Healthy Unity, Honest Healing: Only After Taking Responsibility and Making Amends

This is a time of incredible stress, incredible rage, and it’s pouring out all over the place. In the heat of that pressure, I want to invite us to view these days and their horrific events from an unusual vantage point. I want us to apply some wisdom from Torah and Jewish tradition to the situation and think about the morality and values of what’s happening. Because if we can’t find a way to do that, we will never find a way to talk to each other.

These have been unbelievable times in the United States and, truthfully, around the world. In this country, a charged presidential election — probably more emotional, more divided than any in our lifetimes or in our nation’s history — witnessed repeated assertions that it was fraudulent, that it was stolen.

But there has been no evidence to support that fraudulent assertion. And there have been repeated hearings and findings by courts of law — presided over by both Democratic and Republican judges (including judges appointed by President Trump) — that have ruled that these claims are without merit, there was a definitive winner and it was a fair and open election process, in which both candidates got more votes than any of their predecessors.

But in our distorted world, the president and others lob these false charges of invalid elections. We portray opponents as enemies, and we do not speak about people who differ from us ideologically as though they just disagree, as though we need to learn from them. Instead, we talk about them as though they are vile, as though they are subhuman, as though they don’t have any worth or values and are not worth consideration.

We Must Turn Away, We Must Face Each Other

Democracies die when we can’t hear each other. This willful vilification and distortion morph into violence. Because if we all believe that there are people who are threatening to take away our country, well, we’re going to fight them in every possible way. Violent responses destroy democracy. And lashing out corrodes our ability to communicate and develop a new, more enduring consensus.

We all know what happened in the hallowed halls of Congress and the fascist assault we all witnessed in horror. This toxic brew of false charges and invalid elections — this caricaturing of each other as demons, enemies and traitors — resulted in Congress being stormed last week by hoodlums and thugs, who wore anti-Semitic clothing, who shouted anti-Semitic and anti-Black racist rhetoric and who threatened to kill the speaker of the House, random legislators and the vice president of the United States. All this seems to have been orchestrated and encouraged at the very highest levels. It wasn’t just a spontaneous bubbling up.

In the stench of that brew, I want us to consider a powerful insight that religion can offer us as a way forward.

There have been many voices since that assault on Congress — which, let’s be honest, was an assault on democracy — that have called for a quick and easy coming together. “Let’s unify,” they plead. “Let’s not keep talking about it; let’s come together; let’s forgive each other; let’s start the healing process.” In the face of this false and fatal version of forgiveness on the cheap, I want to warn us that it is deadly if we try to heal by ignoring the real challenges — the assault and real differences in opinion.

It is deadly if we try to heal by ignoring the real challenges — the assault and real differences in opinion.

There is a good reason why halakhah (Jewish law) requires eyewitnesses, factual evidence and reliable testimony. If we try to heal without insisting that people first have solid evidence for the charges that they make, there can be no healing because it is based on paranoia and fabrication. If we cannot insist that we respect the courts of the United States, that we are a nation of laws and not of politicized impulses, then any “forgiveness” simply perpetuates festering sickness. It’s like putting a Band-Aid over the wound without first treating it. It’s like being in a marriage without ever talking about the areas of difference. Covered over, those differences just accumulate until they explode.

We saw that happen under the dome of the Capitol building.

The Solution is Teshuvah

Judaism has very clear teachings here. In order for there to be teshuvah, which is the process of turning back to wholeness, and in order for a healthy unity, rather than pathological unity, we need to take four prerequisite steps. I continue to affirm that the vast majority of us seek healing, wholeness and yearn for a more perfect union. The only path that gets us from here to there takes us through the steps of teshuvah.

The first step is confession. There must be an admission of wrongdoing on the part of the individual.  Confession requires honesty and courage. We are called upon to mobilize the strength to ask hard questions of ourselves: “What have I done to contribute to this terrible scenario? How have I caricatured my ideological opponents? How have I marginalized groups of people? How have I supported insupportable things just because the wrongdoer was my ally, which I would have condemned if that perpetrator were an antagonist?”

So, we have to confess. There must be a national confession of the kind of bubbling racism, anti-Semitism, patriarchy, the recourse to dog whistles to insult and diminish each other, the inability to respect each other and learn from each other — that has to be put out on the table, and those who have perpetuated or contributed to the violence need to admit that’s what they’ve been doing. Frankly, those who’ve claimed the elections were fraudulent need to atone for that sin by confessing, too.

According to the Bible and Jewish tradition, after we’ve spoken the words of the confession comes repentance, the expression of regret. “I see what I did; I see that what I did was wrong, and it pains me.” That is the transformative moment when we are no longer the perpetrator, and we suddenly become the person who is now, in some ways, victimized by our own previous error, our own previous sin. By speaking sincere regret, we remake ourselves into a different person, but that can only happen if our regret is without excuse or an attempt to avoid taking responsibility.

Once we’ve regretted our error, then we have to do the hard work to change. We have to say, “I’m not going to be that person anymore. I’m going to listen to the people I disagree with; I’m going to speak the words that open the door for dialogue rather than brush them aside. I will no longer perpetuate slander, distortion or hate. I will speak not out of fear but love.”

Finally, there has to be repair. “The ways that I contributed to ripping apart this society, I now need to positively contribute to the rebuilding.”

If we can commit to these four steps — confession, repentance and regret, a resolution to change and a commitment to repair the breach — and demand them of those accountable, only then will our unity create actual healing. Then, our healing will have a chance to be deep, transformative and real. Then, and only then, we will not be papering over a festering wound that will metastasize again and again and again.

Before the premature calls for healing and before the siren calls for unity, which are based on falsehoods and ignoring our problems, let’s muster the courage to face the real issues. Like people who are inspired by the actual teachings of the Bible, we must be honest, hold to truth and hold to our faith in open conversation so that, with that respect for our dignity in each other, we’re able to move forward.

Only then can there be healing.

Rabbi Dr Bradley Shavit Artson (www.bradartson.com), a Contributing Writer, holds the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and is Vice President of American Jewish University in Los Angeles. A member of the Philosophy Department, he is particularly interested in theology, ethics, and the integration of science and religion. He is also dean of the Zacharias Frankel College in Potsdam, Germany, ordaining Conservative rabbis for Europe.