A Yom Kippur reflection
In the Jewish tradition, Yom Kippur is a day of reckoning – a time for reflection, repentance, and seeking forgiveness. For breaking each other’s hearts; for causing each other pain. But in 5785, the Day of Atonement comes after a year of so many bad actions by such genuinely horrible players that it seems right to consider where some things actually just cannot be forgiven.
I’m no theological expert, but I can report that if you look for the answers in Judaism, you may find some contradictions. The forgiving interpretation might be that Judaism holds a complex view of atonement and forgiveness.
Certainly it offers the suggestion that in an ideal world, we’d all strive to forgive those who wronged us. Proverbs 19:11 teaches (and yes, I had to look it up), “It is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” There’s a rare combination of logic and beauty here, releasing not only the miscreant from fear but the victim from the burden of anger and resentment, allowing both to move on.
But is that not perhaps a perverse incentive structure that incentivizes miscreants by not exacting a price? Indeed, Judaism also suggests that not every crime is forgivable. The prophet Isaiah issues a stark reminder of the weight of injustice: “Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice and rob the poor of My people of their rights” (Isaiah 10:1-2). Throughout the Bible one finds suggestions that some harms require justice.
The Latin principle of lex talionis – proportional justice – probably stems from ancient law codes, particularly the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (around 1754 BC), where the concept first appeared in a formal legal context. But it is in the Bible that it finds its most famous manifestation, in Leviticus 24:19-20, which commands: “If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”
That sets both a principle of proportionality – and a certain kind of high bar. It seems to kick in with cases of permanent damage (though, yes, some fractures can heal). “An eye for an eye” suggests that when irreversible harm is done, forgiveness is not an obligation. Justice may demand punishment, and forgiveness may not always be appropriate or even possible. We are not all the same.
When wrongs leave permanent scars—whether physical, emotional, or societal — demanding forgiveness may place an undue burden on the victims. Should we expect a person whose family has been torn apart by violence to forgive without condition? Can a society whose members have been systematically oppressed and abused truly forgive without first seeing justice?
This certainly applies to much of what is playing out in various war zones all over the world right now. The wrinkle, of course, is that we cannot agree on who’s to blame. Even Russia, which attacked Ukraine unprovoked in 2022, has defenders. This reaches a wild extreme in the case of Hezbollah, which has been rocketing Israel since the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre – well before Israel’s counterstrike against Gaza – yet has convinced people, including some journalists, that it is somehow a “resistance.”
But in cases where the grievance is more than a narrative, Judaism has something of an answer, saying that forgiveness requires the aggressor to show sincere repentance. Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher, emphasized that repentance requires making amends to those we have harmed and seeking their forgiveness. You know that is not possible with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – but it occurred in perhaps the most unforgiveable scenario of all: The Jews, or many of them, haven forgiven the Germans over the crimes of the Nazis, in which so many Germans were complicit.
The Germans convincingly repented. They have become arguably the most humane, ethical and tolerant of the global powers, and are among Israel’s most steadfast friends. It reaches comical extremes: Most of Israel’s other friends do not disguise their extremely reasonable loathing of Benjamin Netanyahu (see this week’s reports of President Biden’s anti-Bibi invective). German leaders still dutifully try to disguise it.
It goes beyond Jewish issues. We saw the German repentance also in 2015, when Angela Merkel made the pivotal decision to allow over a million refugees, mostly Muslims fleeing conflict, to enter Germany. This policy, often referred to as Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture), marked a incredible humanitarian gesture as thousands of refugees were stranded in precarious conditions. Merkel suspended the Dublin Regulation, which required asylum seekers to register in the first EU country they entered, inviting them to Germany directly.
(Politically, of course, Merkel was not forgiven. It led to the rise of the far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and her Christian Democrats were turfed from power. Repentance can earn forgiveness, but it can also bring new punishments from where you least expect it.)
My sense, on this Yom Kippur, is that sometimes justice is more important than forgiveness. In a world where injustices are so horrifyingly common, this may be a time for accountability instead. Only then can we hope to repair the brokenness around us. And heed the beauty that surrounds us.
(A version of this story appeared in The Forward)
