Writings from Rabbi Glickman

Diane was a cheerful and bubbly person until the day she exploded in rage. At first, nobody knew why she exploded, not even Diane herself. All anyone knew was that after a typical day of errands, she came home, found her daughter’s wet bathing suit left on the bedroom floor, blew up at the world, and nothing was ever the same for her again.

A few days later, Diane went to meet with her rabbi about another matter. The rabbi noticed that Diane looked troubled. “Diane,” he said, “what’s wrong? You seem so angry.”

“You bet I’m angry!” she replied, and told the rabbi about her messy house, the incompetent grocery store cashier, bridge traffic, and several other annoyances that she mistook for the source of her wrath.

“Diane,” the rabbi asked calmly, “what’s really going on?”

“Well, it’s just that -”. She paused, let out her breath, and began speaking more slowly. “I don’t know ….. Something just snapped the other day. I mean, I’m trying to do everything I’m supposed to do, but I never seem to get it right. I’m keeping the house clean, getting the kids to their lessons, I made my forgiveness call to Uncle Fred, and I’m volunteering here at Temple. I’m doing everything I should be doing, but I feel so angry.”

The rabbi took the bait. “Your forgiveness call to Uncle Fred?”

“Oh …I guess I need to explain that one.” Diane confided to the rabbi that her Uncle Fred had regularly molested her for several years during her adolescence. She still sees him at family events, and for years neither had mentioned their secret to one another or anyone else. The hurt and shame remained, however, and as a result, she had recently begun to see a therapist.

Diane’s therapist suggested that she needed to forgive Uncle Fred - that she was never going to be able to get on with her life until she let go of the past and all of its painful memories. He advised her to call her uncle and forgive him. That way they could clear the air and ease the tension that had been straining their relationship for so many years.

“So finally I got the nerve to call him up,” she continued. “I told him that even though I haven’t forgotten what he did to me when I was a teenager, I did forgive him. I told him that I was willing to let bygones be bygones and that I hoped we could mend our relationship and be close once again.”

“And ….?”

“And he didn’t say a word for about five seconds or so - it seemed like an eternity. Then he asked me how my kids were doing in school this year.”

The rabbi’s jaw dropped. “So let me make sure I understand. Your Uncle Fred abused you in unspeakably horrible ways for years. Not once has he apologized or acknowledged the horror of what he did, and for all you know, he could still be doing this to other kids. And your therapist suggested that you call and forgive him?”

“Well…yes, actually.”

“Diane, you need a new therapist!”

“Huh?”

“Look, there are different types of forgiveness. One involves telling the person who has wronged us that although what they did was indeed wrong, it’s OK now. We no longer hold it against them, and we can all be friends again.”

“I think that’s what my therapist was telling me to do.”

“Right. In Judaism we are supposed to forgive people in that way only if they repent first. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, literally means ‘return’ - return to our finest self, return to God. It is a very specific process that involves several steps. The wrongdoer must…” The rabbi began counting off the steps on his fingers. “…Acknowledge full responsibility for what he did, apologize, make restitution, promise never to commit this misdeed again, and then follow through on that promise.”

Diane was sitting straighter now, hanging on the rabbi’s every word.

“To insist that the victim forgive an offender who has not done teshuvah would be to ask that victim to behave like a doormat. It would effectively be asking them to say, ‘Go ahead, walk all over me. Abuse me all you want. Uncle Fred, molest away, for there will come a time when I’ll let you off the hook and forget all about it.’

“Diane, you’re not a doormat, you’re a person, and you deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. When you were a little girl, the grown-ups in your life should have protected you, not abused you. Until he does his teshuvah, I don’t think you owe your Uncle Fred a damn thing.”

Diane’s eyes welled with tears. She quietly dabbed at them with a tissue.

“But there’s another type of forgiveness, too - an internal kind. It doesn’t involve calling Uncle Fred, and it definitely doesn’t involve letting him off the hook. Instead, it is learning to say to yourself, ‘What Uncle Fred did to me was horrible, but I don’t have to continue living with all of the shame and hurt that he caused. As an adult, I am free not to be enslaved by those painful memories, and to embrace only those parts of the experience that make me a better, stronger person. Perhaps one day I’ll understand why he did what he did, and I might even sympathize, but this will never excuse his evil deeds. He treated me like a piece of meat, but I know better.’

“Remember, Diane, the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah; and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, are coming up. The major theme of those holidays is repentance, not forgiveness. So let Uncle Fred decide whether he wants to repent. In the meantime, I hope you’ll just live your life as fully as you can.

That evening, Diane phoned her uncle and recanted her forgiveness. She was about to tell him that he was welcome to apologize if he was serious about it, but Uncle Fred hung up on her before she got to that part.

The next day, Diane’s friends noticed that, although she still wasn’t her old, bubbly self, she was walking a bit taller than in recent days, showing a sense of peaceful dignity they had never before seen in her. Perhaps, they thought, she was learning to let things go, to forgive and forget.

They would never know how right they were.

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