‘Tis the High Holiday season once again and the year 5785 is upon us. After Rosh Hashanah takes place and the month of Elul comes to an end, a time of reflection settles over us as we think about the past year and are reminded to reflect on our mistakes and those who we’ve wronged. 

During the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it is customary for people to reach out to apologize and ask us to forgive them. But how do we actually do that? In a world where pain and suffering happen on the daily, how do we let go and acknowledge the humanity of other people while also preserving our emotions and right to feel hurt or betrayed? 

To answer all our questions about forgiveness, Unpacked sought the counsel of two experts. Rabbi Rachel Timoner is the senior clergy at Brooklyn’s Reform Congregation Beth Elohim, where she leads congregants through prayers and utilizes the Torah as a vehicle for navigating social justice. Jewish social worker and art therapist Berena Wasserstein, LCAT, ATR-BC, and ASW is based in San Diego and primarily focuses on trauma in her work. Unpacked spoke to them about Jewish and mental health-focused ways to forgive and let go this Yom Kippur.

How to forgive yourself

When it comes to forgiving yourself, Rabbi Timoner recommends using prayer to acknowledge your humanity. One way of doing that is through the Selichot prayers, which are done the night before Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur. 

“The idea is that we sing these prayers late into the night and ask for God’s forgiveness, and that process of asking for God’s forgiveness is also awakening our own sense of forgiveness,” she told Unpacked. 

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Another set of prayers that can be beneficial are the typical Jewish morning prayers of “Elohai neshama shenatata be t’horah he,” which directly translates to “My God, the soul You have given me is pure.” 

Timoner likens the idea that humans will always have a pure soul even if they move toward good or evil to a “candle surrounded by smudged glass.” “Your soul is always pure, but the vessel gets smudged and the light gets blocked as you do harmful things, wrong things. And so the process of atonement is a process of purification in that you are cleaning off the vessel around the light where it can shine more clearly,” she clarified. 

Wasserstein recommends self-soothing, finding ways to acknowledge that you are human and can make mistakes. 

Primarily, she recommends mindful breathing, focusing on a specific body part to breathe into. When you feel that body part being impacted by your emotions (like your heart beating fast, for example), focus on breathing into it from your diaphragm and sending your breath to that region. 

“You’re feeling what’s happening in the body, and you’re focusing on that, which is a form of self-love, and it’s also your body kind of telling you, on some level, you got this. You can handle this,” Wasserstein said. 

Other ways to self-soothe include rhythmic dance or making art. Through neuroplasticity, exposure to certain environments or experiences can change the brain and its responses. Art “massages” the brain, allowing it to make room for other emotions. “Sometimes people just need to not think. They try to think through distress, anxiety, anger, and shame. And we have to get out of the cognitive realm. Sometimes you just have to slow down,” she said. 

While it may be difficult, the key is to recognize your humanity when it comes to forgiveness. Learning to love and accept yourself after you’ve made a mistake is important because “in those moments you could be a little bit more tolerant of how flawed you are and how flawed everybody is. If we’re really critical of ourselves, it’s going to be really hard to forgive others for their shortcomings and to let go.”

How to forgive others

Although forgiveness is a mitzvah, both Rabbi Timoner and Wasserstein agree that it is something that takes time. You also don’t need to forgive people if you don’t feel ready to, or simply don’t want to.

“It’s important that if people have been wronged in egregious ways, and they are not ready to forgive, it’s very important that they not be pressured or be told that, according to a religious standard, they’re supposed to forgive. That forgiveness needs to be at its own pace,” Timoner said. 

The three pillars of Teshuvah (repentance) are selichah (forgiveness), mechilah (wiping away or pardoning), and kapparah (atonement). But unless someone asks you for forgiveness, you are not obligated to forgive them. 

“You’re really only supposed to be forgiven once you’ve actually [sought to repair what you’ve broken], so just to think in your mind or in your heart, ‘oh, I wish I hadn’t done that,’ That’s good. That’s a step.

“Then there are other steps. You have to confess the thing out loud. You have to then figure out how to make it better for the other person. If you go to the other person, apologize to them, figure out how to make it better, then you can get forgiveness,” Timoner says. 

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The Torah teaches us several examples of forgiveness and letting go. As Rabbi Timoner explains, each generation of brothers in the Book of Genesis teaches us about forgiveness. 

In the beginning, Cain kills Abel out of jealousy. In the next generation, Esau sells Jacob his birthright and in turn, Jacob takes his blessing; even though Esau had wanted to kill him, the two brothers eventually reunite with their families. 

In the story of Joseph, whose brothers enslave him, he forgives them, even helping their families find prosperity in Egypt. In the final generation, Jacob, on his deathbed, decides to give the birthright to Joseph’s younger son Ephraim instead of his older son Manasseh, and the two brothers never end up fighting. 

“What you see over the course of the book of Genesis is really a story of human conflict rooted in a question of whether people feel equally loved, equally worthy, or jealous. …  Siblings are a stand-in for all of humanity. All human beings are siblings to each other, and each generation is facing the same conflict, and they’re getting slightly better in every generation of being able to manage it. In the final generation, they learn to be together without having to resent each other,” Timoner said. 

Using the High Holidays to let go

Even though we only have to forgive when the person comes to us, the reality is, that holding onto a grudge may likely hurt us most. 

“I advise people that whether or not the person who wronged you comes to ask for forgiveness, it’s in your interest to work internally to get to the point where you can forgive just for your own well-being because it will stop eating at you and you can be free. You’re not free until you can let it go,” Timoner said. 

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From a physical standpoint, our health may be at risk. According to Wasserstein, “When you hold something within and it really needs to be released, it messes up things.”

For some people, holding a grudge could impact their bodies, causing tight muscles, locked jaws, digestion issues, and a rapid heart rate. Wasserstein added that holding onto grudges can increase one’s likelihood for panic attacks and ulcers due to an increase in cortisol. Mayo Clinic even claims that forgiving someone can lead to a lowered heart rate.

Wasserstein compared the idea of being hurt to “breaking news.” When you are harmed, the event may feel like a major headline news event and cause a fight or flight reaction. But as time goes on, it will progressively move towards local news status, becoming a “mortal wound;” It might still hurt when you think about it but it doesn’t trigger as strong a response. 

“When we have a fresh wound, it can feel like loud, breaking news. But when we forgive, we don’t necessarily forget,” she said. “It’s not that trauma leaves you, it’s just the intensity of it and how we respond to it can change.”

To get to a place where the emotional wound hurts less requires internal work. To downgrade “breaking news” to “local news,” one must address the emotional toll the hurt has taken on them. Sometimes rejecting an apology can have everything to do with that lingering hurt instead of the sincerity of the overture. However, Wasserstein believes there is much to learn in these situations, especially about the ways we cope with pain. “Sometimes it is not with the person who you need forgiveness from, it’s with yourself,” she said. 

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One way to do that is through meditation, though that can also be the hardest. “There are different meditation practices, where you take what you learned from the person, and sometimes and somehow turn [negative thoughts] into a thank you or a love, but honestly, it’s really hard,” Wasserstein added. 

Instead, focus on the internal process so you are more likely to accept healing: “If it feels right, and if the [person harmed is] at the point where they could feel their feelings and feel right … that has to be authentic.”

Rabbi Timoner recommends using liturgy as a way to find release. 

“Use those as prompts for whatever healing we need, accounting for our wrongdoings, knowing and naming the wrongdoings that have been done to us, and seeing what we can release about them. Listening for the ways that we are harsh on ourselves and judge ourselves harshly for things we’ve done wrong, and considering how we can repair those things, feel remorse for those things, but then also forgive ourselves,” she said. 

Yom Kippur is a good starting point for beginning the process of true forgiveness. Rabbi Timoner added that forgiveness is iterative, meaning one might spend a year working through a grudge. 

“Think about all of this as an iterative process where this year, you do as much as you can, and you move in that direction, on the path toward complete forgiveness and then you keep watching and listening for remnants of the grudge, if they remain. And if you find them, you engage in another round of letting go,” Timoner continued.

Wasserstein, who grew up in a Conservative household, agrees that spirituality can provide opportunities for releasing anger, particularly as a means to self-soothe. 

“[For] Yom Kippur in general and leading up, I think the flip side of asking for forgiveness, is it’s also a time just to slow down and be introspective. And if that comes to a point where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not ready,’ or ‘I haven’t done the work, or ‘I’d like to do more work,’ that’s a great step towards whatever this release we imagine could be from forgiveness,” she said. 

Do the best you can while also keeping yourself emotionally safe. If you can forgive, try to do so; if not, try to take the steps toward getting there.