During the days of selichos and the Days of Awe we recite scores upon scores of confessions. Yet our Sages emphasize that “Yom Kippur does not atone for transgressions against your fellow man until you reconcile with him” (Yoma 85b). Even someone who taunts his fellow needs reconciliation (Yoma 87a). So these many confessions seem useless in cases when there are obstacles to reconciliation: ignorance of the wrong or of the identity of the wrongdoer; fear of excessive retribution (including criminal liability), and so on.
One way of overcoming these hurdles is to encourage unilateral forgiveness. If every person confesses his transgressions and in parallel everyone forgives wrongdoers, it seems that the absolution of Yom Kippur will be complete!
Widespread Forgiveness
The Rabbis never sought to obligate such a mass forgiveness. Any wronged party has every right to demand recompense and an apology, and we certainly don’t want to free wrongdoers from the consequences of their acts. However, our tradition does encourage widespread forgiveness in order to complement confession or partially substitute for it.
The Tanna Rabbi Nechunia ben HaKaneh attributed his long life to the fact that “No curse of my fellow man ever came to my bed” (Megillah 28a).
The Gemara gives as an example of this idea the practice of Mar Zutra, who recited every night on his bed a prayer requesting, ”Forgive anyone who caused me sorrow.” Based on this example, Rabbenu Yona (Sefer HaYirah 70) recommends that every person “confess and forgive all who vex him” before going to sleep every night. Indeed the widespread wording of Krias Shema before sleep includes, “I hereby pardon and forgive anyone who angered or annoyed me” (Mishnah Berurah 239:9).
Later, the Chayei Adam (144:20) inaugurated the moving Tefilla Zaka (pure prayer) said at the beginning of Yom Kippur. In this prayer, which is printed in virtually all Ashkenazi machzorim, forgiving others is explicitly framed as part of a general project of reciprocal forgiveness: “Just as I forgive everyone else, so give me favor in the eyes of everyone so that they may give me full forgiveness; then our prayers will ascend . . . and be heard.”
In the Chayei Adam this passage is in the middle of the rather long prayer. A widely repeated story states that the Chofetz Chaim successfully urged printers to amend the prayer in the machzor so that this critically important part of the Tefillah Zaka is said towards the beginning.
However, a unilateral pardon of this kind has certain limitations. Some commentators point to the case of Rebbe Zeira, who went out of his way to make it easy for the wrongdoer to ask forgiveness but stopped short of forgiving unilaterally (Yoma 87a). The Maharsha (Agados Yoma 23a) writes explicitly that Mar Zutra only asked Hashem to forgive those who already sought forgiveness from Mar Zutra.
One source that weighs in favor of the effectiveness of unilateral forgiveness is the Rambam (Deos 6), who explains (Halacha 6) that a person should not nurse resentment towards someone who has wronged him. Rather, he should confront him and ask for an explanation. If the wrongdoer asks forgiveness he should readily forgive.
In Halacha 9, the Rambam writes: “If someone sins towards you and you don’t want to reprove him or speak to him because he [the wrongdoer] is an extreme hediot (of limited understanding or sophistication) or because his thinking is distorted, and you forgive them in your heart and don’t bear any resentment and don’t rebuke them, that is a midas chasidus (exemplary conduct), as the Torah only warned against resentment.”
It’s true that this halacha is in the narrow context of the prohibition not to hate your fellow Jew and of cases where the victim finds reproof a burden. But the Rambam doesn’t merely say that such a person is exempt from the great effort of trying to elicit an apology. He writes that such forbearance is exemplary.
Monetary vs. Emotional Transgressions
Another issue in unilateral forgiveness is separating out the monetary and the emotional aspects of the transgression. As we saw in previous columns, a wrongdoer who pays his debt (what he owes for damages, returning the value of stolen goods, etc.) has rectified part of his damage but still needs also to reconcile with the victim. What about the opposite? Is it possible to forgive the wrongdoer for his sin but still insist on payment due?
The answer seems to be affirmative. The exact wording of Tefillah Zaka is that I forgive people all their wrongs “except for monetary payments that I can obtain in beis din.” (Another version, mentioned in Machane Yisrael of the Chafetz Chaim I:39, is “monetary payments that I intend to and am able to pursue in beis din.”) The wording is not “except for wrongs that I can pursue in beis din” but rather “except for the monetary payments.” An article by Rabbi Avraham Zvi Weill (“Haaros Lesidrei Tefillah U’berachos Rosh Hashanah veYom HaKippurim”) likewise makes the case that it is possible to forgive the sin without forgiving the payment.
It seems that there is wide agreement that unilateral forgiveness is not a perfect substitute for initiating a frank reconciliation with the victim. Perhaps the forgiveness is not completely sincere or the wrongdoer hasn’t done complete teshuva; furthermore, there is no closure.
But there also seems to be wide agreement that unilateral forgiveness is at least partially effective in mitigating the sin of the wrongdoer and in removing resentment from the victim. Hence, whatever version of the Tefilla Zaka appears in your machzor, it’s a good idea to give precedence to this short passage striving for reciprocal forgiveness among all Jews.
