For many of us the New Year began months ago - on Rosh Hashana, 5780 rather than January 1, 2020. Each day marks a new beginning and whether it is the start of the Gregorian calendar year ushering in a new decade or just another new day, we have the opportunity to press restart, make amends and chart a new course. We ought to express our Hakarat Hatov to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for giving us this chance to have a “do-over’, maybe even earn extra credit. My mother likes to say - every day that she gets out of bed is her birthday and that alone is a reason to celebrate (ad meah v’esrim). Every morning in Shacharit in the paragraph before Kriyat Shema ( the Yotzer Or paragraph), we say “m’chadeish b’chol yom tamid ma-asei v’reishit”, each and every day Hashem recreates the world anew. Each morning is indeed a new beginning but it is not as if the past is totally erased. Rather we can learn from our mistakes, we can re-evaluate our responses to challenges and we can forgive and be forgiven.
In a commentary on this week’s parsha, Vayigash, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, expounds on the concept of forgiveness. Rabbi Sacks writes that there are moments in life that change the course of history, not only for an individual but on a universal level. When Yosef reveals himself to his brothers he states “I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. (Bereishit 45: 4-8) Rabbi Sacks continues with the idea that this is the first recorded moment in history in which one human being forgives another!
However, it appears from the text that the brothers did not fully understand that Yosef had forgiven them for selling him into slavery. We see this later on when the brothers meet with Yosef after Yaakov’s petirah and tell him a little white lie. In Perek Nun (50) it is written , “the brothers approached Yosef and said “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers for the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Yosef wept.’’ Yosef cried because the brothers used the word “forgive”. He understood from what they said, that they did not understand him when he told them not to be distressed. Yosef had forgiven them long before, accepting that his fate was determined by G-d. Yosef truly did not hold any malice in his heart for them. He had let it go long before, when he realized that all that had happened to him was G-d’s plan.
It is often stated that our blessed Jewish mothers make us feel guilty. Rabbi Sacks explains that there is a difference between guilt and shame. He writes “ One of the fundamental differences between them [guilt and shame] is that shame attaches to the person. Guilt attaches to the act. In shame cultures when a person does wrong he or she is, as it were, stained, marked, defiled. In guilt cultures what is wrong is not the doer but the deed, not the sinner but the sin. The person retains his or her fundamental worth (“the soul you gave me is pure,” as we say in our prayers). It is the act that has somehow to be put right. That is why in guilt cultures there are processes of repentance, atonement and forgiveness. Greece was a shame-and-honour culture that turned on the twin concepts of character and fate. Judaism was a repentance-and-forgiveness culture whose central concepts are will and choice.”
Forgiving is a very liberating feeling. One no longer carries within the negative emotions, anger, or resentment. If you are harboring any ill-feelings, today, now, this Shabbos, begin the new decade, the new year, m’bereishit. Let us learn from Yosef Hatsaddik. As the poet Alexander Pope wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine.” The poet explains that, while anyone can make a mistake, we should aspire to do as G-d does, and forgive.
Have a Good Shabbos!
Rochelle Brand, Ed.D
Head of School
Comentários