CHOCHMAS NASHIM: TO FORGIVE IS DIVINE
By: Suri Davis
There is a popular retort to the famous Rosh Hashanah query: “How was your Rosh Hashanah?” Reply: “I’ll let you know next year.” If you are reading this, then the answer, at the very least is, “I survived.” After two and a half years of Covid, we can feel the true greatness of surviving.
When G-d created the world, He did so with the attribute of judgment, you don’t sin you thrive, you do sin you die. He realized quickly, that man could not survive after Adam released sin to the world, so G-d had mercy, and taught the world, generations over, about forgiveness. If G-d could tolerate our daily sins, surely we could forgive our fellow’s hurts.
I walk daily with a woman who is a child of Holocaust survivors who said that she would like to visit the death camps in Europe. She said so today, just minutes after my reciting the prayer of Our Father our King.
I know I wrote during the nine days about how G-d, could cast us, His children, away from Him, burn down His own home and refuse to permit us to return for thousands of years. I can barely tolerate the few months my children spend in sleep away camp or their year in Israel. It’s hours later, and I wonder how our Father, our King could sit back during the years of European progroms, and of course, I don’t understand how he could let six million Jews be tortured and die. Not only six million Jews, but we learn from the book of Jonah, that G-d has divine pity on all his creations, Jews or not, so how could He permit one man to devise a plan to kill 11 million people. My friend explained that the concentration camp of Majdanek is in the center of town, where people lived their every day lives ignoring the obvious signs of torture and death which went on in their midst.
So my answer to myself is in the Yom Kippur liturgy with regard to the ten Rabbi Martyrs who were tortured by the Romans. When the angels cried out during the torture, “This is Torah, and this is its reward,” G-d replied “Silence, for if you say one more word, I will turn the world back to the world of tohu/vavohu, the state of entropy before creation.” Why were these words His reply? For it is not for us to think that we are to understand G-d’s ways as to how He runs the world. Certainly we question the concepts of the torah so we can understand them and practice them in a way which brings us closer to G-d, but if we don’t understand how G-d runs the world, who are we, that G-d needs to consult with us about His plans.
This Shabbos is known as Shabbos Shuvah/Shabbos of Return, return to G-d. The Shabbos between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The greatest gift G-d gave us and taught us was forgiveness, and thus at the end of the special Haftorah we read this week it says the following:
You will eat, eating and being sted, and praise the Name of G-d, your G-d, who has performed wonders with you. My people will never be ashamed again, You will know that I am in the midst of Israel; that I am G-d your G-d, and that there is no other G-d. And my people will never be ashamed again. Then the following verses which we recite at Tashlich/the Rosh Hashanah ritual of sending our sins into the ocean to cleanse ourselves of sin: Who is a G-d like You, who forgives iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not maintain His anger forever, for He desires loving-kindness. He will once again be compassionate toward us; He will hide our iniquities. Cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Give us the truth Jacob, kindness to Abraham, which you swore to our forefathers from days of yore.”
There is humility in asking forgiveness, and great honor in forgiving others.
I ask that if I hurt any of you during the year, please forgive me.
Gmar chasimah tovah.
-Suri