Radical Forgiveness (Using thoughts from Rabbis Alex Israel & Jonathan Sacks)

It’s interesting how you can go through a week with many different experiences and thoughts only to realize later on ways in which there is connectedness between those experiences that wasn’t so apparent at that time.

On Wednesday, I went to an interfaith coalition meeting and upon sitting down, was approached by a minister who said she wanted to speak to me about participating in an upcoming event, the Forgiveness Project, a project about radical forgiveness.  I must say, I was unfamiliar with the term and also didn’t have enough time to sit down with her after the meeting, so I said I would get back to her at a later time.

So moving forward to Friday, when I was studying Torah using the resources of the Pardes institute about Vayigash, I encountered the term “the radical nature of forgiveness.” All of a sudden there seemed to be a connection between the two occurrences coming out of the clear blue!

Read (Gen. 45: 4-8): “I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

We know from former parshiyot that Joseph’s brothers did indeed sell him into slavery.  We know that they acted out of disdain for their younger brother.  Their action was an act of free will.  Joseph does not deny that they sold him, but he is referring to what we know as a theological framework that states that even though we have free will and can make choices, those choices are part of a larger narrative, one in which there lies a purpose beyond ourselves; a larger picture whose ending we do not know but which is known only by G-d.

 Prior to the statement that Joseph makes announcing his identity to his brothers, there is another scene where the brothers are accused of a crime that they did not commit.  Joseph imprisons them, then holds Shimon as a captive and tells the others that they must go back to their home in Canaan and bring back their youngest brother, Binyamin.  The brothers, who are feeling the weight of their previous actions against Yosef, state:   (Read Gen. 42: 21-23) “Surely we deserve to be punished [ashemim] because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us” … They did not realize that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter.]

Their words were an acknowledgement of their wrong-doing.  Such an acknowledgement of wrong-doing is the first step in doing teshuvah.  It requires one to take responsibility for their actions and not blame their actions on the victim, nor make light of them.

After the brothers bring back Binyamin, a cup is placed in in Binyamin’s sack and Joseph says the youngest brother must stay in Egypt as a slave.  It is at this point, that they confess their collective guilt.  They do not pretend that Judah was the one who suggested selling Joseph into slavery. Read [Gen. 44: 16]   “What can we say to my lord?” Judah replied. “What can we say? How can we prove our innocence? God has uncovered your servants’ guilt. We are now my lord’s slaves—we ourselves and the one who was found to have the cup.”

 Confessing one’s wrong-doing is the second part of true teshuvah.  The brother’s do this by saying G-d has uncovered your servants’ guilt.

 The third part of true teshuvah comes when Judah who had actually suggested selling Joseph into slavery offers to be held in slavery rather than having Binyamin held back as a slave.  He could have repeated his former actions, but refrains from doing so because he has changed.  Proof of his transformation comes when he says:  “So now let me remain as your slave in place of the lad. Let the lad go back with his brothers!” (42: 33)

 Because the brothers had actually shown that they had done teshuvah, because they had acknowledged their wrong doing, confessed their sins, and did not repeat their actions when faced with a similar situation, Joseph was now in a position to be able to forgive them.

It is obvious that the brothers felt guilty about their actions and used that sense of guilt to take responsibility for the hurt they had inflicted upon their younger brother, Joseph, and to change their ways. They used their free will to transform themselves.  Joseph, on the other hand, forgave them for their actions because he stopped seeing himself as a victim without a purpose.  He made sense of his suffering, re-framed it and tried to see it as something bigger than his own self.  Joseph rose above his pain.  At the same time, he was able to forgive his brothers because they had done teshuvah g’morah, complete teshuvah.

What Joseph actually did was to exercise radical forgiveness.  He did so not as a result of lack of strength or out of fear of those who had wronged him. He  needed to make sense of his suffering and did not need to use revenge to get back at those who had wronged him. He saw that they had indeed followed the steps that would no longer allow them to continue re-enacting their sins of the past. His approach did not include a desire for revenge.

The Joseph story is the first time in history, according to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,  that an individual forgave another individual.  That radical nature of forgiveness is actually one that Judaism promotes, because as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says, “When we forgive and are worthy of being forgiven, we are no longer prisoners of our past.”  Judaism believes that forgiveness is not offered because the individual could not help their actions in the first place (that would negate free will) nor because the individual has decided to treat the offended individual with more respect (without ever admitting their wrong-doing).  Judaism believes that individuals are capable of doing wrong, but they are not sinners, they have merely committed a wrong-doing,  their actions are sinful and can be corrected through the three steps of teshuvah.  Once true teshuvah takes place, forgiveness exists because the individual has shown that they are never to do the action again….such forgiveness transforms the human situation.

Questions to be discussed:

Who deserves to be forgiven?

Why do people forgive?

Can large-scale injustices be forgiven by individuals who have suffered?