In Judaism, forgiveness is absolutely fundamental. It’s the theme of our holy of holies of time, the Day of Atonement, when we turn to God for forgiveness. And in preparation for that we try and apologise to those whom we have hurt, and we forgive those who have hurt us.
Normally in Judaism we see forgiveness as something associated with atonement, remorse, apology. But Maimonides - our greatest Sage of the Middle Ages - rules that if the other person does not apologise you are still free to forgive, and you should. And I agree with him, because harbouring a grudge or a resentment is a terrible weight to carry around with you. And you have to travel light in this world. We have too few energies to waste them on being unforgiving.
The search for perfect justice in this world is impossible. So try and create a just society as far as it lies within you. But you have to let go of the past, and that really is what forgiveness is. And though it benefits the forgiven, it benefits the forgiver still more.
You cannot forgive while evil is ongoing. That simply is, in my humble view, irresponsible. I may ‘forgive’ somebody who is planning a suicide bombing attack, but what then will I say if, God forbid, my wife or my children are among the victims?
Forgiveness is always something that accompanies a cease, a pause, an armistice, a sulcha, what have you. There has to be an end, a truce, let us say, in the hostilities, before forgiveness can begin. Otherwise no one is in the real mood to forgive. You have to create space.
I mean, if I harm you, the natural thing is for you to harm me. That is a chain of cause and effect, cause and effect, which destroyed many ancient societies, and is destroying many at this moment. And forgiveness is that radically unpredictable thing, that human capacity to do the unexpected, to respond in a way that could not have been predicted.
So forgiveness has something to do with human freedom. That even though I may feel assaulted and victimised, I can momentarily stand outside of that, and think not as a victim but as somebody who is an agent of of forgiveness. And because of forgiveness, we are not condemned endlessly to replay the conflicts of the past. And that is why forgiveness is logically and psychologically related to hope.
Forgiveness is the prelude to reconciliation. Once we forgive we get rid of the bad stuff, and we’re able then to shake hands. And because we’ve been liberated from the past, together we can plan a future in which we work together instead of against one another.
I remember a moment... I doubt whether I will ever forget it... in 1999, towards the end of the summer, when I went over to Pristina, to visit... to just make a television programme there. It was just the end of the Kosovo conflict, slowly the Kosovan Albanians were coming back to their homes, hundreds of thousands had fled in terror. And you know the the NATO presence was very evident. There were tanks outside every house of worship. And I stood there, in the middle of Pristina, with all the rubble of the the bombs all over the place...
I suddenly discovered, I realised the power of one word: to forgive. If the Serbs and the Kosovan Albanians were able to forgive one another, and to be forgiven by one another - which means apologising as well - then they would have a future. If not they would find themselves endlessly replaying the Battle of Kosovo of 1389... and therefore I suddenly saw the whole future of that part of the world will depend on whether they can forgive or they can’t. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that carry home to me as immediately and powerfully as it did then, because as I say that conflict had been going on for 700 years. It was dormant for many years but Milošević and Karadžić and the various leaders were able to reignite it because, as Ogden Nash once said, no man ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
If you focus on children, or even on grandchildren not yet born, then you’re facing towards the future. And if you’re facing towards the future you can forgive, because what matters to you is not what happened but what we can build together. Whereas a lack of forgiveness is always tied to a strong sense of reverence and loyalty to the past. That’s why people find it impossible to forgive. Because after all how could - you know - I may forgive, but what about my father or my grandfather whom they murdered or stuck in prison, you know? I have to honour their memory by avenging their honour on on their enemies. So if I am totally loyal to the past, I will actually find it a moral failing to forgive because I will not be honouring them.
And then I suddenly realised that we have to be able to move from a past-oriented culture to a future-oriented culture. We should not ask, ‘what happened to our grandparents?’ We should ask, ‘what kind of world do we want to create for our grandchildren?’ And that does not mean forgetting. Forgiving does not mean forgetting. It means living with the past but not living in the past.
We always end on a note of not-quite-crossing-the-Jordan. Of the Promised Land, seen from afar. So that sense of a future that we are just on the threshold of, or of a vision that lies just over the horizon, that is the Jewish view. It’s a very future-oriented view, and it‘s one that allows us to forgive for the sake of our children, rather than honour and avenge the slights to our parents.
