163. How to Make Wrongs Right with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

And it took some time,

but I'm finally fine.

Welcome back.

Sorry, I just feel a little playful today.

God help us all.

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

Thank you for coming back.

We are here again.

And like I used to tell my third graders, I just need everyone to really turn on their listening ears,

open their minds and hearts.

Some life-changing shit coming to you today.

And that's what I used to say to my third graders.

I would have learned so much more.

Hey, my mommy, what is life-changing shit today?

Life-changing shit.

They come home.

I learned life-changing shit today.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So during our episode with Dr.

Galit, she talked to us about how...

When they did a study with mothers and babies, it became clear that 70% of the bids for attention or connection between mothers and babies were missed.

That is how often we miss each other.

But then there was this moment following the miss where the mother or the baby looked out to reconnect, to mend or repair the miss.

And in that follow-up, To repair the miss is where connection is made.

Not in the initial ask for connection or bid for connection or or attempt for connection, but that what we do as human beings is more often than not, we miss each other, but then there is a follow-up, which is a repair of the initial bid for connection.

And that is where connection is made or lost.

And we miss it as adults.

We miss the repair moment because we have shame.

So if you take this baby study and you apply it to children, to adults, to companies, to institutions, to nations.

What happens is, yes, we screw it up the first time in our relationships.

The person comes to us and says, I feel hurt.

There is the golden moment to get connection.

But since we don't know the power of repair, we shut down, we dismiss, we deflect, we deny, and we miss.

The golden moment.

It's true for babies, it's true for children, it's true for adults, communities.

When people tell us that we've hurt them, we don't know how to handle it.

Okay.

We think that we're being told we're a bad person, so we have to defend our identity.

And then we surrender to our own fragility and we miss the magic.

We have to stop missing the magic.

So we are going to speak right now to the person.

who is helping people stop missing the magic.

You all know her as Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg.

She is an award-winning author of eight books, including her latest, which I loved so much, on repentance and repair, making amends in an unapologetic world.

She serves as scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and many other publications.

Welcome, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

I have been reading you and following you for years.

And when I need to know what the smartest perspective is on any given issue, I often go to you first.

I think you're one of the reasons why I'm still on social media.

So thanks for all that you do.

God, I'm so honored.

I've been reading you forever, too.

So

it's about time we talk to each other.

Can you tell us, Rabbi Danya, why

this issue of figuring, figuring, and first of all, I want you to describe the issue for us about repair and repentance, but how it came about,

why you decided it was so important to

put this into the discourse of how we can repair breaches from each other better.

So five years ago,

just about exactly, Me Too broke.

in a big, big way in our culture.

Of course, Tarana Burke had created the hashtag much earlier, earlier, but that was the watershed moment for our culture.

And all of these dudes were named as sexual abusers.

And pretty much to the last, they all offered up these weak sauce statements.

I did it, but it's really going to be a problem for my fans.

And, you know, oh no, the impact on my family.

And

oh, God, you know, wine.

And almost to the last did not mention the people that they harmed.

Right.

And then there was this sort of like, okay, we're just going to shove them in the corner.

And then it's like, now what?

What do we do with them?

And as it happened, a friend of mine,

Jericho Vincent, was writing on this and came to me and said, okay, so now what?

And I wrote up a couple paragraphs using Maimonides, who in Judaism is like the guy on

mending harm, owning your stuff.

The word is

translated as repentance, but maybe I should start like a little bit back.

In Judaism, when we

talk about

what's translated as repentance, it's not now you feel bad.

It's a series of actions.

The word is tshuvah.

which means return.

It's about coming back to the person you were supposed to be all along.

It's about coming back to your integrity.

It's about coming back to the best version of you.

It's about coming back to the path that you wanted to be on before you started screwing up and harming out of ignorance, out of pettiness, out of laziness, out of sloppiness, out of all the reasons we hurt people.

And there's selfishness and greed and all of that, right?

But

even the little reasons that we hurt people

and out of our brokenness, out of our trauma, right?

And so, you have to come back, and there's work to do to come back and come back to relationship with God, if that's language that resonates with you.

And how would you say it for people who don't use

religious

integrity, to yourself, to your values, to who you wanted to be, right?

Right?

You don't, do you want to be a harmeder?

Probably not.

But in order to do that, there's work to do.

And so

the guy in my tradition, in Judaism, is Maimonides, Moses Maimonides,

12th century philosopher, Torah scholar, all-around genius, who took a bunch of earlier thinking and sort of rearranged it in a different order and kind of came up with what we call the laws of repentance.

Repentance is this tshuvah, this coming back.

So I wrote up

a couple of paragraphs based on what I think, you know, Maimonides' sort of order of repentance.

And we'll get into what the steps are.

Like if you're a famous dude whose impact is not just on specific victims, right, these harm specific people, but you also impacted the entire culture.

It's like rape culture, right?

Millions of people are now watching to see what happens next.

And your choices will impact how we think about gender, power, safety, what women are for, all of these things.

so i sent my friends some paragraphs for for the piece they were writing then i threw those paragraphs on twitter

and this thread started like i want to talk about forgiveness and atonement and repentance and and like the difference between these things and people went bonkers i remember because our culture doesn't have this the language for this nobody knows like it's like forgive right oh my god

yeah nobody knows what it means nobody knows what it means so you offer a starving world

paths this is why none of you know how to make up this is why none of you you're all just feeling guilty because you didn't forgive because somebody told you to forgive this is why you don't know what to do when somebody tells you they're hurt there actually are ideas on how to proceed And one of the first most important concepts you present is that repentance and forgiveness are two separate processes for two separate parties.

Repentance

is the work that the one who did the harm,

the hurter,

does, correct?

Right.

Okay.

So give us an example and then tell us what the first step of repentance is, because we're talking about me too and wider issues, but what I've heard you say is that you've never seen this path not work for in some way for individuals, for mothers and daughters, for fathers and sons, for

companies, institutions.

It's just, it works for everybody.

Right.

When we talk about this stuff in Judaism, it's usually been about individual relationships, right?

Family systems or what happened at work or whatever.

And after this Me Too conversation, I started playing with it and like, would it work for institutions?

And, well, what about this case study?

Oh, oh, this company that did something really right, it actually maps onto the steps.

And what about nations?

And I kept waiting for the system to break and it never broke.

There's something there.

And it echoes other systems that work because there's something there.

So first step is confession.

Own your stuff,

which means there's some pre-work, which is what did I do?

Why is this a problem?

And there's a lot of heavy work in having to cross that.

sort of cognitive dissonance of like we have the story of us as the hero i'm always the good guy I never do anything wrong.

And we have to

kind of cross that bridge and face the fact that, like, today

I

caused someone else pain.

Today, I was not the good guy in someone else's story.

And I have some cleanup work to do.

And then you have to name without talking about what you intended and what you meant.

We don't care what you meant.

We don't care about your great intentions.

We don't care what a great person you usually are.

Just name what you did.

Own it.

Ideally, I mean, definitely to anybody who witnessed the harm.

You say something racist in a staff meeting, those people need to see the confession.

Publicly.

If the harm was caused publicly, the taking ownership needs to be done publicly, correct?

Because the harm was done to more people than just the person who was offended directly.

Correct.

And it has to be at least as public as the harm was caused.

And it is praiseworthy to to

make it even more public than the harm.

It's not a name and shame thing.

It's not about putting you in the stocks.

It's about A,

asking for accountability, saying, I'm struggling.

I did something that's not my best self, and I need help getting back on that path of where I want to be.

Number two, from the victim's perspective, this is an end to the gaslighting.

Yes.

Right?

I did this.

It happened.

It was real.

Like any question you might have had about

whose fault was it?

Was it really happened?

You know, did I do something to why did this happen to me?

You get, you get your answers, right?

Relief, you call it.

You give relief to the person who's struggling because they are gaslighting themselves at this point, probably saying, did that really happen?

Are my feelings valid?

The other person, the hurter, is giving relief to that person by saying, yes, it was real.

Yes, I did this.

Right.

And whether we're talking about sexual abuse, if we want to talk about larger systemic harm, we could talk about the way internalized racism plays out.

There are all sorts of different ways that naming and owning that harm can really be critical for a healing process.

As you're talking, I'm thinking of the word reconciliation because usually so much of what we think about reconciliation is like two people or two groups coming together and making peace.

But really,

reconciling is accepting a situation or fact, even though you don't like it.

So, in a way, you're confessing is you're reconciling to yourself, with yourself, that there is this thing that I did,

this way that I'm showing up, this internalized issue in me that I am accepting as just as true as this wonderful part part of me.

And I am

claiming it.

And so really the first reconciliation has to be with you, or else you're never going to be able to offer the truth of a confession.

Yeah, deeply.

And you have to be able to do that separation between, you know, we have this thing in our

society where people think, I can't possibly be, I'm not racist.

So the thing I said can't possibly be racist, not a racist bone in your body, as opposed to we are all human beings and we do things, we have actions and some of our actions are helpful and some of them are harmful and we can clean up our messes and that it's not an indictment of your whole self.

And that's, you know, Glennon, when you were talking about the shame, I mean, it's that, right?

I want to ask a question about what makes a good

whatever the opposite of gaslighting is, owning harm, naming and owning harm.

Because I, I, what I notice a lot, and I think whether it's just the PR agents that are getting a little bit better or actual human beings, I don't know.

I think there's a couple PR agents who have read your book because some are getting a little bit better.

But in terms of people are always saying,

I did something that was out of character for me.

Like that's the main message.

And I always think, but don't we do what is in our character?

Isn't the issue not, I did something out of line with my character, but my character wasn't good enough and i'm gonna and and what i did revealed my character exactly and so what i'm gonna do is make my character better exactly exactly one of my favorite confessions is dan harmony who was a showrunner for community and he sexually harassed one of the writers on

on his set megan gance and

uh you know it was all of the gaslighting and she when she sort of rebuffed him he then then treated her badly.

And when he finally owned it on his podcast, he said, and this is somebody who very clearly identified as a feminist.

And he said, there's no way I could call myself a feminist and do these things.

I clearly did not respect women the way I told myself that I did.

And I lied to myself about what was going on.

And, you know, and, and, and, and for, and for Megan Gantz, it was so validating to just

have it named and just all of the questions are raised.

But for him to say,

the story I've been telling myself about who I am clearly isn't true if these are the choices that I made.

Yes.

And so that's why you get to step two, which is then you have to start to change.

Right.

And then you have to work to do.

We love to put the post on Instagram, right?

I'm very sorry.

I did a thing.

Yes.

I shouldn't have said it.

But very few people will then

back it up with change.

And I want to emphasize, it's that idea that we all are like mugs of liquid, of coffee and or tea.

And when we get bumped, something spills out.

Something spills out.

And so what happens with our behavior is what's inside of us has spilled out, not an accidental liquid that was from somewhere else.

Like actually, what is inside of us.

And so,

so what we say then, or what we hope to be true is I'm going to change what's inside of me so that the next time I'm bumped, something else spills out.

Right?

Yes.

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So let's talk about what is next starting to change.

That feels hard.

So let's just use the example that you just used, Dan Harmon.

His apology or his owning was, it felt like a relief to me

when I read it.

It felt like some man had stopped gaslighting and admitted what they all know.

It felt like an act of mercy.

So what might someone do?

And let's give an example too, of when this is personal, like a relational family situation.

We've made the owning.

That would be like a mother coming and saying, I know that I did this.

Like, how do you see it happening in families with the first step?

So,

the first step, you always have to sort of name it, own it, right?

I have been on my phone and not giving you my full attention, and it's a chronic problem.

And I get that.

Can you do a different one?

Because that one hurts my feelings.

So, that one reads too true.

Yeah, that's

out of my character.

I mean, you know, 98% of America is officially busted.

She hasn't reconciled that yet to herself.

I am taking out my anger about

my bad day

at home instead of dealing with the hard stuff at work.

So you have to own it and you have to name it and you have to name it clearly, right?

The fact that you were playing a little bit loudly really wasn't a problem.

You were okay, right?

And to really the reaffirming and the validating and that's the confessing.

It's me.

I'm the problem.

I love it.

Thank you.

Hi, Danya, for that.

Too swift.

Okay, yes, it's me.

I'm the problem.

Hi.

And

then you have to, and then, and then what?

Like, what are you going to do so that you don't keep doing the thing?

Because you're not going back to anywhere.

You're not becoming your better self.

No transformation.

If you keep doing it, you keep harming.

So

you have to do change.

And it depends on the person, right?

What is at the root of this thing?

Do you need therapy?

Do you need to call your sponsor or get into some sort of rehab situation?

Do you need to separate from a group of friends?

Because you always behave horrendously when you're with them, but you're kind of okay otherwise, but you need to rearrange some of your social priorities.

Do you need to do some deep education on anti-racism or trans liberation?

Are there places of ignorance that you need to be working on?

What is the thing that needs to happen so that you can start to become different and not do the thing anymore?

Yep.

What's interesting, Pazquad, is so far, none of this has to do with the person.

The person who has been hurt doesn't have to do shit in this

process, correct?

This is correct.

So we haven't even engaged them.

We have not even engaged them.

Okay.

Different than change or moving on from change is restitution and accepting consequences.

So tell us about this because there's an example in your book, I think, of someone who

owned the thing, said the thing, then said they were going to change, and then tried to get out of the sentence that they right.

Like that's very fundamental.

Yes.

That's the example that stuck with me in your book.

Like, oh,

well, isn't this a hard one?

Because you have to say it, change it, and then accept the consequences for it.

And I would argue that even the steps one and two are really victim-centric.

You're ending the gaslighting, you are preventing future victims, right?

And then step three:

A, there's restitution, right?

What is owed to the person who was harmed?

You can't undo what you did, but, you know, it's like that Japanese art of kensugi where you

bring things back together.

You pair pottery with gold.

So it's not unbroken and you can still see the brokenness, but there's something.

Do you owe them money?

Are you going to donate to an organization?

Are you going to give time, resources, connections?

I don't know.

What do they need?

How do you find out?

You ask them.

Because if you decide for them what appropriate amends are, then you're still making them an object.

You're not centering their personhood and their needs, so you're like re-inscribing the same harm.

So, you have to ask them, and that has to be negotiated: what are amends, and you have to accept the consequences

because the cup is broken.

Maybe you're not invited back to game night anymore, even if you're totally repentant, you do all the things, great amends, you still don't get to come back to game night.

You lost that job opportunity.

And so, the story is: Barry Frindel is a rabbi who

was caught recording over 150 women as they undressed for the mikveh, the ritual bath.

Recording anyone as they are undressing is already a profound breach of trust, but the rabbi-congregant relationship and the sacred space of the ritual bath.

And

I mean, people go there,

you know, when they're trying to conceive after miscarriages.

It's also a very emotionally laden space.

And I can't even convey the

rage

that I experience when I understand this.

And

so he was ultimately sentenced to significantly fewer

of the crimes that he committed than he should have been because of statute of limitations.

So his sentencing didn't reflect the full amount of crimes that he committed.

And he gave this beautiful apology.

This really, because he's, he's the rabbi.

He knows he's my manides.

He knows what he's supposed to say, right?

He's got all the same books I do.

He knows what to

post.

But then he argued that he shouldn't be in jail for very long because he really ultimately only committed one crime because they're all bundled together, which tells us that he doesn't understand what he did.

What's the eggshell plaintiff doctrine that you sister was adding her lawyer self to the

yeah, I was thinking about this as we were talking about restitution.

I was thinking about

the way that the legal system approaches that.

And there's this doctrine called the eggshell plaintiff that if you negligently cause an accident, you are responsible for the actual damages caused.

So even if the person you hurt

is as fragile as an eggshell,

you can't say, well, the average person wouldn't have been hurt this bad, or it's unreasonable that this person suffered such a great injury.

You take your victim as you find them.

So if you, you know, bump somebody a little bit and they fall to pieces, you're responsible for those pieces, even if you don't think that's reasonable.

And I think that is fascinating as it pertains to all of this, because if you do something, you can't say, you know, you were too sensitive.

What I did doesn't correlate to that kind of injury.

Aren't you exaggerating?

You know, all of that kind of gaslighting.

I just think that that legal doctrine of taking your victim as you find them is fascinating as it applies to this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So next, after we've accepted consequences, no matter how sensitive or fragile the other person was, because that is not the issue here.

Then comes the apology, which is so interesting.

All the way at the end.

Yeah.

All the way.

Just think of it.

Right.

Because when you think about it, like if the apology is at the beginning, you're still basically the harm doer.

Exactly.

Things changed.

You're still that person.

And so it's like checking off something on box and it's, it's the publicist writing the thing you post on Instagram on your little notes app.

Like, I don't know why that's a thing.

It looks so organic.

Yes,

because it looks raw.

How is this different than the first owning harm?

How is the apology different than number one?

You own the harm, right?

You say, I did this thing.

And then you have to do the work.

You say, okay, really, this is me.

Today I'm not the good guy.

And then you have to do the work to change and make that coffee different, you know, put in some sugar, get some cream, whatever it is, so that your coffee is sweeter and better.

And then you have this negotiated amends.

And so imagine somebody's going on a journey of anti-racism, for example.

They said something out of deep ignorance and then they have to understand what they did.

And as they're learning, there's that moment of like, oh, oh.

And then in the negotiated amends, they start to, as they hear what the other person needs, there's more.

understanding what really happened to them and the deeper empathy and connection.

And so by the time you you get to this apology, this transformation has happened.

Yeah.

You have been transformed.

You are already someone else.

And

that apology is flowing from a truly contrite heart.

Yes.

Yeah, well, you did.

And you're really sorry.

As opposed to the harm doer who doesn't understand at all why everybody's so mad.

Baffled.

The harm doer is baffled in the beginning.

Because

they didn't do something out of character.

They did something in character.

And then the world said, that character sucks.

And then they're like, wait.

And so by the time we get through all the work and we get to the apology, we are of a different character.

We can look back on our previous self and have sorrow for the harm that that person did.

I'm sorry means not, oh shit, I got caught, but I have sorrow in my heart.

If we don't have sorrow in our hearts, we shouldn't be saying I'm sorry, right?

Right.

And it's, it's not about getting off the hook and notably the work of repair that amends.

What do you need to do to sew up that hole in the cosmos that you caused already happened, right?

Do the work first.

We don't want your words until you've already done the fixing thing.

Somebody's sitting there on the floor with a broken foot and you're like, I'm sorry.

And the person is like, I'm

really would just like you to pay for my hospital bills or, you know, whatever.

do the work first and then

and then we can have the conversation about how you feel about what you did.

And become safer for the person because you're not even safe to approach the person when you're of the same character that caused the tell us some things that make horrific apologies.

It's awesome, right, Rabbi Dania, when people say they're sorry and then cry and then get very victimy and then make sure that all of the attention is on reassuring that person.

So that's good, right?

Right.

Right.

I mean, that's the thing is that the apology,

it all has to be victim-centric.

And what I love about the language that Maimonides uses in this section of the laws of repentance is that Maimonides says you have to appease the victim.

So it's not, you have to do a certain thing.

And it's like, what is going to appease?

What is going to,

there's some other languages and there are some other words in Hebrew as well, but you know, to care for, to appease, to take care of the victim, like, it's going to be different for different people and it will be different depending on what happened.

It's not Maimonides says you have to say these three magic words and then you're off the hook.

It is what does the person who was hurt need in order to feel better?

What are their spiritual needs?

What are their emotional needs?

So, that's again,

it's about having to engage them as full people.

Yeah.

What about there are many, many examples of times when the

perpetrator who's doing the repentance work needs to not directly have contact with the person who is victimized because that would be bad and more hurtful no matter how much work the person's doing.

And that victim person never wants to hear from this person again and will do their own healing work on their own.

And that is there and that is real.

And there are times.

And again, this is victim-centric.

So if it's going to harm the person who was hurt to show up and say, it's amends and apology time so I can go back and, you know, do my tsuva work then you're not doing it right because it's not about the harm doer so there there are ways to do indirect amends right you can instead of

doing something directly for the person you harmed you uh volunteer your time and energy at an organization that would make sense or you fight to get certain laws passed or you spend the rest of your life trying to transform our culture into a better safer place um if you committed sexual assault, you should not work with victims of assault, right?

But there are things you can do.

And you just have to live with the consequence of not getting let off the hook by the victim.

That might be really uncomfortable for you.

And that is your consequence for the rest of your life that you don't get to possibly have that moment with your victim where your victim says, I forgive you.

Well, and that's the thing, as we said at the beginning, like forgiveness and repentance are different tracks.

Let's talk about that.

Yeah.

So the person doing the repentance work can do all of their work

and do everything

and not be forgiven.

And it's still okay.

Maimonides says, if you're not, if you go and you apologize and the person says,

piss off, I'm not interested in this, then you come back with an accountability team.

You bring three people and they're there to watch you and see what your language is and what are you saying and how are they responding.

And then maybe you debrief afterwards: like, what am I missing?

You know, why is this not landing?

And you do that a few more times, you go back and forth.

And Imonides says, after you've apologized ultimately four times, once on your own, and then three times with different people who are trying to help you make this connection, if it's not landing, you have done everything you can, and you are free to, and then this is where it gets Jewish: like, you're free to ask God for forgiveness on Yom Kippur and the Day of Atonement and you're fine.

There's no place in Judaism for the sentence, you have to forgive me because I can't finish my repentance work otherwise.

It doesn't exist.

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I'm just obsessed with how we, as a culture,

even our expectations and the onus and the agency

is on the person

who had the harm done to them.

If there is an injury, we don't look at the person who did the harm and say, have they atoned?

Have they repented?

Have they changed?

We say, oh,

did they make up?

Are they forgiven?

Are they good now?

As if the victim of the situation is the one who's holding the ball the entire time.

Yes.

And for me, that's so frustrating because, like, culturally, we could shift that and be like, the victim is in charge of taking care of themselves and has zero other obligations.

And I'm looking at you and seeing what you're doing.

If you do harm, you get to be the passive one.

And just looking over and saying, I'm ready to receive my forgiveness anytime.

I did my thing.

And so for me, I feel like forgiveness is between between you and you.

There is no two people in forgiveness.

So when you forgive, it's not

letting the other person free.

When I have forgiven, it's not to let the other person free.

It is to let myself free.

And it's not like accepting what they did.

It's accepting that it happened.

So like the famous Oprah show thing of like forgiveness is giving up the hope, it would have been different.

Not that it was okay, but that it happened.

And I just think this, this thought of forgiveness as like an exchange of value or a gift between two people is horseshit because

if you do it so that you are not a prisoner to the thing that happened to you.

And I think the reverse is true that if you are the harm doer, forgiveness is still between you and you.

You don't go to the injured party looking for gifts because A, that's wildly inappropriate.

And B, it's not even useful because it doesn't actually express anything real.

It's just if you are holding yourself prisoner because you did harm, that's your business.

And an apology might be part of what you try to do, but it can't be what frees you.

Like you need to free yourself through your own work.

Yeah.

I experienced that.

A direct example in my past marriage, rampant infidelity was revealed.

And immediately in my church, I was a project.

Like the, the, Craig, it was, and it's okay.

Craig's used to like me talking about this.

It's part of his repentance work.

I'm just joking.

I know, no, no.

My reaction was, was, was just that visceral horror at, you know, totally getting it.

Like,

I was a project factor.

Like,

it was like he was unfaithful.

And then I was the project.

Like, I had to go to Christian therapy.

I had to go to the circles.

I had to read the books because my job was to forgive.

Has she forgiven him yet?

But there was no, let's put Craig in the groups.

And there was this compulsory forgiveness.

And I love how you talk about, just talk to us about compulsory, because it serves somebody.

And it's always the people in power.

Compulsory forgiveness pretty much always reinscribes existing power structures.

Harm isn't always between someone with more power and someone with less power, right?

It's not the only way that harm happens, but almost always to the last, when one person is pushing or a bunch of people are pushing one party to do the forgiving, it is in order to maintain the status quo so that nothing will change, so that systems won't change, so that social dynamics won't change, so that we can just keep exactly everything as it is.

Our pastor doesn't have to resign, right?

We don't need to ask any larger questions about the police force that enabled this black motorist to be shot.

We just push forgiveness and

then everything can just stay exactly as it is.

Isn't unity often a euphemism for forgiveness?

Like, we just all need to be unified on this.

I actually think that our country's obsession with forgiveness came at the end of the Civil War.

Right.

When white northerners started preaching, listen, guys, we need to forgive the South and we all need to be unified and we all, aren't we all brothers?

And nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, right.

Even abolitionists who were maybe against slavery, but not against white supremacy.

And they threw Black Americans under the bus, said, don't worry about that violence you're hearing about.

It's fine, right?

It doesn't, the lynchings, it's okay.

We're still friends.

We're all unity.

Forgiveness is the number one thing.

And we started hearing forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

And it was a way to re-inscribe white supremacy at a moment when it was at risk.

Unity, right?

And then it's the same thing that happened right after January 6th.

And it is always at the expense of

someone.

And you always have to look around and do the power analysis.

When you hear the words unity, the words forgiveness, right?

When they're getting pushed,

sort of see whose interests aren't being served and why.

Unity at the expense of justice.

You ask who's justice?

And forgiveness, okay, forgiveness without demanding what repentance.

Because as you point out, Rabbi Danya, this unity is always demanded.

Nobody's even said they're sorry.

Nope.

We haven't even required that.

Yeah.

Nope.

Oh, no.

Nobody's sorry.

You know, after the civil war, you had all these people saying, we're all going to be friends.

And then you had both black and white other people who were like uh can we talk about repentance

frederick douglas saying like listen if southerners want to do repentance work for i don't know enslaving human beings

and they want to talk about how genuinely sorry they are that they did this and then went to war to defend their right to do it

sure we can have a conversation but this thing where they're not sorry at all and we're just gonna pretend nothing happened not only are we gonna pretend nothing happened, but we are in fact going to give reparations, but it's going to be for the people who enslaved people who have lost their property.

Not for not reparations

for people who lost their lives and their ancestors lives.

But we're going to reimburse you for that because that is an offense that needs atonement.

And to bring it down to like the personal level also, this is what you see in families when the child comes and says, I was mistreated.

And then the mother says, we just have to forgive.

That's just the way it is.

That is the same dynamic of like, we will keep power and we will keep status quo exactly as it is without changing.

And by the way, in my previous marriage, there was no power differential.

Like we were equal in the hurt, but that process still protects power because by saying Glennon is the one, the victim is the one who has to do the work, power is protecting itself because then all of the people above us, the pastors, the men in powerful positions, don't ever have to be the ones doing the repentance.

So even if the two people in the conflict have equal power, power is still protecting itself.

I think this whole conversation around power and the dynamics between perpetrator and victim, I guess my question is,

is forgiveness even possible?

Because

I don't believe in it.

To me, there's a big question in that it is to create status quo.

It is like, oh, but we all must forgive.

That's just the way of the world.

Religions have these, you know, tenets that are based in it, but it's to keep those institutions central.

I don't know if

real forgive, I just don't know.

And I'm curious from your perspective.

What does it mean?

Is it real?

Okay, let's talk about forgiveness.

So in Judaism, there are two different words that get translated as forgiveness

because nothing is uncomplicated.

There's michila and slicha.

So michilah is like a closing of accounts.

Like you stole from me, fine, you acknowledge that you did and you figured out why

you made that choice or like you're working on it, you're in therapy, you paid me back, you apologized really nicely, we're done.

And remember, none of this includes reconciliation, right?

That's a whole different thing.

Very important.

maybe we're friends again.

Maybe we're not, but whatever.

This story is over.

We're good.

Closing the books.

And then there's slicha, which is like the more emotional, empathetic, like, I see you, and it's warm and fuzzy.

And that, like, that's the one that usually American culture is all about, like, the, you know, I forgive you kind of vibe.

Jewish literature generally talks about mechila.

Like, we're just closing the books.

It's over.

We're just the case closed.

And so it's a much lower bar.

And

so if we're saying repentance and forgiveness are different tracks.

So A, we have the penitent person has gone and done all their work.

They've trotted off and are changed and transformed.

Yay.

Okay, good.

And then the person who was harmed now

has to figure out where they are.

And if somebody is coming to them, and they're genuinely sorry and they're genuinely like doing the work, Jewish literature says, A,

don't be super petty.

If it's something that's not a major, major deal, like don't be petty.

Don't lord your wounds over them, right?

Check yourself to see if your refusal to close the books on this situation is,

you know, if there's something in you that you need to check on

because it may be spiritually bad for you that you're hanging on to this.

So you shouldn't do that.

And that's bad.

And I have a whole extended disagreement, very nerdy disagreement with Maimonides about some of the language and choices he made in this section.

We don't need to go there.

I love you.

Just say that.

I have a nerdy disagreement with a 13th century Jewish scholar.

I used to refer to him as my dead medieval boyfriend.

Oh, of course you don't.

I don't anymore, but

you know.

Well, I need those two differentiations.

We need that.

We need that.

Because in your book, you said sometimes somebody else said this, but it was a quote, sometimes forgiveness is wishing that rotten SOB peace and getting along with your life.

Right.

Yeah.

I can buy that.

Right.

And it's just like, go, Zoom.

And whenever I talk about this, I always make sure to make sure this is clear.

There's the Jerusalem Talmud is an authoritative source says that if somebody slanders you, they never ever have to forgive them.

And the reason why that's given by later commentators is very much because,

you know, if somebody talks crap about you, it's like the feathers have been let loose in the wind.

Like you can never collect them all.

Like you can never get back everybody, you know, the story is already out there and there's no way to totally take it back.

That is harm that can never be fully repaired.

Wow.

So my read

is that if you are harmed in a way that can never be fully fully repaired, you are never obligated to forgive.

That's how I feel.

Right?

You're never obligated to forgive your abuser ever.

With trauma, never.

You might, right, in your healing process, as you do your work of healing.

And I think my personal take is that victims of harm, and we're all perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, all of us, all the time.

But when we are victims, like our job is to do the healing work and to do everything we can to take care of ourselves.

And if organically in that some place at some time, we find that we have closed the books, okay.

And we can tell the perpetrator or not.

It's so good because it's often, it often feels like, can you forgive me?

feels shorthand for, can we pretend that that never happened?

Can we go back to way that never happened?

And that feels like the opposite opposite of forgiveness for the person, which is accepting that it can never be different.

Like you have to accept it can never be different, but the perpetrator gets to pretend like it never happened.

It's like, it can't be both ways.

Right.

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I want to ask you a heavy, serious question, but I know that you are the one to ask.

So

you thought, and the writing in the book is so beautiful and specific about

really how you see this repentance pro,

not even really repentance forgiveness, but repentance, forgiveness process, how it might be implemented in different conflicts, interpersonal and institutional and international.

So how do you see this being implemented in the Israeli-Palestine conflict?

It's so hard.

Obviously, Israel is the party with more power, right?

And human rights abuses are being committed in an ongoing way.

I'm very comfortable naming that.

I'm against the occupation.

I've been vocally against the occupation.

And

the fact of the matter is that

there are competing understandings of what is true.

That is a reality.

I've made it a project to go learn and learn and learn and learn and learn and shut up and learn.

And there are a lot of things that are true simultaneously, even if it's not convenient that they're all true at the same time.

And,

you know, the first step of this work is always confession, truth-telling.

I look at the South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the book as one kind of model.

And I really believe that with Israel-Palestine, what we need to do is make space for all of the truth to be told in one place and that everybody hears all of the things and it's a massive project, right?

And I don't know if we start with everything that happened in 1948.

I have ideas about which specific people or organizations we would bring in and, you know, but you get all of the things told in one place.

And then

what does starting to change look like?

I feel

I really believe deep in my bones that if we can get the truth telling done right, like a real truth telling, that the next step will present itself.

What that's starting to change will look like

will find itself in the middle of that process.

And if you get the right people working together to formulate what that could be, it can and will happen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're making me think of one of the important keys is complete surrender and presence in each step without thinking forward to what the next thing is going to be, because you're going to become a different person and more will be revealed in each step, which will then make the next step clear.

So this is very next right thing-ish.

And when you're saying all of that, it rings so true because as you were speaking, I was thinking about a family and like how impossible it is.

to you're saying this and i'm saying this in this part of my life and but the way you are is you're that way because of the generation before you and it's like the only way a family could heal is if we could have one room with the ghosts of our ancestors and our great-grandmothers saying, oh, she's like that because I healed from this and then she healed from that and then you healed.

And it would be like

the only way a family could truly heal is if generations were in the same room because all the things are true at once.

Right.

Right.

I had a friend sit in my house last week, a dear friend, and she is a freedom fighter for all oppressed groups.

And she is Jewish.

And this is right after the latest Kanye fiasco.

And she sat on my couch,

fire in her, sadness in her.

And she said, It just feels to me like anti-Semitism is the last permissible hate.

Talk to us about where we are in this country with anti-Semitism and

why that rings so true.

So

I have to kind of go back a thousand years in a sentence or two.

If anybody can do it, it's you.

So,

in

beginning in the medieval Christian era, Christians didn't want to do money lending.

Jews are like, it's not a god against our religion.

We don't care.

And y'all won't let us own land, are taxing us ridiculously and keep kicking us out of different countries.

So, having liquid

resources is great.

And so, we get this association with Jews and money.

And then, little by little, this game of blame the Jews, not us, starts up.

So anytime someone is in power and things aren't going very well, they start to say, it's the Jews.

It's not us.

Those greedy Jews, it's not us.

Remember, we are mostly poor.

We are mostly like refugees from country to country because they keep kicking us out.

Yeah, but they still play this game.

And so you get to like 1902, the czar, Nicholas, I hate,

writes, his people write the protocols of the elders of Zion, writes secret cabal of the Jews because things were going badly for him.

1905 revolution was getting going.

Blame the Jews, not us.

It's always the people in power, but the Jews are the scapegoat.

And so we have this like this.

ongoing story of the people in the shadows who are secretly behind the scenes, pulling the strings.

You can't see them, but they're there and they're really behind everything.

And then we have Jews come to America and we are

like, this is the best we've ever had it, honestly.

Anytime in history, things are kind of going okay.

The white Jews managed to assimilate into whiteness in a lot of different ways.

It's conditional whiteness, but it's partly there.

And this same like shadowy Jews behind the scene trope continues.

That's why it's so hard to see because it's slippery.

And it's, you know, you you talk about the deep state and you talk about like, oh, Soros, you know, Rothschilds, like it's an ancient trope.

It's these little things you just show the names of a few politicians, you know, you just raise up and

it comes up again and again.

And these, you know, QAnon is now bringing up blood libel tropes.

It's the same stuff over and over again, but because by design, it's the folks behind the scenes and it's hints and it's whispers.

We are somehow secretly pulling the strings, even though white Protestants have been basically running the country and Christo-fascism is coming for all of us.

Of course.

You know, it's like, I'm sorry.

But somehow, magically, Jews are supposed to be behind all of this.

But you don't say Jews.

And so it's in code.

You talk about the globalists and you talk about the, you know, those cosmopolitan people and the rich people and the people on this on the coasts, the elites.

And so, it's in code, but we all kind of know, and it's half conscious, and it's half not.

And that's why, because it's slippery.

The other thing is that the way that anti-Semitism operates that is different from other oppressions is that

unlike other oppressions, anti-Semitism even works better when Jews are doing okay.

When Jews are actually

doing okay in society, like it continues to function and even thrives off of that.

Whereas many oppressions are about keeping a population, you know, below, under, beneath.

And so

that is also part of the slipperiness of it.

It looks like everything's fine.

It looks like we're doing fine.

Jews are doing, are they just fine?

What's what's a why are they complaining?

And it's like, well, because people keep like gunning down our synagogues, kidnapping our rabbis.

If people would stop doing that, then

that would be great.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So we're going to close now.

We call this we can do hard things.

I just really have come to believe over in my life, whether it's in personal situations, whether things I do online, that

this process of really surrendering to a repentance path,

It's like getting on one of those, when you're in the airport and you get in on one of those little like

escalators that are just flat, but it moves you faster than everybody else.

Like in terms of spiritual evolution, in terms of personal development, actually surrendering to a repentance process feels so uncomfortable.

And it is a speed track to being a better person.

And we are all missing it.

It's like if we had this one workout, since we're all, since America is so physically obsessed, it's like there was this one workout that was like the magical thing that would make you live longer.

And then just none of us did it because it was hard.

Like this is the equivalent of that.

This is a spiritual workout.

Or spiritual workout.

It's a thing that you don't want to do at first and then it hurts and it's sweaty and icky and then it changes you and then it changes everyone around you.

And you can actually see the magic happen in your relationships when you stop refusing it.

And I think that your

work because of that is so, and also for a million reasons.

I mean, you guys have to read the rest of Rab My Daddy's work.

This is just her latest.

So important,

world-changing, life-changing.

Um, thank you for being who you are in the world.

Um, and all of you, we can do hard things, pod squad.

Follow Rabbi Danya, check her out, and end the book.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate you.

Thanks for doing hard things.

Thank you so much.

Okay, see you next week, Pod Squad.

Bye.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a heart pain.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue

to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time

But I'm finally fine

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that

Our final destination

we lack

We stopped asking directions

to places they've never been

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard

pain.

We're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard

things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do

hard

things.

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