A Yom Kippur atonement guide.
 | By Michal Leibowitz Editorial Assistant |
Cancel culture has flourished in the age of social media, but it has parallels in age-old religious practices: from church discipline among early American Baptists to Hester Prynne's scarlet letter, and even the (largely obsolete) Jewish practice of herem. |
The comparisons come easily in large part because they're true — many religious groups do, or at least once did, have mechanisms for separating moral transgressors from the community. But these comparisons have also long struck me as lacking. |
In many religious contexts, the goal of public shaming was to provoke penance and ultimately reconciliation, an idea now largely overlooked. Perhaps that's why so many of the rabbis, priests and pastors you speak to today about cancel culture focus not only on finding fault, but also on forgiveness. |
Rabbi David Wolpe's essay, which we're publishing in advance of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, begins with the premise that public shaming, though powerful, is an inadequate social corrective. He offers us a series of operable practices, drawn from Jewish teachings on repentance, that all of us can practice to create a more functional culture of forgiveness. |
Some of these ideas may be familiar ones in need of reinforcing: A sincere apology should focus on the other person's hurt, not on justifications for your actions. And holding a grudge can harm the grudge-bearer almost as much as the person begrudged. |
But others may be new, like the suggestion that once someone has been forgiven, you shouldn't remind them of their past sin. "To do so," Wolpe writes, "is to re-establish a hierarchy that true forgiveness disavows." |
This essay is particularly good for those of us trying to figure out how to apologize or forgive in the few days left before Yom Kippur. But it may also help anyone who has messed up in big ways or small, anyone who has hurt or been hurt, those of us who are, as Wolpe writes, "imperfect and striving and in need of love." |
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