Tefillah - 065 How We Can Forgive

Receiving Hashem’s Forgiveness - If We Are Forgiving

The blessing of סלח לנו in Shemoneh Esrei concludes with ברוך אתה ה',חנון המרבה לסלוח – “Blessed are You, Hashem, Who is increasing to forgive.” Not only does Hashem forgive; He is “increasingly” forgiving.

Every day, for all three times we daven Shemoneh Esrei, we ask Hashem to forgive us. If so, we make this request thousands of times a year. It is understandable that we ask every day for health, livelihood, for the redemption, etc. But why did Chazal establish that we should daven each day to be forgiven?

Imagine if a person would keep sinning against a friend. His friend wouldn’t be able to forgive him. But Hashem is not like people. Hashem keeps forgiving us, even when the person keeps sinning against Him, again and again.

We have an avodah to resemble Hashem’s middos, and this is how we “cling” to Him. As explained earlier[1], if a person doesn’t try to resemble Hashem’s middos of mercy, he doesn’t awaken Hashem’s mercy. If a person doesn’t forgive others, he can’t merit Hashem’s forgiveness, because he never awakened Hashem’s trait of compassion towards him. If we cling to Hashem by exercising good middos, we awaken Hashem’s middos towards us.

Our middos are not Hashem’s middos. When we have love or compassion on others, this does compare at all to Hashem’s middos of love and compassion, which are endless. If so, what is our avodah to resemble Hashem’s middos, when our good middos do not come anywhere near the level of Hashem’s infinite middos? It is because when we are compassionate, we connect ourselves to Hashem’s compassion, and then we receive Heavenly illumination from Hashem’s trait of compassion.

Man is a limited creation. His physical body is limited, and so are his emotions limited. Man can love, but how much can he love already? His love has limits. But if man connects himself to the love that Hashem has upon His creation, he connects himself to an infinite kind of love. It is not in our power to always love. But if we connect ourselves to Hashem’s love, we can receive the power to love endlessly.[2]

Let us reflect into this concept: how we are able to forgive others. It is really not in our power to forgive others, but if we connect ourselves to Hashem’s endless middos, we are able to receive an endless power to forgive.

Why Should We Forgive Others?

Let’s say Shimon hurts Reuven, and Shimon asks Reuven to forgive him. What is the reason that Reuven should forgive him?

One reason would be that Reuven doesn’t want to appear like a cruel person. Indeed, Chazal say that a person who can’t forgive is cruel. Reuven is aware of this, so he doesn’t want to feel like he is a cruel person, so he goes ahead and forgives Shimon.

Or, maybe he doesn’t really feel like forgiving Shimon, but he also wouldn’t want to see Shimon get punished for what he did to him. That could be another reason why Reuven would forgive Shimon.

There is also a much simpler reason why Reuven would forgive Shimon: he simply has compassion on Shimon. This is a purer motivation than the above two scenarios. He doesn’t want Shimon to get punished and he doesn’t want to be a cruel person, simply because he has compassion on Shimon.

However, there is a deeper reason why a person needs to forgive someone who has wronged him.

Whenever a person wrongs another, he has his really used his various soul abilities to harm the person; the soul is vast and complicating. The Vilna Gaon lists 70 root forces in the soul, and there are many branching abilities as well within the soul. Thus, we do not understand how complicating the soul is, and therefore we cannot understand why a person committed a certain hurtful action against us. That is the deep reason why we should forgive others.

Discovering Your Motivations

When a person lives superficially, and he is asked why he committed a certain evil act against another person, he responds simply either “Because I like to act this way”, or “Because I hate this person”, or “Because I’m afraid of him.” But through the lens of Chazal, every action a person does is stemming from all kinds of inner motivations. There is never any one reason why a person does something.

To say this in slightly deeper terms, in every act, there are always two motivations – there is always some lishmah (pure motivations) involved and some shelo lishmah (impure motivations) involved. If a person thinks into any action he does, he will discover that everything he does has in it both elements of lishmah and shelo lishmah.

For example, when a person gets up in the morning to daven, why does he get up in the morning? One reason is because he knows that Hashem has commanded him to do so. Another reason: Because his wife will get very angry at him if he stays in bed. Another reason: it’s unpleasant to have to get woken up by others. Another reason: Because he doesn’t want to get punished in Gehinnom for not davening. Another reason: Because he wants to daven so that Hashem can take him out of his troubles. Here is an example of how a simple act like why a person gets up in the morning to daven is really filled with all kinds of inner motives.

It is not enough to be aware of just the actions we do. We need to develop an inner sensitivity to the various motivations behind what we do. You can discover a lot about what goes on behind what you do. It is written, “Your thoughts are very, very deep” – Hashem created everything in Creation with the deepest wisdom; in a person’s psyche as well, there can be an endless amount of motivations that a person can discover about himself the more he enters inward.

Chazal say, “Do not judge your friend until you reach his place.” The Kotzker zt”l said that you will never fully understand another person’s situation, therefore, you can’t judge him. A person doesn’t understand himself either! Most people don’t even understand even one percent of their true self! Even those who are immersed in inner avodah do not understand the soul of a person; the soul is beyond our human understanding.

Therefore, we cannot truly understand the depth of ourselves. We can notice things about ourselves and enter a bit inward, but we can’t get to the full depth of understanding our inner self. If a person thinks he understands what the soul is, this shows how much he doesn’t know about the soul. The wisdom of the Torah is endless, and so is the soul of man endless, because man was created with Hashem’s wisdom. It is so deep! It is impossible to get to the full depth of our soul; it’s beyond human logic.

Chazal say that “the task is not upon you to complete, yet, this does not exempt you from the task.” Although we have an avodah to try to understand ourselves, we must understand that we do not understand ourselves fully. However, if a person takes the opposite extreme and he gives up on trying to understand himself because he knows that the soul is endlessly deep, this is being detrimental to himself. Such a person is running away from his entire inner avodah. We have an inner avodah to try to understand ourselves well, but we should be aware that we can’t get to the full understanding of the soul.

The Depth of Teshuvah – Becoming Self-Aware of Your Motivations

Therefore, doing teshuvah affects two aspects. We must do teshuvah over sins, over actions that did not comply with Halacha. But we also need to do teshuvah as well as on the subtle motivations in what we do.

This is because  in order to come to a true recognition Hashem, we need to recognize ourselves. “From my flesh I see G-d.” The Raavad writes that based on this, we have an avodah to recognize our true self.  Rav Saadya Gaon would do teshuvah each day with regards to how much recognition of the Creator he reached; in a deeper sense, we need to do teshuvah over a lack of self-awareness, because this is directly related to how we relate to the Creator.

The more a person understands this concept – not just as on an intellectual level, but from clarifying this in his soul, to be aware of that there is so much depth within the soul – he will get more in touch with his motivations. Although he will not reach the depth of his motivations, he will at least be able to uncover a great amount of depth to himself. Most people, indeed, do not discover what their motivations are.

When Hashem wants us to do teshuvah, it is not just because He wants us to become aware of the deeds we have done. He wants us to discover what our motivations are, to recognize ourselves.

A person will then see life through a whole different lens. This is a concept that, when it penetrates, it shakes the soul and awakens it to this perspective.

Those who taught the method of avodah (how to serve Hashem) possessed much yirah (fear of Hashem). They were always afraid that their actions should be in line with Halacha, but even more so, they were always afraid that maybe they were lacking some degree of self-awareness. They were very wise of course, but on their level, they were always suspecting themselves of not having enough self-awareness.

The Deep Reason Of Why We Can Forgive

Getting back to our current topic – forgiving others – how can a person forgive another? If Shimon asks Reuven for forgiveness, how is Reuven able to draw forth inner strength to forgive? Let’s say Reuven is clear what Shimon did to him, and he is also clear why Shimon did it. Is Reuven prepared to forgive him?

He might make all kinds of rationalizations why he should forgive him: “It’s worth it to forgive him” (But maybe it’s not really “worth it” for him to forgive him…). Or: “I’ll forgive him, because I don’t want him to get punished by Hashem”. There can be all kinds of reasons why Reuven decides that it’s worth it to forgive, but the entire issue will depend on how kindhearted Reuven is. If Reuven possesses a refined heart, he will forgive Shimon, but if he does not have a good-hearted nature, he won’t find the strength to forgive.

But this is all being superficial. If a person lives a more inner kind of life, he knows that he doesn’t even understand himself fully, no matter how hard he has tried to understand himself for the last 20 years. He knows that people are complicated, for there are layers upon layers within the soul. Do we really know why someone else wronged us? There is no way for us to really know. If we forgive another person because we think we know why he has hurt us, and from that understanding we forgive the person, then our forgiving isn’t emanating from clarity.

Imagine if Shimon comes to Reuven and tells him, “I did something against you, but I don’t want to tell you what it is.” Can Reuven forgive him? He has no idea how he was wronged, so it’s simple for him to forgive. This helps us understand the idea; it is easier to forgive when we are ignorant of what was really done to us. In the same vein, we can find the strength to forgive others, because we anyways do not really know why the person did what he did to us.

All of us have been hurt and insulted by other people throughout our life – both physically and emotionally. Some of us have been more hurt by others, and some less, but all of us have been hurt by others. How can we find the strength to forgive? We must realize that we can’t judge another person, because we do not fully understand another person. Since you can’t fully understand why a certain person did what he did to hurt you, you are able to forgive him from a much deeper place in yourself.

The Chazon Ish writes that this world is like a closed riddle; this is certainly regarding human beings, who are a big mystery. We don’t really know why a person really hurt us. This realization will provide you with great menuchas hanefesh (inner serenity).

When a person feels his ego very strongly, he demands that those who hurt him should seek his forgiveness. Deep down, he wishes punishment to come upon others who have hurt him; he wants justice to be served. But if a person reaches a true healthy feeling of shiflus (humility) towards himself – he realizes that he doesn’t even understand himself – and thus he understands that he surely doesn’t understand other people. He realizes that as much as we can know, we still do not know everything – “The purpose of knowledge is to know that we do not know.”

Therefore, we can’t know why people hurt us. It is much easier to forgive others with this perspective. This makes us much more readily forgiving towards others, more compassionate towards others. When we internalize this perspective, we can merit the meaning ofחנון המרבה לסלוח - to be forgiven by Hashem for our own sins.