Sacred Action: Returning, Reparations and Reconstructionism
Forgiveness is not a guarantee. Show up anyway.
Hebrew words in my LinkedIn feed are the equivalent of shining the bat signal with a star of David knocked out instead. (Somehow my people have a way of making it into my feed, often without me knowing they were Jewish when we connected.) Someone posted about Tikkun Olam, and it reminded me of an article — I greatly admire the words from each of these two brilliant women — discussing repair, apologizing, and accountability.
The interview, by Anne Helen Peterson is with Rabbi Danya Ruttenburg as they discuss why “Nobody is owed forgiveness.” (Side note: Subscribe to both of them).
“The basic idea is this: tshuvah, in Judaism, is often translated as “repentance,” but it really means “to return,” like to get back on the path from where you strayed. Our focus is not so much on whether or not the victim forgives as whether the perpetrator does the work of repair and transformation.”
For me, the idea of coming back to something that hurt you over and over is quintessentially Jewish — as is the idea that we deal with it. We address people who have harmed us and we also seek out those we have harmed to repair, even if it takes all year. We are always seeking closure by returning to the scene of…
