Most of us, I would venture, don't give forgiveness much
thought except for the six weeks from Rosh Chodesh Elul to
Succos, during which time we seek forgiveness for whatever
wrongs we can't redress and beg same for wrongs real or
imagined that we may have committed. I would like to think
that six weeks of this a year is quite enough but I recently
discovered that perhaps that may not be the case.
As I have mentioned before, the field of one's trials and
tribulations is usually the most fertile place for growth to
take place and so it didn't surprise me that this particular
episode started out once more in the fiscal realm only not in
any usual way.
I had received the rather sad and disturbing news that my ex-
husband had died. He was only 48, fit, thin, perfectly
healthy. Along with the thoughts racing through my head
regarding my son sitting shivah and the unbearable
pain to my in-laws and all the things that had to be arranged
quickly, was the realization that only two months previously,
in an attempt to save money, I had cancelled his life
insurance. After all, he was only 48, he was healthy, I even
read that it was a segullah for long life not to have
life insurance because it insured the person would be there
to help.
"Oh my G-d, I killed him!" I thought.
No one believed this. Especially since the money would have
taken care of a great deal of my debt. When you cancel
insurance, it takes a few weeks for it to actually be
cancelled. The time had just run out.
Through the extreme kindness of my friends and neighbors and
my son's school, we weathered the shivah. My son
returned to school and I went back to routine. Even before I
thought to broach the subject, I mean, how can you broach the
subject, my in-laws called and graciously assured me they
would continue to provide child support, at least until
social security kicked in. But I couldn't shake the feeling
that Hashem was really trying to tell me something.
My friend works as the secretary at Netivot Olom Yeshiva in
Bnei Brak. Because of our friendship, over the years, I have
availed myself of the wisdom of the many holy rabbis there
and this time she thought I should speak to Rav Aderet, one
of the mashgichim with a very good sense of humor and
an even better sense of insight.
"What does Hashem want from me?" I asked him. First I lose a
million dollar court case that should have been open-and-
shut, now this. I hadn't had a steady job for a year. I'd
tried every segullah for parnossoh and
nothing's helped. Of course, Hashem never lets me sink
completely, and I am always grateful when an unexpected
miracle occurs. There is always some salvation at the last
minute from some unexpected place but I am always left
treading water. "I'm tired," I told him with a dramatic sigh.
"What am I not doing?"
I saw that he understood my pain, he understood my desire to
do the right thing. He didn't lecture or judge, instead, he
told me a story. He had been imprisoned in Russia for a year,
when he had gone there to visit. While he was incarcerated,
he, too, started wondering what he was supposed to be
learning from this. He came up with the idea that if he had
been separated from society he must have done something
against it, so he wrote letters upon letters asking people
for forgiveness. Likewise, it seemed to him that someone
somewhere had a grudge against me and that this grudge was
blocking the flow of abundance to me. "Pick ten people who
might have some complaint against you and ask for
forgiveness."
I was very upset. First of all, I have an overdeveloped sense
of guilt as it is. It's unlikely that I hadn't already sought
the forgiveness of anyone I may have thought that I had
wronged in the slightest. Second of all, it seemed distinctly
unfair. Here I was a good, honest person, I give charity, I'm
not a sybarite, I try and do chessed and yet someone
could have a grudge against me and that could ruin my
life?!
Yes.
I railed for a couple of days but then I rallied. "Just do
it," he told me. Okay, if that's what it takes . . .
My first phone call gave me an otherworldly hint that maybe
there was something to this theory. I had rented a bedsit in
London over twenty years ago. For the unenlightened, a bedsit
is a room you rent in a house and pay for by the week. When I
planned to move out, a friend of mine was supposed to take
over the room and she was in charge of paying for it in
advance. I returned one day to find my clothes being
unceremoniously removed from the premises by the landlord
because my friend had not paid and my lease was up.
Now technically, I don't think I was responsible for paying
this family, but it seemed like a good place to start. I had
remembered the address and a friend in London looked up the
number for me. The elderly lady picked up. She informed me
that they had just gotten up from her husband's
shivah. She didn't remember me, or the incident, but
she was grateful for my call and said that if I wanted, I
could give the money to charity. I said,
"What if I give the money to a yeshiva and they can say
mishnayos and Kaddish for your husband?" She
loved the idea. And so I sent a check to Netivot Olom for the
equivalent of what I remembered one week in a bedsit cost.
Providentially, it was the amount that the yeshivah takes for
saying Kaddish and mishnayos, exactly. They
wrote her a letter informing her of the contribution and I
hoped that that had taken care of any unfinished business.
So I continued asking people for forgiveness. I only actually
found one person who had a grudge against me and it seemed so
trivial that I wondered why anyone would bother to hold on to
something like that for several years. It also showed me how
easily people get offended.
Having completed my list of living people, I now had to ask
forgiveness from the dead. It seems ironic that the one thing
you can take with you to the grave is a grudge. So I called
the rabbi from my childhood shul and asked him if he
could get a minyan together to go to my parents and
ask for forgiveness in my name . . . in the snow. It was an
unusual request but he did it. He said he would get some
yeshiva boys together to come with him. Again, providentially
a friend of mine in Montreal had sent me a check for $100. I
told him I'd tear up the check and to send it to the Rabbi to
pay the yeshivah boys, which was again, exactly what it
cost.
Nine months ago, Chabad had sent an emissary to the very non-
religious neighborhood where my ex-husband was from. He
therefore merited to have the first taharah ever
performed there. So I called the Chabad rabbi and asked him
if he could take a minyan over to the cemetery for me.
Well, getting a minyan together in this neighborhood
was not the most realistic ambition. But, again,
providentially, the rabbi's relatives were coming for a
visit, two of them were rabbis in their own right and three
rabbis makes a beis din. So they went over to the
grave of my ex-husband and asked forgiveness in my name.
Chalk up another level of my spiritual growth that can be
attributed to my ex.
So did this help?
Well, I didn't win the lottery, though I did buy a ticket.
However, while I was negotiating forgiveness in this world
and the next, I was hired, albeit temporarily, to replace a
woman going on maternity leave for a few months. The timing
did not escape me. And I did follow the Rav's other advice of
not talking about it all the time, and trying to be more
joyful, which has made my life a bit less stressful. And
whether or not this does ultimately bring a steady stream of
salvation, I can feel that I did my best to gain forgiveness
and remove the grudges from the hearts of people I might have
hurt.
But what this has done more than anything else, is reframe
the whole issue of seeking and granting forgiveness. It isn't
just a seasonal exercise in propriety. Bearing grudges is
serious business; it can hurt people seriously and causes
more than just superficial rifts in acquaintance. People can
take their pain to the grave and you'll be held responsible.
It's possible that no one living or dead, really did bear me
any grudge. I really try hard to be a nice person. But
perhaps, even if that's so, what Hashem wants from me, from
all of us, is to make other people's feelings so much of a
priority that we even feel our very sustenance depends upon
this. Then we'll be very careful not to slight them in any
way.
Every Yom Kippur, we hope to start again with a clean slate.
We hope that we've been forgiven and that our forgiveness is
sincere. But any time is a good time to be magnanimous
and seek and grant forgiveness. Though I'll admit that
granting it is often harder than seeking it. Also, I think
one needs to be wary of people who hold grudges. I think
that's what's meant in the prayer by distancing yourself from
someone of harsh judgment. Resentment doesn't do anybody any
good. And graciousness doesn't do anybody any harm, so
pursuing peace can only be beneficial for us.
Oh, yes, lest I forget, if anyone is angry at me for anything
I may have written, in this paper or the next, please, please
forgive me! I simply can't bear any more grudges.
