I say this as a member of the profession which, over the years, has studied the impact of forgiveness on health and well-being, and the results could not be any clearer: forgiveness is associated with physical and psychological benefits that are key in predicting a longer life.
One neuropsychologist has even found that forgiveness changes brain functioning: when a person is forgiving there is an increase in activity in the frontal lobe of the brain, the zone also responsible for problem-solving and complex thought, or the higher functions of thinking and reasoning.
In short, the array of benefits you can reap by learning to forgive is quite impressive according to psychological studies, and they include healthier relationships, less anxiety, stress and hostility, higher self-esteem, and longer lifespan.
Moreover, many religious traditions view forgiveness as liberating – if not divine. In our day and age, religious leaders of all stripes have preached the value of forgiveness. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that whoever is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. My own spiritual hero, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, former chief rabbi of England, stated emphatically that "forgiveness means that we are not destined endlessly to replay the grievances of yesterday….It represents our ability to change course, reframe the narrative of the past and create an unexpected set of possibilities for the future...In the face of tragedy, forgiveness is the counternarrative of hope. It is not a moral luxury, an option for saints. At times it is the only path through the thickets of hate to the open spaces of coexistence.”
When I was a younger, less experienced therapist, I, too, counseled nearly all my clients to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you deny the other’s responsibility for hurting you, I would say, and it doesn't minimize or justify the wrong. What was hurtful or offensive might always remain a part of you, but forgiveness can lessen its grip and help you focus on other, more positive parts of your life. I pointed out that forgiveness helps you to go on living less encumbered; it releases the control that the offending person and situation might have in your life.
Yet as I have gotten older and seen and heard more of life's vicissitudes and horrors, my attitude has changed. While I still believe it is good to forgive and wicked to hold a grudge, aren't there some egregious, intentional harms that are so unforgiveable that forgiving them is wrong? What if the transgressor does not express remorse or ask for forgiveness? Is it better for some individuals to choose not to forgive?
Unforgivable People: Murderers
These questions were on my mind in June after a mass shooting took place at a church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. A 21 year old gunman, intent on starting a racial war, shot and killed nine people. However, almost immediately, several families of the victims spoke out publicly forgiving the unrepentant shooter. I wondered, as did many commentators, is this the correct approach? Is forgiving the unforgivable just and self-healing, or does it become party to evil?
Unforgivable People: Nazis and Mengele
I remembered a documentary I had seen several years ago which addressed this issue and which has left a haunting impression on me. The film was entitled, "Forgiving Mengele." Lest one forgets, Joseph Mengele was one of the Nazi doctors in Auschwitz who stood as Jews were herded off cattle cars, pointing some of the arrivals towards forced labor and the majority to the gas chambers. Mengele had a standing order for twins; he needed them for his “medical experiments.” Most of the time, he injected one of the twins with poison or with a bacteria or virus and then documented the development of the disease and the onset of death. As soon as the test patient died, he and his assistants would then immediately murder the twin sibling -- usually with an injection in the heart -- before performing simultaneous autopsies. Some 1,400 pairs of twins fell victim to Mengele’s barbaric experiments.
Eva and Miriam Mozes were six years old when they were selected to become guinea pigs in Mengele's lab, enduring experimentation such as being injected with potentially lethal strains of bacteria (and not given treatment). Somehow the sisters were able to survive and even emigrate to Israel where Eva served in the Israel Defense Force for 10 years. She later married Michael Kor, a Holocaust survivor living in the United States: and she moved to the US where she raised a family and created the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. Museum (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors). In a further effort to "eliminate hatred and prejudice from our world," Eva made trips to Auschwitz and sought out a German doctor who bore testimony to the atrocities committed by Mengele. It was shortly thereafter, in an apparent effort to free herself from victim status, that she made the shocking announcement, "In my own name, I forgive all Nazis.”
While I understand what motivated Eva Mozes Kor and the parishioners in Charleston to do what they did, I think it is healthy for some individuals to choose not to forgive. The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, "there is a time to love and a time to hate." When it comes to those who are frightfully evil and unrepentant, hatefulness is, it seems to me, an appropriate response.
Unforgivable People: Toxic Parents
There is one other category of unforgivable people with two tragic ironies to boot. For one, these are people who prey on offspring that they should ordinarily love and protect. I am talking about the "toxic parents" in this world. These would include the mother who stood by and let the man in her life hurt her children; the parent who sexually, physically, and emotionally tried to dominate and destroy his/her children; or any mother or father who did other heinous, unloving things to a defenseless child. You see, when parents abuse, neglect or deprive their child of unconditional love and safety, this child views him- or herself - as unworthy of love and protection. This produces toxic shame, a feeling of terrible self degradation which usually leads to patterns of addictive and self sabotaging behavior.
This also produces the second tragic irony: when someone with the condition of toxic shame seeks my help, they often have already decided to forgive the offending family member, even if that person is still mistreating them! The real challenge in such instances is helping the victim to believe in and love themselves, to stop blaming themselves for the way others treated them, or, in short, to forgive themselves. These are far from easy cases. It can take years of psychological therapy, psychiatric consultations, support groups or twelve-step programs, and sometimes rehab treatment to help unburden the guilt of toxic shame.
Should We Hate Unforgivable People?
Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveitchik, a young scholar whom I admire very much, has even gone so far as to declare that hate can be a virtue, an obligation. He cites instances in Jewish Scriptures where the Hebrew prophets not only hated their enemies but rather reveled in their suffering, finding in it a fitting justice.
I agree with Dr. Soloveitchik, but only to a point. The home atmosphere and Midwestern Jewish conservadox culture in which I was raised also taught me that, when it comes to evil, it is important not only to never forget and also to never forgive. We were never taught to seek God's mercy on those who would perpetrate evil on our people such as Haman, Hitler, Nasser or the like. Instead, we were guided to display what I would call a "sugar wrapped wrath." On the holiday of Purim when the book of Esther was read, we would see who could outdo the other by making the loudest noise when the name of the villain Haman was mentioned. On Passover, the holiday that reminds us of our people being slaves for 400 years in Egypt, we would make a brief reference to invoking vengeance on our enemies but only after we had eaten a hearty meal and couldn't wait to get to bed. Also throughout the year, whenever a great enemy of the Jewish nation, of the past or present, was mentioned, I would hear my parents, grandparents, or teachers invoke mild expletives or the frequently used phrase "yemach shemo" which means literally, may his name be erased.
Yes, you can say that I was raised to neither love nor forgive my mortal enemies – rather, to even hate them. But the hatred that I saw was not at all the cruel, hot, seething or burning type which is difficult to extinguish and may become misdirected to innocent people. Ours was a gentler, cooler type of hate; through words and symbolic actions, our hatred usually included a devaluation and diminution of the frightfully wicked person. As such, it also served to cool our minds while at the same time allowing us to remain vigilant against those who wantonly seek our destruction.
Unrequited Forgiveness and End of Life Issues
If forgiveness is the debt we owe to ourselves and others, then we should have, at the very least, an annual reckoning or audit of our actions. In Judaism, we are in Elul, the last month before our High Holy Days. It is a time of deep reflection, a time to make amends to anyone we have wronged so we can begin the New Year with a clean slate. For me personally, it is a particularly somber period because both of my parents passed away during the month of Elul in different years. That is why I write a Newsletter each year at this time, to help me mourn my parents and memorialize the values I learned from them.
This raises the challenging issue of unrequited forgiveness, particularly at the end of life. Just as we want to wrap up each year, so, too, we have an existential need to wrap up our lives with a clean slate; but how does one seek forgiveness from someone who refuses to communicate or, even worse, has already died? I believe that nearly every family, my own, sadly, included, has persons—whether siblings, cousins, or even parents and children—who have become estranged and disconnected, often over minor issues. A long forgotten argument, a dispute over inheritance, a perceived slight can lead to treating one another as mortal, unforgivable enemies. What do you do with a "sorry" or "forgive me" that will never be heard? How do we handle unexpected deathbed pronouncements or confessions?
As someone who is approaching the Elul of his own life, I have no answer to these perplexing questions other than to reiterate that forgiveness, indeed, is not a simple concept. But except for irrevocable and wanton damage, we should always be willing, as the Chofetz Chaim said, "to walk in the footsteps of forgiveness." Or as one researcher wrote, "With forgiveness comes a shocking amount of power and healing. It propels us from a place of dis-ease and anxiety toward emotional, physical, and spiritual health."
In an often unforgiving world, shouldn’t we choose the healthful, life affirming path?
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