Candles burn as Cantor Rollin Simmons sings during a Kol Nidrei service Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, in the Barish Sanctuary at Congregation Emanu El in Houston. The service celebrated the start of the Yom Kippur holiday.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
From sunset on Sunday to nightfall on Monday, Jewish Houstonians will celebrate Yom Kippur, a day focused on repentance and forgiveness. Though the holiday has been celebrated for thousands of years, it still resonates today in a polarized culture where grievances can fester and differences calcify.
On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, forgiveness doesn’t come easy. Jews typically abstain from eating, drinking, bathing and sexual activity during a 25-hour fast that’s meant to “afflict your soul,” said Senior Rabbi Brian Strauss at Congregation Beth Yeshurun.
Many Jewish people apologize to friends and loved ones for harm they’ve caused in the past year in the week before the holiday. “It is the one day of the year when we come together as a community to address this need to forgive and be forgiven,” said Senior Rabbi David Lyon at Congregation Beth Israel.
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Though forgiving those who’ve wronged you is a value in many religious traditions, that guidance might conflict with modern psychology on setting boundaries and cutting off toxic or draining people. Sexual abuse scandals in religious settings have also raised questions about the limits of forgiveness, and whether it can be overemphasized to dismiss the need for accountability or consequences.
Gideon Estes, head rabbi at Congregation Or Ami, said forgiveness involves giving grace to others, but it doesn’t necessarily mean assuaging their guilt. One way to explain it, he said, is an affirmation: “I don’t think you need to be punished any further.”
That closure requires that the people apologizing truly acknowledge and make amends for what they did wrong, he said. “It’s OK for forgiveness to be contingent on people changing things,” said Estes.
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He explained that Jewish sacred texts call for people to seek forgiveness three times, and if they don’t receive it after the third time, they can consider themselves forgiven in God’s eyes. That guidance should encourage Jews to acknowledge that people may not always be ready to forgive, and to give others time and space before asking a second or third time, Estes said.
Yom Kippur services often involve periods of both individual and communal prayers for repentance and forgiveness. Seeking forgiveness in community with others can help reduce the shame people feel and ensure they don’t feel alone in their guilt, Estes said. Judaism teaches that misdeeds don’t define us forever, he said.
Lyon explained that Judaism doesn’t follow the Christian guidance about “turning the other cheek.” Pursuing justice is an important Jewish value, he explained, and the restoration of a wrong will often involve reparations, not just an apology.
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He said he’s found the Yom Kippur ritual of asking loved ones for forgiveness to be meaningful in his own life. Years ago, he and his sister were able to “clear the air” after a falling out and reconcile around Yom Kippur, he said. “The expectation of the holiday gave us the time and the space that we needed to do it,” Lyon said.
He argued that the message of Yom Kippur is all the more valuable in a society where poorly worded Facebook posts or youthful outbursts can follow someone forever.
“What’s strangling us is that in politics and in other places, to be vengeful, mean, cruel and horrible is very popular today,” he said. He urged people of all faith traditions to come together and agree that that kind of behavior is “not who we are.”
“I think if we can reclaim what our tradition teaches us, even in a social media world, then we’ll make mistakes, but we also need to find a way, truly, to be forgiven,” Lyon said.
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