More specific q?

You’re not obligated to forgive someone if they haven’t asked your forgiveness AND already demonstrated that they’ve done transformative work to bc someone who makes different choices. For starters.

You’re not obligated to forgive your abuser. https://twitter.com/westeawest/status/931244110123552768

Judaism puts a lot less emphasis on compelling forgiveness than on bc someone who deserves to be forgiven.

Yes, if someone asks your forgiveness 3 times and you refuse to forgive the sin is on you. But that assumes a lot of hard, genuine work is being done. And that these asks are real, in relationship.

Think less sadfaced guy who got caught and more restorative justice/reconciliation work.

Rote apologies written by a PR flak are not tshuvah/repentance in Judaism. They have zero status.

Now, all this said, doing the work of forgiveness and letting go (not the same as absolving) can be healing for those harmed EVEN IF the one who does harm never apologizes.

But that’s different than being obligated to do that. Very.

Simon Weisenthal’s The Sunflower is a fascinating book on forgiveness. Wiesenthal, during the Holocaust, was brought in to the room of a dying Nazi, genuinely repentant, who asked Wiesenthal to forgive him on behalf of all Jews.

He bolted from the room but was haunted by the q. Years later he wrote up the story & sent it to a lot of great world leaders & thinkers, many of whom had suffered great atrocities themselves. What did they think he should have done?

The Sunflower book is comprised of the story and question, & all the answers. Which are each fascinating and powerful.

The Jews are all like, forgive the Nazi on behalf of those he murdered?

(But more beautifully worded and meaningfully argued)

Others offered different perspectives. The Dalai Lama, who told the story of a Tibetan monk recounting time in a Chinese prison. He suffered many horrible tortures. The Dalai Lama asked him what was hardest. His answer? His fear of losing compassion for the Chinese.

So not a lot of clean easy answers. But lots of good questions.

In any case, we Jews think about this all differently than, say, many Christian theologies.

The reason the Jews said no, btw, is entirely coherent within our theology of repentance--the only person who can forgive someone who did harm is the person harmed. In the case of murder, eg, this is not possible.

There are possible other paths towards atonement from God (namely: fully accepting all consequences of the harm, including criminal consequences, and full work of repentance, which, if you read the other thread is a lot of steps. Then maybe you and God can discuss--at your death.

But that's not forgiveness, it's atonement. THOSE ARE SEPARATE THINGS. Atonement from God, forgiveness from the victim. Every single time. You never get forgiven for murder because the victim can't forgive. Full stop.

I also think Maimonides (who is really The Guy on this--there's some stuff in the Talmud and etc. but Maimonides really developed our repentance framework into something substantial) is right about almost all of it, but also misses some stuff.

Namely, what we know about trauma and abuse today, and possibly how our lenses about how trauma and abuse can fit into larger systemic systems of oppressions, complicate the whole "if you don't forgive on the 3rd time the sin is on you" bit. Which, notably, isn't in the Talmud.

That is, the Talmud says the person who harmed should not ask more than 3 times, but the "then the sin is on you" bit was from Maimonides.

Also Maimonides says if you hurt your rav, your teacher, you should go to him even a thousand times--implying that the rav might not forgive after the 3rd ask. AND the Shulchan Aruch says that if one was the victim of slander, they never have to forgive.

Clearly there are some harms that are irreparable. (Remember, this all presumes that the person who did harm did real and earnest repentance, which is many steps and a lot of work, find the link in the top tweet I QT).

I haven't seen texts that address the question of what happens if the victim DOES NOT WANT to hear from the perpetrator (hmu if you have citations for me!!) but obviously when we're talking about, eg, sexual violence, relationship violence, other kinds of abuse this is relevant.

So this is something I'm working on--bringing a feminist lens to this to help bring the formidable Torah around repentance and forgiveness in my tradition to the next place.

Anyway, tl; dr people who are telling you you have to forgive are probably totally wrong, from a Jewish POV. If forgiveness, letting go etc. is correct and healing even if the perp has not repented properly, you should do that!! Yay for healing!

But sometimes it's not the right thing (or not right right now, or maybe never) and in my tradition, if the perp hasn't done the work, we don't even begin to consider the victim as obligated in any way (and even if they have, it's complicated (tm)).

NB You are not obligated to forgive person X, who harmed you, if they have not repented. That does not justify you perpetrating harm on other people. That's straight-up on you.