A Jerusalem memory and a question: is forgiveness possible?

An icy wind blew as we struggled out of the warmth of the café into the warren of streets that meandered through the Arabic section of Jerusalem. I looked over at my traveling companions and realized that Sara was shivering inside her short jean jacket. “We have to buy her a scarf,” I mumbled to Carol, my mouth tucked inside the brilliantly striped Mexican rebozo around my neck. We huddled closer together to retain the warmth, Sara in-between like a protected nestling. Because she was a teen-ager, she normally would resent the inhibiting closeness but with this biting cold, did not protest.

  

Fortunately it was one of the days that the shops were open. The intifada had succeeded in shutting the city down for three days before the cold hit. We were sight-seeing, taking in the garden tomb, the Church of the Sepulcher, the pools of Bethesda, and Solomon’s stables. We only had a little money to duck into the warmth of a café for scalding hot, sweetened mint tea. It felt like pure luxury.

   

When we found a vendor who sold scarves, we let Sara choose, carefully pooling our shekels together from our pockets, leaving us with twenty argarot and one shekel, about sixty cents USD. But it was worth it to see the look of gratitude on her face, chapped pink by cold. Just as we exited the shop, drifts of snowflakes started to fall. Snow in Jerusalem! Where would we spend the night? I hadn’t told Carol that when I had gotten up to use the restroom, a man had approached our table and offered to buy me for an afternoon. Or was it Sara he wanted? This chubby, shy, tag-a-long was terrified of this strange adventure and fortunately she hadn’t been paying attention to the man’s broken English or hand gestures.  

  

 Although my feet were numb and hands shoved deep into jean pockets were icy, I was thrilled to be in the holy city of Jerusalem. I remembered that on their way into the city, a man we met on the bus had given me his card. A Christian Arab, Ali repeatedly invited us to stop at his home and meet his family. Impressed that we traveled in the name of Jesus, penniless, adhering to the original Gospel lifestyle, he was respectful. He shook our hands warmly when we parted.

 

 “Let’s call Ali,” I suggested over the top of Sara’s blond curls.

 “Tomorrow I think we should go north, to the Galilee. We’re not dressed for this weather.”  

“Yeah, you’re right.” I was disappointed to be leaving Jerusalem after waiting years to be here. But I would come back. To add my prayer to the Wall. To wander the streets in a mystical trance. To find my soul crying out for a way to find home.

To be in Jerusalem, to be in Israel, is to be in a place that yearns for peace, but weeps from war after war, on the border and within her borders. Frozen teardrops on this day. How is peace possible without forgiveness? is the question I asked myself.

In 1989, I attended synagogue on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. I was invited by an American family to babysit, to take their child home when she became too restless to stay. They belonged to one of the only conservative synagogues in Israel. As we walked to the synagogue, the profound silence was cathartic to me. The cessation of traffic was highlighted by the serious, yet joyful mood.  The women dressed in white fluttered in the women’s balcony like doves, the children were free to wander among the men praying downstairs, the sounds of plaintive Kol Nidrei wafted up like smoke from a celestial fire drenching us in holiness. Although I couldn’t understand all of the Hebrew, I could follow along in the prayer book as we enumerated our sins and asked to be covered by God’s merciful forgiveness.

The High Holy Days are a time of repentance in the sense of self-reflection, to consider harm you may have done to others and ask their forgiveness before God opens to your page in the book of life. I loved the fact that we asked for forgiveness as a congregation, that we were part of a ritual cleansing as well as personal evaluation. The community supported us as we declared those sins, those choices and decisions where we missed the mark, aloud.

Recently I taught a writing workshop at Stillwater prison for the purpose of holding a reading during Victim Awareness week. They wanted to hold a reading to express their remorse and I would do whatever I could to help them make that possible. I told them, “You can’t just write a letter of apology and expect to be forgiven. Your victim may never be able to forgive—but if I were a victim, I would want to know how you have changed. How you are different now and would never commit that crime again. I want to know about the work you have done on yourself.” The word I used is metanoia, literally with-mind, to find mindfulness which is translated in the RSV New Testament as repentance. To me, the concept of metanoia goes beyond repentance, it means that you have changed.

As a victim, it can be a long hard road to healing. It can take years. It can take forever. I was lucky to have a therapist who was able to guide me through the trauma and tell a new story of survival. After years of silence about my rape, I was finally able to speak about it, write about it, read my writings aloud.  And yet, my impulse was to forgive the man who perpetrated the rape immediately after it happened because during the four hours he held me captive, I listened to his story. I knew he was a victim as well and that the violation on my body were the results of his own abuse, humiliation and anger. It is not an excuse. I don’t believe forgiveness needs to include forgetting. 

A few years ago I attended a Radical Forgiveness workshop led by Rev. Sher McNeal. We formed a circle and she read questions such as “Have you ever been hurt, ever been unkind to someone?”  “Have you ever been bullied,  have you ever bullied someone?” The acts of unkindness, abuse, violence mentioned became more and more specific. We were instructed that if we were either victim or perpetrator, to step into the middle of the circle. Then she asked us to look each other in the eyes and say, “I am sorry that happened to you.” No one knew who was victim or perpetrator. Rather we witnessed that with each question, some of us stood in the middle of that circle together. Sorrow and forgiveness included all of us. Remorse included all of us. Forgiveness included all of us. Kinda like Yom Kippur. A covering over us of Divine Mercy.

If my perpetrator had entered the Radical Forgiveness circle with me, would I have been able to look him in the eyes and say I am sorry that happened to you? Would we be able to weep together over his life wasted in prison and my years of PDST and distancing myself from relationships? Would we be covered by the mercy of God? I like to think it could be so.