Parashat Nasso, 5766, Cathy Shadd
Nasso
Cathy Shadd
June 10, 2006
I am giving this drash today in honor of all the parents of Shabbat B’Yachad.
Does this sound familiar?
“Mom, she just ran through the middle of my game and knocked all the markers off the table!”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t even see your game or the markers!”
“Sweetie, even if you didn’t do it on purpose, you still upset your sister and you need let her know you are sorry and help her pick things up.”
“Sor-EEE!” The markers get thrown back onto the table.
Teaching our children to apologize is one of the most basic things we do as parents, and yet for most of us, it is an ongoing challenge. Why is it so hard for children to accept responsibility for harming someone, to apologize, and to make it right with the person?
Does this sound familiar?
“I thought you said you’d be back by 6:30 for dinner?”
“I did, but the traffic was terrible and my cell phone was dead.”
“But the kids have already eaten and left the table. Remember we were going to talk about our trip at dinner?”
“I couldn’t help the traffic, could I? I already feel bad about missing dinner. Don’t make me feel worse. “
I think we have trouble teaching our children to apologize because we haven’t really mastered it ourselves. In today’s parashah, Nasso, in 5:6-7, we read, “When a man or woman commits any wrong toward a fellow man, thus breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess the wrong that he has done. He shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it, giving it to him whom he has wronged.” While the passage offers further details on the atonement for theft, the first part of the passage is what resonates with me and what I want to address in this drash. We learn from this passage the same lesson we probably learned from our parents and are trying to teach our children, namely that when you hurt someone in any way, you need to apologize and to make up for it. I want to look at what makes apologizing so hard, what makes it so powerful, what makes it effective, and finally, what our tradition offers to help us do it.
When I mentioned to a few people that I was working on a drash about apologizing, they joked that it’s not Yom Kippur. Joking aside, we tend to focus on our sins against our fellow humans more during the High Holy Days than we do day to day. In his drash last October on Yom Kippur, Josh Gressel called for a show of hands in response to two questions: who had actually approached someone to ask for forgiveness during the High Holy Days and who was fasting or would be if medically possible. In commenting on the marked difference in response to the two questions, he asked whether it is really easier to fast for 26 hours than to ask someone for forgiveness?”
Why is it so hard to ask for forgiveness? To try to understand the many reasons we are reluctant to apologize, I read a handful of articles and a few books on apologizing and conducted my own informal survey of about 20 people, both children and adults. My findings pretty much confirmed what various experts have concluded. Most simply put, it is hard to admit that we have done something wrong. As a 5-year-old told me, “You already feel bad and saying it out loud makes you feel worse.” Many writers about apology note that the toughest part is recognizing and admitting that you were wrong. Many of us have a need to look good and be right. Letting go of being right may mean confronting a truth about ourselves or our shortcomings which we are reluctant to face. The authors of The One Minute Apology, a book which I found both corny and perceptive, identify two categories of people who have trouble apologizing: those with false pride who think more of themselves than they should and can’t be vulnerable enough to apologize and those with self doubt who think less of themselves than they should and are focused on self protection. When the wrong we have done causes us to feel shame or humiliation, we do all kinds of things to blunt those feelings, things like blaming or avoiding the other person and rationalizing what we did. Many of us are afraid that an apology will be seen as a sign of weakness and/or guilt.
A friend who is active in the Recovery Movement shared with me that in working the “12 steps,” lots of people get stuck between steps 8 and 9. The 8th involves becoming aware of how you have hurt people and becoming willing to make amends, while the 9th is an action step that involves making direct amends to these people. This seems to be a place where many of us get stuck.
Given that it can be so hard, why should we push ourselves to do it? Many authors have written about the harm of not apologizing and the healing power of a properly done apology. The author of one scholarly piece I read noted that remorse without apology can cause untold suffering for both the offender and the victim, neither of whom can heal. But a sincere apology can mend, strengthen or restore both damaged self esteem and a damaged relationship. One writer eloquently stated, “Apology has the power to mend relationships, soothe wounds, and heal broken hearts.” It can “restore dignity, trust, and a sense of justice,” in the words of another. Yet another commented that while we cannot undo the past, we can try to undo the effect of our actions by apologizing. When we sincerely apologize, make amends, and demonstrate we have changed, both sides can achieve peace of mind and emotional resolution.
When I was a child we lived next door to a couple without children who were half way in age between my parents and my grandparents and whom we called “aunt” and “uncle.” They were very proper and formal in a New England kind of way. She died after he did and left the contents of her home to my sister and me. As we emptied and sorted through drawers and closets, we came across an entire dresser filled with stacks of greeting cards tied up with ribbons. After looking through several drawers of these bundles, we realized not only that this “aunt” and “uncle” had ritually exchanged greeting cards on every holiday and on their birthdays for forty years, but also that they both had signed every one the exact same way: “All my love, your –––.” As we continued on our strangely fascinating journey through their cards, we discovered one, his to her, on which, in addition to the usual line, he’d written, “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” Reading it, I could still feel, years after they’d been written, the impact those six words must have had. Through apologizing we can move on and grow because real apologies, in the words of one writer, show “strength of character, gain the respect of others, and have great healing power.” So what constitutes a “real apology?”
Many articles and books offer concrete advice on how to apologize, variously named “the 3 R’s” (regret, responsibility, remedy”), “the four R’s” (remorse, restitution, rehabilitation, and request for forgiveness) and “the five R’s” (recognition, remorse, repentance, restitution, and reform). Alliterative word lists aside, the key ingredients in an effective apology seem to be: saying what you did, saying you are sorry, and making it right. The “saying what you did” part needs to be specific and needs to be heartfelt. A meaningful apology involves taking full responsibility for your actions and the harm you caused. That means, according to one author, “You can’t apologize in the subjunctive or the conditional.” Saying something like, “If I did something that hurt you, I am sorry” is not an apology that will succeed in healing anyone. Similarly, don’t excuse yourself while apologizing (“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’ve been really busy.”). You don’t sound sorry if you excuse yourself or, even worse, if you blame the other person for being overly sensitive.
Someone who does family therapy once gave me an excellent piece of parenting advice. Too often, she said, we tell children, “Say you’re sorry” when what we really want for them is to get that they hurt someone and need to do something about it. She suggested focusing less on training our children to say the “I am sorry” part and more on teaching them that they need to make it right. This might mean kissing a boo-boo, helping to pick up scattered markers, or offering a hug.
All of what I have just summarized from various secular writings on apology is at the core of the Jewish idea of repentance. The Torah teaches us not only that people can change and repent their wrongs, but that repentance leads to redemption. Teshuvah means “turning” and involves both a turning away from damaging behavior and a turning towards God. The Torah is full of examples of people who made mistakes and passages in which the Jewish people are urged to give up their bad ways and return to God. The Jewish idea is not to be weighed down by past mistakes, but rather to use them as a springboard towards greater intimacy with God. The Talmud underlines the elevating power of teshuva by stating, “Where penitent people stand, even the totally righteous cannot stand.”
Our Sages taught that teshuva existed even before the creation of the world. Ehud Luz, a professor at Haifa University, explains that teshuva is not subject to the usual order of time, and that by returning to God, we actually rise above time to correct the wrongs of the past. The advice I found on apologizing in numerous contemporary books and articles echoes what Maimonides wrote in the Mishnah Torah where he outlines the steps of teshuva as stopping the harmful behavior, regretting it, including expressing your regret out loud to God, going to the injured party and asking for forgiveness, and not repeating the mistake.
How can Judaism help us actually approach someone we have hurt and offer a heartfelt apology? The core Jewish belief of tzelem elohim, that man is created in the image of God, helps us in several ways. No matter what we do in our lives, no matter what mistakes we may make and what pain we may cause or experience, we are and always will be b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God. When my 9-year old daughter Anna was a preschooler, her class used to sing a version of the song “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine.” She synthesized this with some nascent understanding of God being part of us and came up with the Kabbalistic idea of a divine spark, which she very poetically used to refer to as her “little sparkle.” Once, after doing something she clearly felt terrible about, she asked me, “Mom, if you do something really bad, can your sparkle go out for good?” And I had the beautiful experience of reassuring her that no, it would always be there, ready for her to make stronger. It’s very reassuring when we commit a misdeed and feel in the shadow of shame to know that we are also in the tzelem, the image of God. The authors of the One Minute Apology even suggest remembering that God made you as a way out of feeling incapacitated by remorse. A character in the story they create as a vehicle for their ideas advises, “Remember where you came from. God does not make junk.”
In addition to offering us a comforting view of our connection with God, the concept of tzelem elohim also helps us to relate to others in a more ethical way. I recently read that in parts of southern Africa, the common way to greet someone is to say, literally, “I see you.” It has been said that one’s eyes are the window to the soul, and if we believe that our innermost core, our very soul, is divine, then when we really “see” another, we have encountered God. We enter into what Martin Buber famously refers to as an “I– Thou” rather than an “I It” relationship. When we hurt someone, the shame and guilt we feel can keep us focused on the “I” part of Buber’s equation. But by shifting our focus to the other person, by “seeing” him as b’zelem elohim, we can create a bridge out of our morass of guilt. This core belief of tzelem elohim is the basis for understanding what it means to be human and who we are in relation to one another.
As I read stories, in preparing for this drash, about people who held onto unresolved feelings of shame for years, decades even, I realized that I was such a person. I started to relive again a night when I engaged in the most despicable lashon hara, “evil tongue,” and hurt someone I loved in the process. This happened on a hot New England summer night almost 30 years ago. My brother (may his memory be for a blessing) and I were both home visiting our parents. He had been overseas for a semester and had brought home his new girlfriend. For some reason, I didn’t like her; I didn’t feel she was good enough for my brother. Sitting in our backyard, my across the street childhood best friend was asking me about this new girlfriend. I had just said all kinds of very cruel things, several paragraph’s worth, when she and my brother emerged from the darkness of the patio, not more than 20 feet away. In one awful second I realized that they had heard everything. I no longer remember exactly what happened next, but while I made up with him, I never apologized to her. Raw shame and guilt from this moment have stayed with me all these years. Last week, feeling inspired by some of the apology stories I read and the material I have shared with you today, I searched for this old girlfriend of my brother’s on the Internet, found her listed as an employee of a church in Minnesota, and emailed her a long overdue and very heartfelt apology. She wrote back immediately, saying that she recalled the incident only in general terms, that it took courage for me to contact her, and that she felt sorry that I had carried this with me for so many years. She thanked me for contacting her and ended with the incredibly powerful sentence: “I forgive you.” It was an amazing experience to sit at my computer weeping with relief after such a long time and so much intervening sadness. I highly recommend it.
If we can fully embrace that everyone makes mistakes, that we help both ourselves and the other person when we take responsibility for hurting people and make it up to them, and that God is, and always will be, in all of us, then we will be able to teach this to our children, both as parents and as a community.
Shabbat shalom!