[Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Jewish, Great Britain]
[Forgiveness and the Jewish Tradition]
In Judaism, forgiveness is absolutely fundamental.
It's the thing theme of our Holy of Holies of time--
the Day of Atonement when we turn to God for forgiveness,
and in preparation for that we try and apologize
to those whom we have hurt
and we forgive those who have hurt us.
And normally in Judaism we see forgiveness as something associated
with atonement, remorse, apology.
But Maimonides, our greatest sage of the Middle Ages,
rules that if the other person does not apologize,
you are still free to forgive and you should.
And I agree with him, because harboring a grudge or a resentment
is a terrible weight to carry around with you.
And you have to travel light in this world.
We have too few energies to waste them
on being unforgiving.
[Letting Go of the Past]
The search for perfect justice in this world is impossible,
so try and create a just society,
as far as it lies within you.
But you have to let go of the past,
and that really is what forgiveness is.
And though it benefits the forgiven,
it benefits the forgiver still more.
[And When the Evil Is Ongoing?]
You cannot forgive while evil is ongoing.
That simply is, in my humble view, irresponsible.
I may forgive somebody who is planning a suicide bombing attack,
but what then will I say if, God forbid,
my wife or my children are among the victims?
Forgiveness is always something that accompanies
a cease, a pause, an armistice, a "sulcha"--what have you.
There has to be an end, a truce, let us say, in the hostilities
before forgiveness can begin.
Otherwise, no one is in the real mood to forgive.
You have to create space.
[Forgiveness: The First Step Towards Hope]
I mean, if I harm you, the natural thing is for you to harm me,
that is, a chain of cause and effect, cause and effect,
which destroyed many ancient societies
and is destroying many at this moment.
And forgiveness is that radically unpredictable thing,
that human capacity to do the unexpected,
to respond in a way that could not have been predicted.
So, forgiveness has something to do with human freedom,
that even though I may feel assaulted and victimized,
I can momentarily stand outside that and think not as a victim
but as somebody who is an agent of forgiveness.
Because of forgiveness, we are not condemned endlessly
to replay the conflicts of the past,
and that is why forgiveness is logically and psychologically related to hope.
[Reconciliation]
Forgiveness is the prelude to reconciliation.
Once we forgive, we get rid of the bad stuff
and we're able then to shake hands,
and because we've been liberated from the past,
together plan a future
in which we work together instead of against one another.
And I remember a moment--I doubt whether I will ever forget it--
in 1999 towards the end of the summer
when I went over to Prishtina to visit
to just make a television program there.
It was just the end of the Kosovo conflicts.
Slowly, the Kosovan Albanians were coming back to their homes.
Hundreds of thousands had fled in terror.
And, you know, the NATO presence was very evident.
There were tanks outside every house of worship.
And I stood there in the middle of Prishtina
with all the rubble of the bombs all over the place,
and I suddenly discovered and realized the power of one word--to forgive.
If the Serbs and the Kosovan Albanians were able to forgive one another
and to be forgiven by one another,
which means apologizing as well,
then they would have a future.
If not, they would find themselves endlessly replaying
the Battle of Kosovo of 1389.
And therefore, I suddenly saw the whole future of that part of the world
will depend on whether they can forgive or they can't,
and I don't think I've ever felt that carry home to me
as immediately and powerfully as it did then,
because, as I said, that conflict had been going on for 700 years.
It was dormant for many years,
but MiloĹĄeviÄ‡ and CareviÄ‡ and the various leaders
were able to reignite it,
because, as Ogden Nash once said,
"No man ever forgets where he buried the hatchet."
[Facing Towards the Future]
If you focus on children--
or even on grandchildren not yet born--
then you're facing towards the future.
And if you're facing towards the future, you can forgive,
because what matters to you is not what happened
but what we can build together.
Whereas a lack of forgiveness is always tied
to a strong sense of reverence and loyalty to the past.
That's why people find it impossible to forgive,
because, after all, how could--
I may forgive, but what about my father or my grandfather
whom they murdered or stuck in prison?
You know, I have to honor their memory by avenging their honor on their enemies.
So, if I am totally loyal to the past,
I will actually find it a moral failing to forgive,
because I will not be honoring them.
Then I suddenly realized that we have to be able to move
from a past-oriented culture to a future-oriented culture.
We should not ask what happened to our grandparents.
We should ask what kind of world we want to create for our grandchildren.
And that does not mean forgetting.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting.
It means living with the past
but not living in the past.
[The Promised Land]
We always end on a note of not quite crossing the Jordan,
of the Promised Land seen from afar.
So, that sense of a future that we are just on the threshold of
or of a vision that lies just over the horizon,
that is the Jewish view.
It's a very future-oriented view,
and it's one that allows us to forgive
for the sake of our children
rather than avenge the slights to our parents.