THE TESHUVA (REPENTANCE) PROCESS: FORGIVENESS VERSUS ATONEMENT [PART I]
A victim possesses the ability to forgive the person who has hurt him, but he does not have the ability to grant him atonement for his sin. The Hebrew term for the act of forgiving is mechilah; the term for the act of granting atonement is kaparah. Let me explain.
When a person harms someone, two types of damage result.
One type - usually tangible and often measurable - is the actual damage which the victim has suffered as a result of the victimizer’s behavior.
The other type is usually intangible and at times not measurable at all, but Judaism views it as extremely significant nevertheless. I am referring to the moral taint - the metaphysical harm - which the victimizer has inflicted upon himself, i.e., his or her loss of innocence.
Each type of damage requires its own corrective.
The first type – the harm we have inflicted upon someone else - requires forgiveness, mechilah. Of course, the victimizer must first make restitution that is both fair and realistic. He must then attempt to reconcile with his victim by apologizing and expressing his sincere regret for his hurtful behavior, as well as his commitment never to repeat that behavior. The act of “forgiveness” in the juridical sense is the assertion that indebtedness no longer exists (as in the act of “forgiving” a loan). Analogously, the victim who grants mechilah to his victimizer is foregoing all further claims against him; the latter owes him nothing.
The second type of damage - the victimizer’s self-inflicted moral taint - requires kaparah, atonement or a restorative cleansing of the person’s essence. Although as human beings we are able to forgive one another; we do not posses the ability to grant atonement to one another. We are not able to undo or redo the historical reality of the abuse. Our victimizer’s repentance notwithstanding, we are not able to purify him, to return him to the state of innocence. That ability lies exclusively within God’s domain; He alone is able to neutralize, metaphysically, the contaminating effect of the repentant victimizer’s behavior upon himself.
Therefore, on Yom Kippur (from the same root as kaparah) we petition not only for mechilah but primarily for restorative atonement, for kaparah. We are obligated to repent, apologize and seek forgiveness throughout the whole year, as soon as we become aware of our moral and spiritual failures. Only on Yom Kippur, however, does the Source of Existence extend His offer of repurification to any repentant person who yearns for it and requests it from Him.
The forgoing is based upon insights by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, of blessed memory, in his collection of Teshuvah lectures entitled On Repentance. In next week’s column, I intend to draw from these insights in an examination of the reconciliation process in the case of assault and battery, in order to consider how the relationship between mechilah and kaparah serves to enable this process.