Don’t be cruel TB Baba Kama 92

Today’s daf TB Baba Kama 92 provide sources for wise teaching. Let me share one with you.

“MISHNA: Despite the fact that the assailant who caused damage gives to the victim all of the required payments for the injury, his transgression is not forgiven for him in the heavenly court until he requests forgiveness from the victim, as it is stated that God told Abimelech after he had taken Sarah from Abraham: “Now therefore restore the wife of the man; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for you, and you shall live” (Genesis 20:7). And from where is it derived that if the victim does not forgive him that he is cruel? As it is stated: “And Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bore children” (Genesis 20:17).” (Sefaria.org translation)

We see from this that asking for forgiveness and granting it is an important two-way street. Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins writes “In the words of William A. Ward, ‘Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.’ In the Yom Kippur Confessional we are reminded that we not only ask God to forgive us, but we too must, in God -like fashion, forgive those who ask our forgiveness. The benefits, as William Ward explains, are clear. Forgiveness brings satisfaction and more closeness to both the offender and the offended.” (Moments of Transcendence: Inspirational Readings for Yom Kippur, page 99)

Dr. Sidney B. Simon and Suzanne Simon explain exactly what forgiveness is.

“Forgiveness is letting go of the intense emotions attached to incidents from our past. We still remember what happened, but we no longer feel intensely angry; frightened, bitter, resentful, or damaged because of it. Forgiveness becomes an option once pain from the past stops dictating how we live our life today and we realize that what once happened to us does not have to determine what will happen to us in the future.

“Forgiveness is recognizing that we no longer need our grudges and resentments, or hatred and our self-pity. We do not need them as an excuse for getting less out of life than what we want or deserve. We do not need them as a weapon to punish the people who hurt us or keep other people from getting close enough to hurt us again. We do not need them as an identity. We are more than a victim of injury and injustice.

“Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt us. It is no longer wanting to get even or to have them suffer as much as we did. It is realizing that we can never truly ‘even the score,’ and it is the inner peace we feel we stop trying to.

“Forgiveness is accepting that nothing we do to punish them will heal us. It is becoming aware of what we did because we were hurt and how these attitudes and behaviors have also hurt us. It is deciding that we have simply done enough hiding and hurting and hating and that we do not want to do those things anymore.

“Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we have always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves. It is breaking the cycle of pain and abuse, ceasing to create new victims by hurting others as we ourselves were hurt.

“Forgiveness is moving on. It is recognizing that we have better things to do with our life and then doing them.” (Yom Kippur Readings, edited by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, page 65-66)

No wonder as part of the bedtime Shema we pray every night before we go to sleep “I hereby forgive anyone who has angered me, or sinned against me, either physically or financially, against my honor or anything that is mine, whether accidentally or intentionally, inadvertently or deliberately, by speech or by deed, by thought or by speculation, in this incarnation or in any other: any Israelite [is forgiven], may no man be punished on my account. ” (Sefaria.org translation)