Forgiving Ourselves
Erev Rosh Hashanah: September 29, 2008/5769
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit

I want to tell you about a conversation I had when I was 23 years old. The conversation was about loneliness. I had just moved to Jerusalem where I was beginning rabbinical school. It was a time when I was moving around a lot. I once figured out that I had lived in a different room or apartment every year for eight years running. I had just moved into yet another apartment and this conversation was with one of my new roommates.

It seemed like my life was always starting and re-starting and I said that I thought I knew something about being lonely. In the course of that evening, my new friend said, “Yes, I’ve moved a lot and I’ve traveled too, but you know, when it comes to loneliness, I have never felt as lonely, as alone, as the times when I’ve done something stupid and I had fight with a person I care about. It’s that loneliness, the loneliness we experience not when we’re drifting and unattached but when we are in a relationship with someone and do something that we can’t believe we’ve done and it makes us feel so apart from them. That’s the loneliness that really hurts.”

The Torah teaches Lo tov heyote haAdam levado (It’s not good for people to be alone). And our tradition isn’t only talking about the importance of building a life with a person that you love. It’s also teaching that human beings are meant to be with other people, in creative, positive connections with those around us. So it’s disturbing and unsettling when we find ourselves in conflict with our parents, with our children, with our brother or sister, with friends and acquaintances, or the people we work with and study with every day. I’m convinced that one of the most valuable gifts that Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, can provide is the opportunity to address and repair the loneliness, the separation we feel when we hurt others or are hurt by them in return.

This Rosh Hashanah, I want to speak about the process of moving out of that lonely place. Tonight, I want to talk about the importance, and the process, of forgiving ourselves. At this holy moment, when we hope to be able to enter a new year with new possibilities, somewhat of a clean slate, forgiven for the stupid and thoughtless things we occasionally did last year, how can we expect to be forgiven if we are not able to find a way to forgive ourselves and reconcile with those who hurt us?

All right, it’s about time for a story. I know this is a true story because I watched it unfold. I had a friend all through high school and college. He had been with one girlfriend for seemingly forever. The year after we graduated college, he was one of the people who was actually going to get married. I never thought she treated him that well, but from the outside, it’s hard to know what makes a relationship work.

Well, it’s an old story but a sad one nonetheless. As the wedding date got closer, the girl had a change of heart, cheated on him, lied to him, and dumped him. Josh (not his real name) was devastated and spent months (I know this because he was one of my housemates at the time) in the place of “I could of, I should have, if only….” He was driving himself crazy, and in all honesty, driving the rest of us in the house crazy as well! Finally, one of our older and wiser housemates, who was probably 26 years old at the time, physically sat him down (I remember the living room, with the broken couch) and said, “Josh. Listen to me. It doesn’t ultimately matter if she comes back to you or not. What ultimately matters is how you act right now, in regard to women, in regard to relationships, in regard to yourself. Your next moves are crucial and will determine how you respond to women and how they respond to you for years to come. You have to be self-respecting. You have to be honest and insist that people be honest with you in return. All the things that you didn’t do in that relationship, all the things you wish you had done, you start doing right now. If you don’t find a way to forgive yourself and move on, if you don’t find a way to be at peace with yourself, you’re not going to be at peace with anyone.”

The theme of Rosh Hashanah is not “forgive and forget.” The theme is “forgive and remember.” One of the names of Rosh Hashanah is Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembering. But on Rosh Hashanah, remembering is not supposed to be a review all your misdeeds, to beat yourself up and make you feel bad. Remembering is for the sole purpose of understanding what you need to do, so you can act differently in the present moment.

A story is told of a student who traveled a long distance to meet with a famous rebbe. The student humbly asks, “Rebbe, how do I become wise?” The rabbi looks carefully at the student and answers, “From making good choices.” “But rebbe, how will I know how to make good choices?” The rebbe responds, “From experience.” “But,” the student continues, “How do I get that experience?” The rebbe smiles and answers, “From bad choices.”

I believe that finding happiness and satisfaction in life, depends on your next choice, on your next move. What are you going to say next? What are you going to do next? If we make a good next choice, we can look back and forgive ourselves for bad choices in our past.

So, how do we actually do this? How do we enter the process of freeing ourselves from the bad choices we made and forgiving ourselves?

Here’s something we might want to tonight, or over the next two days. The first step is to realize and accept that no one is perfect: not your friends, not your teachers, especially not your parents. Even the people we love and respect the most in the world are fallible human beings. Sometimes when I’m having a hard time forgiving myself for something I’ve done wrong, I do a certain exercise: I stop and think about the people I most admire in the world, a teacher who had great impact on my life, a friend who I think is truly amazing. Then I stop and think: is she perfect? Does she do every thing totally right all the time?

The answer, of course, is no. As accomplished and special as someone is, she is still human and makes human mistakes. Then I ask myself the second question: Do I love this person or admire him less because occasionally he does something stupid or insensitive? And the answer is no. Then I remind myself that everyone, including me, can make a mistake.

Now, the irony here is that feeling bad is good, if, and when, it motivates us to examine and change our actions. Feeling bad is bad if it incapacitates you and gets in the way of making the changes that you need to make. Our tradition is clear: You don’t have to be perfect. You do have to own up your mistakes, and you do have to be actively committed to acting differently.

So after you clear away that unrealistic expectation of personal perfection, then get specific. Chose something that burdens you from the past year: a bad decision, a time when you were cruel or thoughtless or selfish. Do what the rabbis call cheshbon hanefesh, taking an account of your soul. Think about why you acted how you did, and how you want to act differently next time.

Once you have a sense of what you did wrong, articulate it to yourself in a clear sentence or two: “The next time I make a commitment to help a friend, I will say clearly what I am going to do, and then I will do it when I said I would.” I know this next suggestion might sound silly, but in our tradition, we believe in the power of words spoken outloud. There is something powerful and magical about hearing the words that you speak. The magical incantation “abra k’dabrah” is from the Hebrew abra k’davrah (it came to pass as it was spoken). And in fact, saying our commitments to change outloud seems to really make a difference as we imprint the importance of these changes on our mind.

If this change involves another person and you need to apologize, or make right a wrong you committed, set a time frame to do that. Make the phone call. Write the email. Both are all right. However, I maintain that a face-to-face apology, while harder, will have a much greater impact.

Then let it go. Forgive yourself. Forgiveness is about giving and ultimately, giving should be done joyously. Once you begin to act in a different way, be generous to yourself. Realize you are not stuck in the past, but have made the steps to move forward in your life, moving positively into this new year.

If you can’t forgive yourself for your own sake, do it for the sake of the people around you. Because that self-anger, that self-criticism, that inability to accept the fact that we are all imperfect beings, will spill out and hurt the people around you. I just saw a wonderful movie called “The Band’s Visit,” about an Egyptian police band that takes a wrong turn and ends up in a little town in Israel. The movie is about the very lovely and challenging interactions between the Egyptians and the Israelis. The Egyptian bandleader is stern and controlling and unforgiving to the band members under his command. As the movie unfolds, we learn the reason for his hard and unforgiving behavior. We learn that he is really not angry at his band members. Instead, he is punishing himself for his own history. It turns out that his strict and stern approach to life alienated his son, an unstable boy who felt driven away from the family. His wife was so devastated that over the years, her health failed. The bandleader blamed himself so deeply, was so unable to reconcile and move on, that he wouldn’t allow himself, or those around him, to experience joy.

Ultimately, forgiving yourself is not about you. It’s about how you are able to function with the others around you. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch said, “First become a blessing to yourself, so that you may be a blessing to others.”

Rosh Hashanah presents a unique opportunity to begin this process of forgiveness and change. The story is told that Rabbi Eliezer’s students once came to him and said, “We are so busy with our studies. When do we actually need to start this complicated process of change in our lives? When do we actually need to do teshuvah? All the time? Just before Rosh Hashanah? Just before the end of Yom Kippur?”

Rabbi Eliezar said, “No, no. Relax, you don’t need to do teshuvah every day. You don’t need to forgive yourself, to forgive others every day. You only have to do it once, the day before you die.”

“Phew,” his students said, and then they stopped and realized the meaning of his answer. “But rabbi, how do we know when we’re going to die?” “Exactly,” said the rabbi. “You have to live every day with the same moral intensity as if it were your last.”

Rav Simcha Bunam had a strange, powerful teaching that he would share with his students during the holidays. He said, “You know, sinning, all those things we do wrong, those sins are really not the worst things we do. Our greatest crime is that at any moment, we have the opportunity to change, and we don’t take the opportunity to do so.”

At any moment, we are able to forgive ourselves and move forward in our lives. I hope that on this new year, we will seize that opportunity and begin to make the changes that are key to our fulfillment and happiness in the year to come.