The nature of forgiveness

Hazzan Judy Greenfeld has spent much of her life thinking about forgiveness.

In December 1975, when she was 16, her parents were held up in an inner-city Cleveland parking structure after seeing a play with some friends. The assailants were three teenage boys with a sawed-off shotgun, and the one holding the gun panicked. He shot her father, and he died immediately.

Greenfeld, her four siblings and her mother were so immobilized by the pain and shock, it took them a year just to be able to move, she said. Each Friday night and each holiday brought a fresh wave of grief.

Greenfeld doesn’t know what she would do if she ran into the murderer, who was sentenced to a juvenile detention center and then a few years in prison.

“Part of me felt like, why do these kids get to live? They should be dead. These boys should know who they killed,” said Greenfeld, who founded the Nachshon Minyan, a spiritual and educational community in Encino.

For decades, Greenfeld has done the psychological and spiritual work necessary to move on with her life.

“If someone really hurts you or ruins your life, there is this sense that if you forgive them, they are not going to pay, and they’re not going to really feel what you felt. There is a desire for somebody to be as pained as you are,” she said. “Well, we don’t get to do that, because the truth is we don’t have control over that.”

So Greenfeld reconceptualized what forgiveness means, parsing the word to derive a nuance that has led her to spiritual healing.

“I turned the word ‘forgiving’ into ‘for giving’ to God to take care of. When I do that, it puts me into a place where I can release myself of the personal responsibility of having to bring someone to justice. The true healing of forgiveness is that it releases you,” she said. 

Greenfeld has devised a meditation to help visualize the process of forgiveness, which she says works for offenses mundane or life-altering. 

She pictures the offense — in her case, the murderers — and imagines an electrical cord extending from her solar plexus out to these boys. The energy is draining from her and going to them.

“I have something that weakens me and is so painful. It is the energy that runs from me to that picture, that scene. Part of the work is untying myself from that energetic cord, so that I can pull my energy back to me,” she said.

For smaller offenses, it might just be a thin thread that needs snipping. For larger offenses, it might be a cable of twisted wires.

“I have to cut that cable. And all those little fibers, all the little wires hanging out, I have to smooth them, and then pull that cable back into my own heart to re-empower myself,” she said.

“And what I have found is that when I take it into that realm, I’m released. I don’t know if I can tell you, if I ever saw these men, what I would do, and I can’t tell you that I feel there is justice in the world. But I know I have been able to live my life and turn it into good, which is what I feel teshuvah (repentance) is — being able to bring good where there has been something that isn’t good.”

Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin, rabbi emeritus at Stephen S. Wise Temple, said his years on the pulpit and working with people has led him to believe that it is forgiving, and not apologizing, that is at the core of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“I’ve discovered that worshippers always look upon the High Holy Days as a wonderful therapy session, because they know they can begin with a new slate. But I would like the emphasis to be that the worshipper, in his or her relationships, lets the other have a new slate. And that is why one of the most important commandants is, ‘Thou shall not bear a grudge,” Zeldin said.

People who are forgiving recognize their own faults and thus empathize with others, according to Rabbi Mark Borovitz, founder and director of Beit T’Shuvah, a residential recovery facility in Culver City.

“The only person who would rebuff teshuvah is someone who needs to be angry, and it’s just really sad,” he said. “Some people are addicted to being miserable.”

Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of Clal — The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and an author and speaker on spiritual and interpersonal issues, said those who are unable to forgive need to look inside themselves.

“Generally speaking, I find the inability to forgive somebody else has to do with that person internally not forgiving themselves, or not having been forgiven for something they did,” he said, noting that it is specific to each case. “Until it creates some kind of anxiety that undermines the person’s way of being in the world, there is nothing much you can do,” he said.

Of course, there are some transgressions and betrayals that are so deep, they can’t be forgiven.

“Sometimes we hurt people so deeply, that the brokenness, at least in the near term, is irreparable, and then we live with it. Brokenness is part of life,” Kula said.

Jewish sources require one who is apologizing to make three sincere attempts. If after three attempts the apology is rebuffed, the wrongdoer is absolved.

Of course, divine absolution might do little to heal someone whose apology goes unaccepted.

“One thing you may feel is grief. What you’re expecting is to reattach to the person, and the grief is that the person will not be who you wish them to be,” said Wendy Mogel, a psychologist and author of the forthcoming “The Blessing of a B Minus.”

There are shades of gray on the forgiveness spectrum. You can forgive someone but not have an interest in continuing the relationship, according to Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector and professor of philosophy at the American Jewish University. Or, you can reconcile without forgiving — he points to America and Japan, following the mutually destructive deeds of World War II. Or, you can offer a pardon, so the person is not absolved of guilt, but no longer has to suffer the punishment.

What Greenfeld understands is that finding some way to resolve enmity between people helps both parties.

“When people are really tired, I ask them to look at the resentments in their life, because resentments drain you,” she said.

“In the end, you have to ask the question, how do we want to continue to bring goodness into the world? Forgiveness allows us an opportunity to move forward.”