God Will Forgive You, Will You Forgive Yourself?
An exercise in preparation for The Days of Awe-
Presented by Cantor Bruce Rockman, Selichot Program-September 24th, 2016
According to Harold Kushner, God doesn’t send the problem; God gives us the strength to deal with the problem. It is my hope to guide you to your own conclusions. Like many, I’m preparing to approach the subject of forgiveness with fear, reservations, apprehension and a bunch of emotional baggage. I am not always willing to say the needed words of contrition publicly, privately or even admit them to myself. I am looking for comfort and strength from this process, trying to engage in prayer, repentance and righteousness. I will not lecture. I hope to sit with you as we inspect our souls, not those of our neighbors. We sit together, experiencing the same event but having a different experience. We all need support, we accept this help by our presence our solidarity, our actions and not necessarily by our words. Thank you for participating in this process. Cantor Bruce Rockman
Words of introduction and from our contributors.
“One reason religion has survived in the modern world despite four centuries of secularization is that it answers the three questions every reflective human being will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? These cannot be answered by the four great institutions of the modern West: science, technology, the market economy and the liberal democratic state. Science tells us how but not why. Technology gives us power but cannot tell us how to use that power. The market gives us choices but does not tell us which choices to make. The liberal democratic state as a matter of principle holds back from endorsing any particular way of life. The result is that contemporary culture sets before us an almost infinite range of possibilities, but does not tell us who we are, why we are here, and how we should live.
You can’t delegate memory to machines. You have to renew it regularly and teach it to the next generation. Winston Churchill said: “The longer you can look back, the further you can see forward.” Or to put it slightly differently: Those who tell the story of their past have already begun to build their children’s future.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Our nefesh is the part of our soul that has to struggle with this world, with all the things that can go wrong, and with all the things that we do wrong. Our neshama, on the other hand, is the part of our soul that remains, always, intimately linked to G-d. We need to remember that that is us, too.
We can understand that being forgiven (by G-d or by ourselves) does not mean ignoring or whitewashing what we have done wrong. Instead, it is born in the tension between being imperfect in one way (the way of the nefesh in this world), and perfect in the other (eternally linked, through our neshama, with Hashem).” Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff
Remember to Forgive Yourself
by Roni Susan Blau- LCSW and a psychotherapist
http://www.jewishjournal.com/yom_kippur/article/remember_to_forgive_yourself
Every year on Yom Kippur, Jews in synagogues all over the world engage in a communal chest-beating during the Vidui, to repent, symbolically, for our collective sins. But what about the sin of being too hard on ourselves? As the High Holy Days approach once again, it seems logical to wonder why it is always so much easier to forgive others than ourselves.
Self-affliction, fasting and other forms of self-sacrifice and abstinence are not particularly Jewish notions. That is why we don’t devote more than one day of the year to acknowledging our sins. Judaism teaches that God is a forgiving God. Much more so, it seems, than we ourselves can be. Since when does anyone need an excuse to beat up on oneself? We are all too familiar with our critical voice — the inner critic who is always willing to offer negative comparisons. Regrets. Should haves and not good enough. The refusal to accept that we are all flawed, imperfect and unique.
I know that I am not alone in my self-flagellation. We are all our own worst enemies. However, it turns out that our mental health may depend on our ability to forgive ourselves. Stanford University has begun research into exploring how forgiveness can enhance health and relationships and even prevent disease. As well as depression. Resentment. You get the idea.
As a therapist, I am so often present for extraordinary compassion among people. In my therapy groups, the clients are unfailingly, unconditionally supportive and unstinting toward one another. But when it comes to their own struggles or small triumphs, they minimize their own progress or condemn themselves in harsh and unforgiving terms.
In “Overcoming Life’s Disappointments,” Harold Kushner writes about biblical figures often consumed by powerful, unsavory, yet all-too-human emotions. In one example, he wonders about Moses’ uncharacteristically unsympathetic behavior toward Aaron when the “strange fire” at the dedication of the Tabernacle consumes Aaron’s two sons.
It may have been that Moses was jealous of Aaron for having sons to carry on his legacy as well as the time to devote to his family, while Moses was consumed by his role to be able to have any time to experience ordinary life. The Bible is full of such descriptions of so-called “bad” emotions. Sibling rivalry. Jealousy. Uncontrollable anger. Sexual exploits. If our patriarchs experienced such varied and stormy emotions and were still forgiven by God, why do we try so hard to avoid or deny them?
When we choose to listen to our critical voice, it allows us to avoid “feeling the feelings.” If we felt that we could tolerate the psychic pain, we may actually find that this would lead to greater expansiveness — the freedom to feel genuine regret, acknowledge our losses and move forward with greater awareness of our limitations.
Instead, it is often more comfortable to stay stuck. If we take the risk to forgive ourselves, the next step would be to move forward in our lives while also becoming aware of the unconscious choices that we have made. It can be easier to isolate or disconnect ourselves from reality than to have to negotiate all of the disappointments and unrealized dreams that arise when we decide to live in the present moment.
Like any discipline, becoming aware of, and changing our thoughts takes constant, mindful practice. And lots of gratitude for what does exist in our lives.
Rabbi Naomi Levy offers a prayer for “When We Are Too Hard on Ourselves” in her book, “Talking to God, Personal Prayers For Times of Joy, Sadness, Struggle, and Celebration”: “Teach me how to love myself, God. I am so critical of myself. … I accept shortcomings in others, but I am so unforgiving of myself. … Teach me how to enjoy my life. … Show me how to embrace the person that I am. … Soften my heart. … Fill me with the capacity to treasure my life. Thank you, God, for creating me as I am.”
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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/212318/we-are-all-anthony-weiner
We Are All Anthony Weiner
In the former congressman’s fall from grace, Judaism offers lessons in empathy
I’m not usually one for heartfelt confessions, but the news this week drove me to just the other side of intimacy, so here it goes: Until very recently, I weighed slightly more than 350 pounds. Nightly, I would feast on meals that could comfortably nourish a gaggle of refugee children. I measured out my life with tablespoons of ice cream, swallowed mindlessly by the freezer late at night, or pizza pies of noble proportions chewed over with joy and washed down with wine. I ate even as my waistline grew larger and my breaths more shallow, even as everyday activities required rest, even as loved ones intervened and told me, again and again and again, that I was gorging my way to morbidity. Eventually, I listened and turned to steamed cauliflower and SoulCycle and other desperate measures you take when the scale is stacked against you, and within seven months dropped the aggregated weight of the American Olympic women’s gymnastics team. I feel much better now, and am grateful for my transformation, but every time I hear the sound of teeth on tacos, say, or smell the submission of soft butter to warm bread, I wonder if I won’t be fat again soon. I wish I could say for certain that the answer is a definite no, but I can’t: My conviction is only as strong as the next meal.
Why am I telling you this? Because I know what it’s like to be Anthony Weiner, and if you’re the least bit honest, then so do you.
Sure, the temptation to lambast the amorous politician is strong. For starters, he is unimprovably named for the occasion, and, more poignantly, is displaying the kind of behavior that makes even the most open-minded among us reach for the DSM-5 in search of answers. If you have a heart, bearing witness to Weiner pursuing his escapades while snuggled with his young child was enough to break it.
And yet before you furrow the brow or roll the eye, before you make that joke or that moral judgment, ask yourself this: Are you that different?
Have you never, like me, allowed your compulsive eating to jeopardize your health, your family life, your future? Have you never bought a bottle of vodka on Friday evening, watched it go dry by Sunday afternoon, and told yourself that you can stop whenever you choose but you just don’t choose to right now? Have you never allowed a need or an urge to grow into a snarling beast that bit everything or everyone that stood between it and its pleasure? If the answer is no, then sister, brother, you’re among the fortunate few: Most of us down here are just struggling with perpetual imperfection. We do our best to be good parents, and we fail miserably. We work hard to be the best spouses we can, and too often we let the same angers or anxieties we know only too well take over. We fail in all the familiar ways, and our failures eventually harden into monuments to a life boldly lived.
Don’t get me wrong: Some make terrible mistakes, and make them more than once, and pay a price, and make their families pay as well. Weiner belongs squarely in this category and deserves each painful tumble in his fall from grace. But when confronted with such struggling souls as his, derision is hardly the best approach. Instead, we may want to take a page from our elders, for whom misdeeds came not in one flavor but three. Because Judaism does not believe, like its younger and more popular sister, in original sin, it differentiates among different degrees of being bad—cheit, a sin performed inadvertently; avon, a sin committed under the sway of wild desire; and pesha, a hardened and deliberate rebellion against God. The first category calls for abundant compassion; the word cheit literally means “missing the mark,” suggesting that the sinner is more of an errant archer than a smooth criminal. The third category, naturally, involves stern retribution, as rising up against the Lord isn’t something to be trifled with. But what to do with category two? The Rambam addresses this question in his Mishneh Torah, and it finds him in a gentle, forgiving mood: Speak softly and kindly, he counsels of anyone addressing those who’ve committed an avon; show the sinners respect, and speak so as to benefit—never to humiliate—them.
But these are generalities, and in real life it may be hard to apply such lofty ideals to thorny, ugly situations. When confronted with the evidence that our spouse has been repeatedly sending lewd photographs to a perfect stranger, I bet, very few of us would think of the Rambam. We might, however, think of Reb Zusha of Hanipol.
The Hasidic master’s Hasidic master, Reb Zusha, born in 1718 in Galicia, was an expert in many things, most impressively the ability to see the divine spark that burns even in the darkest transgressions. His students, goes one story, once brought before him a thief, a wretched young Jew who was caught stealing for the umpteenth time. They shoved the young criminal before the aged rabbi, expecting the sage to mete out some fiery justice. But Reb Zusha just looked at the criminal with kind eyes and smiled. “I’ve learned so much from this man!” he told his stunned disciples. “He invests such great effort in what he does! He takes risks to get what he wants. And he is swift on his feet. Most importantly, he is always optimistic: If he fails, he always tries again and again and again.” If only Reb Zusha edited New York’s scornful tabloids, we’d get a much different—and much more instructive—view on Weiner’s disgrace.
It’s up to us, then, to find the Zusha within. Stories like Weiner’s are compelling to us not only because of their juicy bits but also because they allow us the opportunity to reflect, at a safe distance, on our own fights and our own failings. In Weiner, then, let us see not a punchline for an easy joke but ourselves: struggling with demanding careers, trying to keep a marriage afloat, feeling lonely and in need for affirmation, tempted by the gross and transactional nature of a world now governed by soulless digital applications that celebrate nothing but the immediate relief of unbearable urges. We all mean well. We all try. We all fail. The point is to keep trying.
Zusha understood that perfectly. On his deathbed, goes another story, the old rabbi sat and wept bitterly. His students, gathered around him, speculated about what could make their rabbi so despondent. “I bet he’s crying,” said one, “because he fears that when he meets God, the Almighty will tell him he was not quite as righteous as King David.” “No,” argued another, “it’s because he fears that God, when he meets him, will tell him he was not quite as holy as Moses.” Overhearing the conversation, Reb Zusha lifted his head and smiled. “The only thing that truly frightens me,” he told his students, “is to meet God and have Him tell me ‘Zusha, you have not been the best Zusha you can be.’” We should all share the same concern. Nothing else truly matters.
A Message from Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff
As the High Holy Days approach, we grapple with one of Judaism’s deepest ideas. Teshuvah. We seek forgiveness from Hashem for all that we have done wrong.
And since Hashem is a loving G-d, Hashem forgives. But what do we do when we know we have done something that led to devastating consequences? How do we forgive ourselves?
First, by fully accepting responsibility. Any attempts at evasion will leave us with nagging doubts from which we can never escape.
Second, we have to distinguish between our nefesh and our neshama.
Our nefesh is the part of our soul that has to struggle with this world, with all the things that can go wrong, and with all the things that we do wrong. Our neshama, on the other hand, is the part of our soul that remains, always, intimately linked to G-d. We need to remember that that is us, too.
When our nefesh is battered, and we are racked with guilt, we should retreat—for a while—into the world of the neshama. Just long enough to regain our composure, and our sense of self-worth.
The neshama has infinite understanding of, and patience with, the fact that we are born into an imperfect world, that we ourselves are imperfect, and that the nefesh is the soul-part of us that is sent to grapple with that imperfection. Failure is part of its mission.
With this in mind, we can understand that being forgiven (by G-d or by ourselves) does not mean ignoring or whitewashing what we have done wrong. Instead, it is born in the tension between being imperfect in one way (the way of the nefesh in this world), and perfect in the other (eternally linked, through our neshama, with Hashem).
Thank you for taking the time to review this material. It is my hope that this material will help you enjoy a more meaningful High Holiday experience.
Dear Freinds.
I hope you are finding these resources useful. We are blessed to have access to
Consider writing your Personal Vidui-Confessional
Create a list that will be helpful and meaningful to you, a prayer that you will be able to access during the High Holy Days
Remember to include in your confessionals-God, your family, your friends, associate as well your sins for being way too hard on yourself.
My video playlist “Forgiveness” can be found if you search “Bruce Rockman” on YouTube, then click on the guy eating pizza in Israel.
L’shana Tovah Tikateivu- I wish you the most meaningful, healthy and happy New Year,
Cantor Bruce Rockman