We Can Truly Forgive Oppressors Only When Oppression Ends
D. K. Renton’s new book tackles the thorny subject of revolutionary forgiveness. Few can accept preemptive forgiveness of their persecutors: we have to have some faith in the future, that there will be a little less pain when we build the world to come.
D. K. Renton is a secular writer, more likely to cite Marx than Maimonides. And yet, as with many elements of the modern left, we can trace his desire for a culture of forgiveness to a particularly Jewish notion about what is needed to right our wrongs. (DimiTalen)
When Jews conceive of questions of guilt and forgiveness, they are often framed around the biblical concept of “Teshuvah.” While Teshuvah is often translated as “repentance,” that terminology has a particularly harsh Christian connotation that loses the process that the Hebrew word connotes. Teshuvah literally means “return” (as in one who “returns to God”), so it implies a repair necessary to return a relationship, or a life, to its previous wholeness.
With Teshuvah, a person is seeking to acknowledge the breakage their behavior caused: Teshuvah happens when the damage is authentically managed. This is when forgiveness can occur, which is not naturally owed in the Jewish tradition. Only the person harmed can truly forgive, and without Teshuvah, the victim is not required to offer forgiveness.
When a secular Jew says they are motivated by “Jewish values,” the practice of Teshuvah is often a piece of what they mean. This is part of why David Renton’s new book, Revolutionary Forgiveness, stood out to me: it is rich in a perhaps unintentional, but certainly unapologetic, Jewishness.
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