Dear Friends:
After 45 days in rehab following allegations of infidelity, golf pro Tiger Woods appeared before the television cameras to issue a brief, tightly scripted statement: “I know that I have bitterly disappointed all of you… For all that I have done, I am so sorry…” For many listeners, however, his words were vapid and disingenuous. One blogger wrote: “By spoon feeding the public, he decides what they need to hear. Tiger still plays by Tiger’s rules.” 59 days into the largest oil-spill disaster in American history, BP chief executive Tony Hayward said to Congress: “I am deeply sorry for the lost lives and environmental damage” from his company’s doomed offshore rig. He was met with widespread cynicism and anger. A typical reaction: “Too little, too late! He is saying as little as possible to appease the public, but feels no remorse whatsoever.”
Are some apologies too vain to be accepted? Are some wrongs too grave to be forgiven? I know of no more profound exploration of the twin moral imperatives, to apologize and to forgive, than Maimonides’s classic Laws of Repentance, for its penetrating psychological insight and spiritual guidance. Maimonides’s injunctions are decidedly varied in tone. At times, he goes to extremes to encourage the fallen sinner: “If a person transgressed all of his life, but repented on the day of his death, all his transgressions are pardoned, as it is written: ‘Until his dying day, You wait for him; if he returns, you will straightway receive him.’” Elsewhere, his admonishments can turn quite harsh: “Sleepers, awake from your sleep! Slumberers, rouse yourselves from your slumbers! Examine your actions and repent!” On the subject of apologies, he mandates: “One must not show herself cruel by not accepting an apology; she should be easily pacified, and provoked with difficulty. When an offender asks her forgiveness, she should forgive wholeheartedly and with a willing spirit. Even if he has caused her much trouble wrongfully, she must not avenge herself, she must not bear a grudge.” On the other hand: “One who makes a verbal confession without resolving in his heart to abandon his sin is like one who takes a ritual bath while grasping a defiling reptile. The bath is useless unless he first casts the reptile away.”
As we approach the High Holidays, the season of repentance, here’s what I would say to the offender: “Beware of empty words and vain promises. Better no apology at all than hypocrisy.” But to the injured party I would say: “Meet your perpetrator with compassion and forgiveness. Resentment will destroy you much sooner than it will touch him.”
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
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