Good Yontif. At
the beginning of this summer, I was watching the latest season of Queer Eye. If
you aren’t familiar with the show, each of the Fab Five has their own roles as
they makeover the lives of others: one, Karamo Brown, being a life coach. In episode
two of season four, their client is a man who was paralyzed from the waist down
due to a gunshot wound. The injury helped him to rethink a lot of aspects of
his life, and really turn himself around for the better, but he still needed
the help to make some aesthetic changes that would help him get around in
style, within his home and outside it, in his wheelchair. As a part of their
makeover, Karamo facilitates a conversation between their client and the person
who shot him. On their drive to meet the shooter, they talk about forgiveness. Karamo
tells his client, “People assume forgiveness is a destination and not realizing
it’s a journey you take throughout your life.”
The meeting goes
well, and afterward the client tells Karamo he better understands now what
happened the day he was shot and feels like a weight has been lifted off of him.
The resonance of Karamo’s statement in the car earlier remains. Sometimes after
trauma or other terrible offence, forgiveness comes in stages. There may be
moments of feeling at peace with the reality of what happened, feeling like
we’ve let go, forgiven the other person to their faces or in our hearts, and
thinking we’ve moved on. And then there often continue to be moments where we
are triggered by something and we realize we are still angry or sad or hurt by
something we thought we’d let go of, and we have to go through a process of
forgiving and forgetting all over again. It can be a frustrating process, but
it is a normal and healthy way of dealing with something that was not normal or
healthy in your life. It does not mean you did the forgiving wrong the first
time or that you were lying to yourself or anything of the sort. It likely
means the thing that happened was actually fairly unforgiveable, but learning to
move on from it is necessary for your own well-being so the forgiveness takes a
long, long time, in fits and starts. It’s a journey, not a destination.
In the traditional
Torah portions of Rosh HaShana, we see some terrible interactions that could be
read as unforgiveable behavior. In the portion we read here, Abraham tries to
kill his own son! In the portion just preceding this, which some other
synagogues read on this day, Sarah demands Hagar and young Ishmael be cast out
into the desert. Abraham complies and the child nearly dies. After these
events, the immediate next section of Torah tells us that Sarah dies, which the
ancient rabbis understand as being a direct result from learning what happened
(or almost happened) on Mount Moriah. The Torah never again depicts Isaac and
Abraham interacting, and we can easily draw conclusions about why that might
be. We never see Hagar again, at least not by name, and Ishmael never returns
to his father or brother until his father dies.
In the newest
Reform machzor, there are some reflections on the Torah readings included in
the book before the readings themselves are written. Rabbi Alan Henkin writes
about Abraham’s m’sirat hanefesh, his willingness to surrender himself. The
akeidah teaches us how to respond to Rosh HaShanah because of the moral to
transcend one’s own desires and relinquish that which is important to yourself
in the name of better serving God. I like the moral, but think it would be
better suited if Isaac was in on the sacrifice. Abraham loves his son, but he
doesn’t own him and he isn’t giving up a cherished possession. He’s making
decisions over someone else’s life and expecting the ultimate sacrifice from
someone who isn’t given a choice. Isaac is the one who surrenders himself, who
transcends his own body. He takes note of the firewood and butcher knife and
the lack of sacrificial animal, and the Torah hints to us that he knows what’s
coming. And yet he walks on. The Torah does not tell us he cries out or resists
when Abraham binds him. It is not an unreasonable reading of the text to think that
Isaac indeed resigns himself to what’s happening. And perhaps he understands
why; perhaps he is truly willing to be a sacrifice to God. But even so, it is
reasonable for him to be upset with his father for not discussing the matter
with him first. Isaac can be both ok with the idea of self-sacrifice and the
unknowable nature of God’s demands, and still be not ok with how the situation
was handled by Abraham. This conflict of emotion could easily create the kind
of situation in which forgiveness is given slowly, coldly, within strict
boundaries to their relationship following this event.
Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman writes that the akeidah is a model for our season of teshuvah
because it depicts the difficulties of establishing moral relationships with
God and our fellow humans. She says, “Avraham’s all-consuming desire to do
God’s will at the expense of those he loves most (Sarah, Hagar, Yishmael,
Yitzchak) points to areas for moral growth and development for all of us. When
we see God as wholly other and divorced from the immediate world of our
relationships with human beings, we fail to recognize the God within us and the
divine spark within others. God becomes splintered and deformed, and our moral
lives do as well.” In other words, we best serve God when we take care of each
other. A seeming directive to serve God by hurting others, whether physically
or emotionally, through legislation or exclusion, neglect or violence,
xenophobia or passive chauvinism, is a directive misunderstood, a test failed. Yet
it opens up the opportunity for teshuvah, repentance and forgiveness, returning
and becoming a more holistic community.
When Abraham does die, Ishmael and Isaac
both come to bury their father together. The Torah tells us that Abraham’s
second wife, Ketura, is there as well, and the traditional midrash suggests
Ketura is actually Hagar returned. We don’t see what Abraham does for teshuvah,
if he does any at all. We don’t hear the sons’ eulogies. We don’t know what
their feelings of residual anger and hurt were, or what they felt about the
lasting trauma his actions inflicted on their lives. But we do know that they
at least forgave him enough to come home and give him a proper burial. They
bury him in the Cave of Machpelah next to Sarah, the woman who coldly cast one
of them out to die in the wilderness, the mother killed by grief from the
actions done to other of them. They are enough at peace with their family
dynamics to agree to this, to perform the one final mitzvah that cannot be
returned. And then they go their separate ways again.
This year, I invite you all to tune into
your own forgiveness journeys. What are the events in your life you are still
struggling to forgive? How are you working to move on from them in healthy ways
anyway? How do you view those who have hurt you, what is your ongoing
relationship like after you have tried to forgive them? What are the ways in
which you think you might still be affecting others who are trying to forgive
actions of yours? What can you be doing to move forward in those relationships
with teshuvah and new foundations of trust? While these gates of prayer,
repentance, and judgement are flung wide open these ten days, let us reflect on
this and resolve to step into 5780 with greater awareness, more forgiveness,
and quicker acts of teshuvah. Amen and Shana Tova.
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