If you’ve ever struggled with apologies, you’re not alone. It’s been a challenge for all of us since the beginning of creation.
It began with Adam and Eve. We recall how God created a Garden of Eden lush with fruits and vegetables of all kinds. God gave just one instruction: not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.[1] Of course, it didn’t take long for them to indulge in the fruit of this tree, despite God’s warnings. When they did “their eyes were opened,” and they became aware of their nakedness.[2] For the first time, they learned that actions have consequences and that they are capable of mistakes. When God asked what they had done, they could have come clean, but they made another choice: they responded defensively.
“You put the woman at my side.” Adam exclaimed, “She gave it to me, and I ate it.”
“The serpent duped me, and I ate.” followed Eve.
Adam and Eve acknowledged that they had both eaten from the tree. They had defied God’s orders. While they deserve credit for their honesty, they fell short, in their insistence that they were not at fault. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. They didn’t refute their actions but absolve themselves of responsibility for them.
Adam and Eve committed the first sin, for which there would never be an apology. It was the first time, but it would not be the last.
After all, who of us here today has not hurt someone— intentionally or unintentionally? And who of us has not failed to offer an apology when it was due?
During the High Holy Days, we often emphasize forgiveness, because each of us wants to be forgiven for the times we missed the mark. And yet, Ancient Rabbinic texts teach us that forgiveness is secondary.[3] We can experience the fullness of High Holy Days even if we are not ready to forgive, but we cannot get the most out of this season if we are not willing to do the work of teshuva, the work of apology.[4]
That is why we spend so much of Yom Kippur practicing the skill of apology. We list sins for which we are collectively responsible, pound our chests, and vow to do better. Our Machzor reminds us on this holiest day of the year that atonement is not something to be avoided.
Our holiest act of the season isn’t fasting or praying—though both are important. It is the sacred practice of apology, which when done right, can enhance our lives and give us healing.
While most of us can detect a heartfelt apology when we are on the receiving end of it, we are less trained in how to offer one. This may date back to childhood.
When a child hits or says something hurtful, most of us instruct the child to “say sorry.” We teach them that the words “I’m sorry” are a panacea, erasing the mistakes they have made and absolving them of all responsibility. If a child apologizes in a way that we deem that apology insincere, how many of us ask our children to say sorry again “like they mean it?” We don’t ask that they mean it—just that they sound like they do. How often does this interaction include a conversation about how the children feel, or what an apology should entail? How often does it include introspection? Instead, we teach our children to apologize not because they are sorry, but because it is the polite thing to do. And if that wasn’t enough— experiences of being forced into reluctant apologies as children can make it much harder for us to offer them as adults.
It’s no wonder many of us struggle to offer sincere apologies. Elton John wasn’t wrong when he said, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.” It is harder still to provide these words with meaning and intention.
Even in the 12th century, Maimonides realized how difficult this process could be. Borrowing from the wisdom of Jewish scholars before him, he codified a teshuva process for teshuvah, which Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg recently expanded upon in a book that combines Maimonides’ teachings with modern victim-centric insights from sociology and psychology. In it, she explains that there are five stages of repentance: humbly admitting a mistake, beginning to change, making amends, apologizing, and making different choices.[5] Perhaps these steps will be as helpful to us as they have been for past generations:
- Humbly admitting a mistake.
The teshuva process always begins with humility. It requires us to be vulnerable, to sit in a place of discomfort and introspection which many of us would rather avoid. It requires courage and strength.
Without a willingness to do this, the entire process falls apart. A powerful party may deny that there is any merit to the claim at all. There are countless examples of people in positions of power who, after expressing a racist statement, contend that they could not have done that because they “do not have a racist bone in their body.” This is a failure of humility and responsibility.
“Admitting culpability opens the possibility that change might be needed; claiming “those bones aren’t racist at all” is a way of saying that no change is necessary,” writes Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. “This resistance to facing harm head-on is a form of gaslighting—a manipulative way of denying reality—which piles more harm on top of the original offense.”[6]
Much like Adam and Eve, who deflected responsibility to other parties, we might find ourselves seeking to evade accountability to avoid feelings of guilt, shame, discomfort, or insecurity. We might become so resistant to vulnerability that like Adam and Eve, we are willing to vilify another person rather than take responsibility for ourselves. If we equate our errors with our sense of self-worth or see admitting wrongdoing as a demonstration of weakness, the entire undertaking may feel impossible. That is perhaps why there are so many examples of people failing to apologize or offering false apologies.
And yet, repentance doesn’t exist without naming the harm that has been caused. It requires us to do what Adam and Eve could not: owning and taking responsibility for our mistakes. We must have the willingness to acknowledge what we have done and to place another’s needs above our own. It’s hard work, but most things that are worthwhile are.
A well-placed apology can set the stage for healing within ourselves and others that is anything but weak.
When musical artist Lizzo released the song “Girrls” last summer, it received immediate backlash that she had not anticipated, over her lyric “I am a spaz.” She received upset messages such as this one by Hannah Diviney: “Lizzo, my disability Cerebral Palsy is literally classified as Spastic Diplegia…spasticity refers to unending painful tightness in my legs… your new song makes me pretty angry + sad. ‘Spaz’ doesn’t mean freaked out or crazy. It’s an ableist slur. It’s 2022. Do better.”
Lizzo could have been defensive. She could have stood by the words in her song, saying that the word “Spaz” has many meanings, but instead, she listened to the hurt that she was hearing and had the humility to respond. Within three days, she had not only taken responsibility for her actions but had acted to correct her error. She rerecorded the entire song with new lyrics before issuing a public apology, in which she vowed to do better.
By owning her mistake, Lizzo did something rare in the celebrity world: she had the courage and strength to admit wrongdoing and make the necessary change. Her action brought immediate healing to those she hurt. Whereas her mistake had caused divisiveness, her apology had created an opportunity for repair.
- This brings us to the second step in teshuva: beginning to change.
At Camp Newman this summer, one camper made a racist statement that felt threatening and deeply insulting to fellow bunkmates. The camper was willing to apologize, but words alone felt insufficient. Rabbi Allie and the Newman staff faced a dilemma in how to respond. After talking it through, they decided to send the camper home temporarily. If they wished to return, they would go through a process of study, exploring why their remark caused such pain, and engage in repair work around the incident. The camper had made a grave error, but the camp wisely provided a chance for redemption, and the camper took it, beginning what we hope will be a beautiful process of growth and change.
Each of us makes mistakes; that is part of life. The question is what we do with those mistakes.
Rabbi Alan Lew teaches, “If you haven’t done the work, you’ll get back there.” When we do not acknowledge our growth areas or grapple with the harm we have caused, we make the same mistakes repeatedly until we are ready to do the hard work of growing and changing. This could take the form of sabotaging relationships, lashing out in anger, or quashing dissent to preserve the status quo, explains Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. In one way or another, the challenges that haven’t been addressed will keep resurfacing.
As an example, she points out the United States of America’s unwillingness to fully take responsibility for the enslavement of people of African descent. We may no longer enslave people, but white supremacy continues to rear its ugly head, whether in the form of lynchings, Jim Crow laws, redlining, mass incarceration, or voter suppression. “The precise nature of the harm may be different,” she explains, “just as the sabotage and lashing out in relationships may not look exactly the same each time—but the patterns are undeniable.”[7]
We all have patterns requiring our attention. This is called our soul curriculum. Alan Morinis explains, “The sooner you become familiar with your curriculum and get on with mastering it, the faster you’ll get free of these habitual patterns. Then you will suffer less. Then, you will cause less suffering for others. Then you will make the contribution to the world that is your unique and highest potential.”[8] True change takes time. It may require education, therapy, journaling, or other kinds of support, but should we chose to engage, we will be much better for it.
- Make amends.
- Apologize
Teshuvah’s third and fourth steps are mentioned in the very same sentence. After owning mistakes and beginning to change, we strive to do something to make up for our errors. We fix the borrowed car that crashed, repair the window we broke, or replace the child’s lollipop that we knocked down. We do what we can to restore what is broken.
What’s fascinating about Maimonides’ steps of teshuva is how late we come to the step of apology, though there is great wisdom in this.
An apology offered too early is usually no apology at all. Our culture often demands instant apologies, whether from a small child- or from a celebrity on Twitter. This pressure to apologize before doing the necessary soul-searching leads to false apologies that often do more harm than good. All of know what I’m talking about—they are the false apologies that we have heard and perhaps even uttered ourselves, when we felt we needed to say something before we were ready.
There is the apology that shifts focus and blame- the “Sorry you feel that way” apology, or the “If you were offended, I’m sorry” apology. This apology does not accept responsibility. Instead it changes the focus. It, like Adam and Eve’s non-apology, deflects responsibility.
There is a vague apology: “I’m sorry for whatever I did that might have been wrong.”
The passive “mistakes were made” apology.
Or the “I’m sorry but…”
There’s the “That wasn’t my intention, so you shouldn’t feel hurt” apology.
And the “Can’t we just put it behind us?” apology.
These false apologies, offered far too early in the teshuva process, demonstrate a lack of reflection, humility, and victim-centered consciousness.
A false apology sends the message, “I don’t think you have a right to be upset about this at all,” a sincere apology honors another person’s feelings, affirms them, and expresses a genuine desire and action taken to do better in the future. But this is never instantaneous. It always takes time.
- Make better choices
After we complete each step of the teshuva process, we aspire to Tshuva gmurah, complete repentance. After sitting in discomfort, engaging in our soul curriculum, making amends, and offering an apology we hope that we have so changed that if placed in the exact same position, we would now make better choices.
These five steps enable us to become better versions of ourselves. When this happens, true healing is possible.
For example, Danya Ruttenberg points to when Lindy West confronted her troll. Lindy West was no stranger to trolls on Twitter. As a feminist writer, unapologetically fat, she received her share of hate messages. But one day in 2015, she experienced an abusive tweet that sent her reeling. Someone had created a Twitter account based on her recently deceased father to upset her. West wrote a blog post about the pain this troll had caused her as she grieved for a father she loved. At some point, she received an email from the troll herself:
“I don’t know why or even when I started trolling you . . . I think my anger towards you stems from your happiness with your own being. It offended me because it served to highlight my unhappiness with my own self…. [Trolling you] was the lowest thing I had ever done. When you included it in your latest Jezebel article, it finally hit me. There is a living, breathing human being who is reading this…. I am attacking someone who never harmed me in any way…. I’m done being a troll….I apologize. I made a donation in memory to your dad. I wish you the best.[9]
This is what is possible when we engage in a teshuva process. She humbly took responsibility, demonstrated introspection and growth. She made amends, and apologized and even changed her behavoir. Her process of teshuva was not one of weakness, but one of strength, that transformed her life for the better.
“Teshuvah,” Rabbi Ruttenberg writes, “is like the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with gold. You can never unbreak what you have broken. But with the sincere and deep work of transformation, acts of repair have the potential to make something new.”
Teshuva is a gift to anyone we have hurt and to ourselves. Through Teshuvah, we allow ourselves to confront the things that hold us back from being our best selves. We advance our soul curriculum to bring more joy, healing, and supportive relationships into our lives.
May this Yom Kippur be a calling, encouraging us to engage in the sacred practice of apology more deeply.
Is there someone in our lives we have hurt, intentionally or unintentionally? Perhaps it’s a neighbor, an ex, a family member, a co-worker, or a friend. Perhaps it’s someone we lost track of long ago. What would it be like to delve deeply into why we made our choices? What would it be like to take responsibility, make amends, apologize, and grow from the experience?
One midrash teaches that teshuvah was created at the beginning of the world. Even before people made the first mistake, God believed that we were capable of repair. From the beginning, God believed that though we will make mistakes, we need not be defined by them—that admitting them isn’t a sign of weakness but one of strength, leading to a more fulfilling and peaceful life. Today we are called to the sacred practice of teshuva, as God envisioned so many years ago.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov once said, “If you believe that you can damage, believe that you can fix. If you believe that you can harm, believe that you can heal.”
May 5784 be a year of growth and healing for us all.
[1] Genesis 2:17
[2] Genesis 3:7-8
[3][3] Mishnah Yoma
[4] https://templesholom.net/sermon/rosh-hashanah-sermon-sorry-not-sorry-2/#_ftn2
[5] Maimonides outlines the stages of teshuvah in Hilchot Teshuva. These five steps are based on Danya Ruttenberg’s understanding of the text.
[6] Ruttenberg, Danya p.9
[7] Ruttenberg, Danya. On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (pp. 32-33). Beacon Press
[8] Morinis, Alan. Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar (p. 3). Shambhala.
[9] Lindy West, “What Happened When I Confronted My Cruelest Troll,” The Guardian, February 2, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/02/what-happened-confronted-cruellest-troll-lindy-west
Rabbi Cassi Kail 