Yom HaShoah, Part II: Forgiveness

I also want to share a conversation my Peace and Conflict class had yesterday afternoon in preparation for Yom HaShoah. Our class was on the topic of forgiveness and reconciliation. We discussed the story Simon Wiesenthal shares in his book, The Sunflower. In a concentration camp, Wiesenthal was pulled out of work one day by a nurse who took him into a hospital room in which a Catholic SS officer is dying. The SS soldier begins explaining his life story to Wiesenthal, and then confesses to the atrocities he committed, the houses he burned down, the children he shot, ultimately asking Wiesenthal to forgive him. Wiesenthal, having listened for probably 2 hours, walks out of the room without responding.

But Wiesenthal's book doesn't end there. He ends his story by asking fifty-three people of different faiths; theologians, clergy, philosophers, etc the question, "What would you have done in my place?" and publishes their responses at the end of the book. My class read several Jewish sources (from Talmud, halacha, and liturgy) on the topic of forgiveness, and each person read a different response or two to Wiesenthal's question.

In our discussion, we read raised a lot of questions, among them:
-Can a person forgive on behalf of others?
-Can a person apologize on behalf of others?
-Can a person forgive unconditionally, i.e. whether or not the other person has apologized?
-Forgiving the person vs the act; forgiving the murderer vs the murder.
-What is the connection between time/distance and ability to forgive? Are we, the third generation after, in a particular position to forgive the Nazis (because we have that distance)? Are we, the third generation after, incapable of/unqualified to forgive the Nazis (because we have that distance)?

We also read an article* by Yehudith Aurbach. Aurbach claims that forgiveness is "basically a spiritual-moral phenomenon" and therefore that religious-cultural context shapes our understanding of forgiveness. It is more difficult, she argues, for us to reconcile with a party who has a different religious-cultural understanding of forgiveness than we do.

According to Aurbach, "forgiveness is one of the cornerstones of Christian theology," because Christians are supposed to model themselves after Jesus, "who forgave his enemies on the Cross without even waiting for them to ask for forgiveness." This is in contrast to Judaism, which "has stricter rules regarding forgiveness. Forgiveness can be asked only from the victim himself, and only the victim can forgive...Without Teshuva [repentance] there is no forgiveness." The Islamic approach, she argues, is more similar to the Jewish one: "Tawba (repentance), like its Jewish equivalent Teshuva...is considered a necessary condition for ghufran - forgiveness granted by God to the repenting sinner."

Aurbach claims that these different religious-cultural approaches influenced the different responses to Wiesenthal's question. All of the Jewish respondents, she said, agreed that Wiesenthal was right in not answering; all of those who said they would have forgiven the Nazi were Catholic or Buddhist. She quotes one respondent who said, "My whole instinct is to forgive. Perhaps that is because I am a Catholic priest...I sit in a confessional for hours and forgive everyone who comes in..."

I found Aurbach's article incredibly though-provoking, partly because of my interest in interfaith work, and partly because I fall exactly into her description of the Jewish approach to forgiveness. To me, one can only forgive on behalf of oneself. The idea of a Catholic priest forgiving someone (particularly for a sin he/she committed against a fellow person) has never made sense to me. Had the SS officer asked me/Wiesenthal to forgive specific crimes he had committed against me personally, I have no idea how I would have responded, but it would at least have been a question I could consider. But to ask me/Wiesenthal to forgive him for the crimes he committed against other Jews, is completely and absolutely out of my capability.

And, so I'm wondering, what do you think, especially in light of Aurbach's article? I'm especially interested in hearing from my non-Jewish friends, and from those of you with different perspectives than what Aurbach describes as the Jewish approach to forgiveness. Please comment!

* Aurbach, Yehudith (2004). The Role of Forgiveness in Reconciliation. In Bar-Siman-Tov, Y. (Ed.). From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, [p. 158-160] The Religious-Cultural Context