i. Days are scrolls; write on them only
what you want remembered.
- Bachya
ibn Pakuda, Duties of the Heart, 11th Century
ii. When we are dead, and people weep for us
and grieve, let it be because we touched their lives with beauty and
simplicity. Let it not be said that life
was good to us, but rather that we were good to life.
- Rabbi
Jacob P. Rudin (Reform, Great Neck)
iii. Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green
to red and orange. The birds are
beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South. The animals are beginning to turn to storing
their food for the winter.
For leaves, birds and animals turning
comes instinctively. But for us, turning
does not come so easily. It takes an act
of will for us to make a turn. It means
breaking with old habits. It means
admitting that we have been wrong; and this is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all
over again; and this is always painful.
It means saying: I am sorry. It
means recognizing that we have the ability to change.
These things are terribly hard to
do. But unless we turn, we will be
trapped forever in yesterday's ways.
Lord, help us to turn - from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility
to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness
to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn
us around, O Lord, and bring us back toward You. Revive our lives, as at the beginning. And turn us toward each other, Lord, for in
isolation there is no life.
- Rabbi
Jack Riemer (Conservative, Boca Raton)Prayer before Study:
1. The most powerful story about repentance I
know concerns Ernst Werner Techow, one of three German right-wing terrorists
who assassinated Walter Rathenau, Germany's Jewish foreign minister in
1922. The killers' motivations were both
political extremism and anti-Semitism.
When the police caught the assassins, two committed suicide; Techow
alone survived. Three days later,
Mathilde Rathenau, the victim's mother, wrote to Techow's mother:
In
grief unspeakable, I give you my hand - you of all women the most
pitiable. Say to your son that, in the
name and spirit of him he has murdered, I forgive, even as God may forgive, if
before an earthly judge your son makes a full and frank confession of his
guilt...and before a heavenly judge repents.
Had he known my son, the noblest man earth bore, he would have rather
turned the weapon on himself. May these
words give peace to your soul.
Techow was released from prison for
good behavior after five years. In 1940,
when France surrendered to Nazi Germany, he smuggled himself into Marseilles
where he helped over 700 Jews escape to Spain with Moroccan permits. While some had money, most were penniless,
and Techow arranged their escapes for nothing.
Shortly before his activities in
Marseilles, Techow met a nephew of Rathenau, and confided that his repentance
and transformation had been triggered by Mathilde Rathenau's letter. He said: Just
as Frau Rathenau conquered herself when she wrote that letter of pardon, I have
tried to master myself. I only wished I
would get an opportunity to right the wrong I have done.
- Joseph
Telushkin, Jewish Wisdom
Ordained at Yeshiva
University, Rabbi for the Synagogue of
the Performing Arts in Los Angeles
2. We tend to confuse forgiving with
forgetting, but they are not the same thing.
There are times when we will forgive those who hurt us even though we
cannot forget. Forgiveness is not
saying: I don't feel the pain
anymore. Forgiveness is saying to
the one who hurt us: I do not feel the
need to hold on to your involvement in my pain anymore. Forgiveness is not forgetting; forgiveness is
choosing not to actively remember.
It is also important to note that
forgiveness does not mean condoning an action.
You do not have to tolerate what someone has done to you in order to
forgive them. In other words, you can
forgive someone and still not approve of their behavior. You can forgive them and still refuse to
accept what they have done to you.
For at its essence forgiving is not
about the people who have hurt us.
Forgiveness is about healing ourselves after we have been hurt.
- Rabbi
Edwin C. Goldberg (Reform, Coral Gables)
3. What sins are not forgivable? Contrasting
views:
A. If you want to stay in
prison all your life, become a jailer.
Being vindictive, being
angry at somebody...the people who say "I'll never
forgive the Germans" are still in a concentration camp.
- R. Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, the
inspiration of the Jewish
Renewal movement and Professor of Religious Studies
at Naropa University, Boulder CO.
B. Forgive
them not, Father, for they knew what they did.
- Abe
Rosenthal, former Executive Editor of the New York Times,
referring to the killers at Auschwitz (Contrast to Luke 23:34)
C. We
may be able to forgive you for killing our sons, but we will never forgive you for making us kill your sons.
