelings of
vulnerability. We have been harmed in a
way we were unable to avoid, which has compromised our safety. By forgiving, we may put ourselves at risk
again.
Offering forgiveness can involve a
profound wrestling with good and evil, within our-selves and outside of
our-selves. As one writer expressed
it: “Forgiving involves facing this most
difficult of moral and personal challenges:
striving to take the goad from our sides without eviscerating ourselves
of our guts—our moral sensibilities, our self respect, our standards of justice
and our hope.” (Steven Cherry, Healing
Agony: Re-imagining Forgiveness)
After extremes of violence and trauma, how is forgiveness even possible?
In a remarkable memoir, a black
South African psychologist who served on the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission named Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela reflects on her interviews with Eugene
de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned death squads under
apartheid rule. After witnessing an
interaction at the hearings between de Kock and two black South African women whose
husbands he was responsible for murdering, who yet offered de Kock forgiveness,
Madikizela wanted to understand how remorse
and forgiveness happen after mass atrocity.
“How,” she asks, “can we transcend hate if the goal is to transform
human relationships in a society with a past marked by violent conflict between
groups? These questions,’ she says, ‘may
be irrelevant for people who do not need to live as a society with their former
enemies. But for those of us whose lives
are intertwined with those who have grossly violated our human rights…,
ignoring the question is not an option.” I was asking the same kind of
questions and though I don’t see the South African situation as historically or
politically similar to Israel and the Palestinians, I wanted to learn from her.
Was de Kock too evil or were his
acts too evil to be worthy of the forgiveness offered to him, she asks? In a face to face encounter,
Gobodo-Madikezela confronts one of the existential crises that arise when a
victim of extreme trauma faces a remorseful perpetrator. As de Kock expresses what seems to be sincere
grief and remorse over what he has done, Gobodo-Madikizela finds herself
feeling sympathy for this mass murderer. At that moment, she instinctively
touches his hand … but then recoils. Was
she crossing the moral line which allows one to maintain a measure of distance
from a perpetrator by actually being able to identify with him? Was she
violating her own sense of morality by feeling the human impulse of empathy for
this killer?
Reflecting
later, she sobs with despair for her suffering as a black woman under
Apartheid. But at the same time, she
explains she felt a profound sense of loss about de Kock, “(for) the side of
him she had touched (that) had not been allowed to triumph over the side that
made him Apartheid’s killing machine.”
It is an extraordinary quality to be
able to empathize with such an enemy…and, of course, this was only possible
once de Kock was in prison and the power dynamic between them had been
reversed. When war or oppression is
still ongoing, such empathy can be nearly impossible.
One of the most profoundly
disturbing dimensions of this summer’s war was witnessing the ever more deeply
entrenched dehumanization between Israelis and Palestinians from both
sides. Dehumanization made ever more intense
as the everyday interactions that used to occur between the two peoples before
the Second Intifada have become increasingly rare. That is what happens as violence and vengeance suck people into the cycle
of kill or be killed, dominate or be dominated. (Embodying Forgiveness)
Empathy, even for the dead children of the enemy, can become a victim of
war, as Bob Tabak’s recently posted dvar
Torah so painfully named. Empathy or
even attempting to understand the other seems like treason. This is why peacemakers are often
assassinated by their own people.
Sitting
with those thoughts, I was moved to discover the words of a Christian
theologian, L. Gregory Jones: “It is
important to analyze and confront our tendencies in modernity… to see the world either as ‘lighter’ than it
is (hence trivializing forgiveness by making it therapeutically easy) or as
‘darker’ than it is, hence believing that forgiveness is impossible or
ineffective because violence is ultimately our master.” I stopped in my tracks after reading that
sentence. Has violence indeed become our
master?
Jones continues: “It is urgent to explore whether there
are ways to unlearn and break habits of violence, to stop cycles of vengeance,
to cultivate a politics of holiness…. Our commitments to unlearn and break
these habits is fragile, even when there is a desire to do so. If
such commitments are to be sustained, they require supportive friendships,
practices and institutions that enable the unlearning of destructive habits and
the cultivation of holy ones……...” (Bolding mine)
And so I continued reading to learn more from people who
have broken those habits.
Among
the books I read was Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. In his introduction
to the book , Bill Clinton reports Mandela’s answer to the question of how he
was able to make the journey from prisoner to peacemaker and president: “When you’re young and strong, you can stay
alive on your hatred. And I did for many
years.” Then one day, “I realized that
they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not
take those things. Those things I still
had control over. And I decided not to
give them away. I realized that when I
went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I
wanted to be free. And so I let it
go.” “To make peace with an enemy one
must work with that enemy, and that enemy (has to) become one’s partner.”
Mandela’s words echo the wisdom of
Torah. Just weeks ago, Rabbi Jonathan
Sacks wrote on the biblical injunction “Do not despise the Egyptian because you
were a stranger in his land”. “The
wisdom of Moses’ command not to despise the Egyptians still shines through
today. If the people continued to hate
their ….oppressors, Moses would have taken the Israelites out of Egypt but
would have failed to take Egypt out of the Israelites. They would still be slaves, not physically
but psychologically. They would be ……
held captive by the chains of resentment, unable to build the future. To be free, you have to let go of hate. That is a difficult truth but a necessary
one…..Always be ready, Moses seems to have implied, for reconciliation between
enemies.”
Rabbi Sacks continues: “No less surprising is Moses’ insistence: “Do
not despise an Edomite because he is your brother.” Edom, he reminds us, was the other name of
Esau. The earlier stories from the book
of Genesis seem to imply that the enmity between Jacob and Esau would be
eternal. Why then, asks Rabbi Sacks,
does Moses tell us not to despise Esau’s descendants? “The answer is simple. Esau may hate Jacob. It does not follow that Jacob should hate
Esau. To answer hate with hate is to be
dragged down to the level of your opponent.
When….I asked Judea Pearl, father of the murdered journalist Daniel
Pearl, why he was working for reconciliation between Muslims and Jews, he
replied with heartbreaking lucidity:
“Hate killed my son. Therefore I
am determined to fight hate.”
And this is what I discovered to be
the distinguishing and shared characteristic of people who
have been able to partner with the enemy and do the hard work of
peace-making: not to see the one who inflicted violence and trauma on them as the
enemy, but rather to see the enemy as hate itself. So simple.
So profound. So seemingly
impossible. But there are people who do
it.
Several years ago, a Palestinian
doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish probably changed the course of Operation Cast Lead
and the bombing of Gaza in 2009. Dr.
Abuelaish was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. He went to medical school in Cairo, studied
obstetrics and gynecology in Saudi Arabia and did his residency in Israel. He spent years working in Israeli hospitals where, he
has said, patients were always surprised to find a Palestinian doctor
delivering Jewish babies. He travelled
through check points daily to work and was widely respected by many Israelis.
On January 16, 2009, only 5 months after his wife had died of leukemia, Dr.
Abuelaish’s home was hit by a bomb during Operation Cast Lead. Three of his
daughters, aged 13, 15 and 21, were killed; another daughter, was seriously
injured, a niece died and a fifth girl, another niece, suffered catastrophic
injuries. Right after the shell struck, he ran to the room that had been hit. "I saw my
girls drowning in a pool of blood," "I saw their body parts… all over
the room". Desperate for medical assistance, he called his friend Shlomi
Eldar, a presenter on Channel 10 in Israel who happened to be on air at that
moment. The doctor’s agonized cries for help in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic
were broadcast live throughout Israel. Within an hour, with the help of his
Israeli friends, his injured daughter and niece were evacuated from
Gaza. Then Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, also heard the
broadcast. Two days later he announced the ceasefire.
Dr.
Abuelaish has written a powerful book called: I Shall Not
Hate . In an interview
he was asked: But how is
it possible that you do not feel hatred after what has happened to you? "There
is a difference between anger and hate, he explains. “Anger is acute but
transient; hate is a poison, a fire which burns you from the inside. ….It is
important to feel anger in the wake of events like this, anger that signals
that you do not accept what has happened, that spurs you to make a difference. But you have to choose not to spiral into
hate. All the desire for revenge and
hatred does is drive away wisdom, increase sorrow and prolong strife… …I
realized that I had two options …: I
could take the path of darkness or the path of light. If I chose the path of darkness, of poisonous
hate and revenge, it would be like choosing to fall into the complications and
the depression that come with disease.
To choose the path of light, I had to focus on the future and my
children.”
Even
if the enemy has not expressed remorse, this letting go of hatred is a form of forgiveness that is an innovative gesture, breaking
open the logic of vengeance and cycles of violence.
The organization Bereaved Families was founded by
Yitzchok Frankenthal, an Orthodox Jewish business man from Bnei Brak. Frankenthal’s 19 year old
son Arik was returning home from his army base on a weekend pass when he was
abducted by Hamas terrorists and never returned. In 1995, Frankenthal and several bereaved Israeli
families founded the Parent’s Circle Family Forum. In 1998 the first meetings
were held with a group of Palestinians families from Gaza who identified with
the call to prevent further bereavement through dialogue and reconciliation.
The connection with the group in Gaza was cut off as a result of the second
Intifada, though the work of the organization continues.
Robi
Damelin, whose 28 year old son was
shot by a sniper while serving in the Israeli army, and who works for the Family Forum, says the
first words that came out of her mouth when she learned of his death were ‘do
not take revenge in the name of my son.’
Robi travels around the world with Palestinian partners to promote
dialogue. One of those partners, Ali Abu
Awwad, born in 1972 on the West Bank, was given a 10 year prison sentence as a
teenager for throwing rocks but was released 4 years later after the signing of
the Oslo Accords. In 2000, during the
Second Intifada, Abu Awwad was shot in the leg by an Israeli settler and his
brother Youseff was killed by an Israeli soldier at a check point incident.
Together with his mother, Abu Awaad became a member of Bereaved Families
Forum. He reports that he was shocked at
his first meeting when he saw an Israeli parent cry: “I never believed that
Israelis could cry. I saw that they
could be victims.” David Shulman, a
professor of Humanistic Studies at Hebrew University describes Awwad as one of the leaders of a new
generation of non-violent resisters in Palestine, and quotes him as saying:
"The
Jews are not my enemy; their fear is my enemy. We must help them to stop being
so afraid – their whole history has terrified them – but I refuse to be a
victim of Jewish fear anymore".
AliAbu Awwad has been on tour this fall in the USA with Orthodox Rabbi Hanan
Schlesinger, a passionate Zionist settler who says he has been transformed by
his friendship with Ali. Abu Awwad is
coming to Congregation Mishkan Shalom this coming Thursday evening, October 9th
and to Germantown Jewish Centre on Friday morning.
I cannot begin to figure out the
geopolitics of the Middle East. But I
understand human relationships. I do not
know if I would ever be capable of the kind of forgiveness exemplified by these
remarkable people, but I know I want to learn from them. At a moment in history
like this, on this Shabbat Shabbatonim,
I want to take seriously that forgiveness is a powerful Jewish practice. I want to take seriously that hope is an
ethical position, not an emotion. I want
to take to heart Sharon Salzberg’s words on faith: “the power of faith doesn’t mean we’ve annihilated
fear, or denied it, or overcome it through strenuous effort. …. It
means feeling our fear and still remaining in touch with our heart, so that
fear does not define our entire world, all we can see or do or imagine.”
I want to leave you with the words
of two poets. The first is Jewish, Rabbi
Tamara Cohen and the second by Palestinian American, Naomi Shihab Nye.
No Pain
Like My Pain (Lamentations 1:12) - for
Tisha b'Av 5774/ 2014
That's
how it feels Dear God.
That's
how it felt to the lamenters exiled and Temple-shorn.
That's
how it feels to each grief-wracked mother, father, sister, son, family, nation.
הביטו וראו אם יש מכאוב כמכאובי
"Look
carefully and see if there could possibly be pain like my pain, like the one
bestowed by You upon me."
No pain
like my pain,
no exile
like my exile,
No land
my land,
No
desolate city like my desolate city.
No heart
like my own aching heart.
No fear
like the fear of my people.
No
genocide like our genocide.
No
humanity like our humanity.
No right
like our right.
No wrong
like their wrong.
No rage
like my rage.
No pain
like my pain,
immediate
and raw and righteous,
ancient
and true and etched in our genes by history's injustices.
Dear God,
help us look,
look
closer so that we may see
our children
in their children,
their
children in our own.
Help us
look so that we may see You --
in the
bleary eyes of each orphan, each grieving childless mother,
each
masked and camouflaged fighter for his people's dignity.
Dear God,
Divine Exiled and Crying One,
Loosen
our claim to our own uniqueness.
Soften
this hold on our exclusive right -- to pain, to compassion, to justice.
May your
children, all of us unique and in Your image,
come to
know the quiet truths of shared pain,
shared
hope,
shared land,
shared
humanity,
shared
risk,
shared
courage,
shared
peace.
In
Sh'Allah. Ken yehi Ratzon.
May it be
Your will.
and may
it be ours.
- Rabbi Tamara Ruth Cohen
From
‘Jerusalem’ by Naomi Shihab Nye
I’m not
interested in
who suffered the most.
I’m interested in
people getting over it.
Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
…..
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.
….A child’s poem says,
“I don’t like wars,
they end up with monuments.”
He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.
There’s a place in my brain
where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.
It’s late but everything comes next.
