on living as a loving and creative person, refusing to be “warned off”
from his creative path— and overwhelming love simply drowns out
resentment. Asking, “Shall I forgive my enemies?” would have implied
that anger is still speaking, demanding to be heard. Instead, creativity
and love have silenced it. The “wings I have won in the hot strivings
of love” carry the creative hero to a light “that no eye has ever seen.” If
one can venture a bold interpretation, this “unseen” light appears to be
music itself.68
In short, there are two ways a creative person might react to a
struggle against adversity. One way would be to remain focused on the
wrongs one has suffered, and on the possibility that the wrongdoers will
weep and moan and express contrition. This type of reaction is common
enough, but isn’t it petty? The path mapped out by Mahler is, instead, to
keep on being oneself and doing one’s work, not wasting time on angry
thoughts and feelings, but just giving whatever one has to give.
As de La Grange says, the whole idea of resurrection is un- Jewish.
But in fact there is no after- worldly resurrection here. Instead, we are
speaking of an earthly love that rises above anger and is its own reward.
Perhaps this is also un- Jewish, if we are thinking of the teshuvah process.
And yet such an attitude is perhaps more compatible with the Jewish
emphasis on the worth of this- worldly striving than with the Christian
eschatology of lowness and penitence that is Mahler’s primary target.
From the start, the voices sing with strength, dignity, and passion.
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Mahler emphasizes the centrality of music to his entire idea of active
love. We should not take this as simply a statement of personal predilec-
tion. We are invited to think about the role of music in human life, and
even in religion. Music expresses many emotions, but it is surprisingly
rare to find music expressing, as a predominant organizing structure (as
opposed to brief episodes), vindictive anger and simmering resentment.69
At any rate, the type of unconditional love and joy that Mahler’s sym-
phony offers and to which it draws our attention is characteristic of the
way in which music can impart to human relations, whether in a reli-
gious context or not, a sense of joy and shared delight, thoroughly bodily
and consisting of vibrations, breaths, and movements, that simply rise
above anger and humiliation. How could music in fact repudiate the
body with shame, except by destroying itself?70 Indeed, one could go out
on a limb and say that even when first- rate music expresses the verbal
agenda of the Dies Irae (as, for example, in the Requiems of Mozart and Verdi), its corporeal nature and its passion— its generous outward movement of the breath— tend to negate that process and to gesture toward a
more humane and more loving way of life.71
In both of our dissident examples, we see reasons for anger, and
probably, in the past, actual anger. But in the reconciliations depicted,
there is no allusion to a past of anger. Not only is there no structured
teshuvah or penance process, with its multiple conditionalities, there is also no forgiveness in any recognizable form at all, even unconditional.
There is just love, silencing anger. This theme cannot be fully developed
at this stage, but it gives us at least a sense of what options might be open to one who looks askance at the whole forgiveness idea.
VI. Dissident Voices in the Jewish Tradition
The Jewish tradition, too, has dissident voices. To do justice to the tradi-
tion’s complexity and to avoid appearing to support the stereotype that
contrasts Christian mercifulness with Jewish harshness and conditional-
ity, let us now introduce them. As with the Prodigal Son, so here: the dis-
sident voices appear in stories, which need to be carefully read.
The classic transactional account prompts a variety of questions that
subsequent interpreters ponder. Isn’t the ritualized account of teshuvah
too unyielding? Can such complex interpersonal matters be structured
by law, and doesn’t law at times deform them? Do the rules promote
reconciliation, or do they actually often impede it, by forcing attention
backwards and constructing an obsessive search for blame? Three stories
from the Talmud meditate on these complexities, told one after another
in the text.72 The first two go as follows:
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R. Jeremiah injured R. Abba. R. Jeremiah went and sat at R. Abba’s
doorstep. When R. Abba’s maidservant poured out wastewater,
some streams of water were sprayed on R. Jeremiah’s head. He
said, “they have made me into refuse,” and he read, as pertain-
ing to himself, the verse, “God lifts up the needy from the refuse
heap.” R. Abba heard him and went out to him. He [R. Abba]
said to him, “Now it is I who must appease you.”
When a certain person injured R. Zera, he [R. Zera] would go
by and study before him and invite himself into his presence, so
that the injurer would come and appease him.
Both the first and the second stories short- circuit the formalistic process
of supplication, in favor of a forward- looking and generous relationship.
In the first, sheer chance intervenes before R. Jeremiah gets a chance
to confess and implore. The maid’s careless act of sprinkling him with
waste- water evens the playing field: neither is above the other, each has
wronged the other, so they may as well just make amends without play-
ing the “who’s to blame” game. (Notice that there isn’t even a confession.)
The first story, then, presents an alternative model for human rela-
tions, suggesting that a search for the first offender often yields to harsh
and unyielding behavior, while an admission that each has no doubt
offended one another in some way paves the way for constructive think-
ing that moves past the wrong and looks forward. In the second story,
R. Zera doesn’t play the traditional retentive role of the injured, waiting
for the injurer to come to him. Instead, pretending to study, he actively
goes out of his way to create, flexibly and generously, conditions for
apology and reconciliation.
It’s clear that these two stories do not represent transactional for-
giveness. What about unconditional forgiveness? I don’t think so.
Unconditional forgiveness requires that the wronged party have angry
feelings first, and then choose to waive them. In the first story, we simply
know too little about the feelings of the wronged R. Abba. His decision
to come out might involve either unconditional forgiveness or uncon-
ditional generosity. In the second, we can be pretty sure that R. Zera is
not harboring anger: his calm strategic behavior is indicative of active
generosity and love.
The third story, however, is the most complex of all:
A certain animal slaughterer injured Rav. [The slaughterer] did
not come [to Rav] on the eve of the Day of Atonement. Said Rav,
I will go and appease him. R. Huna met him. He said, “Where is
my master going?” He
said, “To appease so- and- so.” [R. Huna]
said to himself, Abba [that is, Rav] is going to kill a man. Rav
went and stood over him. The slaughterer was seated, cleaning
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the head [of an animal]. He raised his eyes and saw him [Rav].
He said to him, “Abba, go: I have no dealings with you.” While
he was still cleaning the animal’s head, a bone let fly from it,
struck the slaughterer’s neck, and killed him.
In the most obvious and frequent interpretation of this story, the slaugh-
terer dies because he has behaved obdurately, failing to apologize to
Rav.73 Rav, by contrast, has behaved well, seeking out the injurer himself,
an especially generous act given the social and class difference. (So Rav’s
behavior, in my terms, would be unconditional forgiveness.)
However, the idea that this is a generous act is shaken by R. Huna’s
reaction, and Huna was Rav’s greatest student. Huna does not see the
initiative as an act of great generosity. He sees it as an act of violence
that will lead to death. Not an act of grace but an act of aggression.
As Moshe Halbertal writes, “The story forces us to confront squarely
the ambivalence between sanctity and narcissism that inheres in
any act of grace.” Rav is aware that the slaughterer has missed the
time appointed for apology, so he goes to him— and it seems that he
is going in a state of high dudgeon, in order to extract the apology.
For R. Huna sees something in his demeanor— he is too enraged, or
too determined— that makes him see the visit as violent. And indeed
Rav’s demeanor to the slaughterer turns out to be very different from
R. Zera’s sensitive and indirect offer of an opportunity for apology: he
stands over him, backing him into a corner, thus provoking the ensu-
ing fatal confrontation.
What an alternative interpretive tradition has seen here is the aggres-
siveness sometimes inherent in the demand for apology, and the great
difficulty of distinguishing between aggression and sensitivity, when
we’re dealing with imperfect human beings. Even unconditional forgive-
ness can be tainted with narcissism, aggression, and assumed superiority.
Think how often— in a marriage, in relations between children and
parents— people do in effect stand over another person, sanctimoniously
demanding apology— until somehow a bone flies off and a serious injury
occurs. I’m with Moshe Halbertal when he argues that these stories com-
plement the formal tradition of teshuvah, making us see that real teshuvah among human beings is always too complex to be fully captured in legalistic formulations, because it always involves a story involving real peo-
ple involved in a complex and multiply fallible human relationship.
The suggestion of all three stories is that there is something wrong
with sticking to the classic account of transactional teshuvah, given the imperfect nature of human beings and their complicated motives. In the
first story, the maid’s chance action made both men see that they were
both imperfect, and had better try to raise each other up to create some-
thing a little better than before— something that the legalistic account,
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with its emphasis on who’s the first offender, did not invite. The sec-
ond story suggests that it’s all too easy for victims to be self- righteous
and wait for propitiation, secure in the feeling that they are the wronged
party. Instead, the gentle act of paving the way for apology, making it
easy and natural, almost a nonevent, is a better harbinger of good rela-
tions to come.
And the third goes even further, seeing that even an unconditional
act may have its problems. When one is wronged, the suggestion is, it
is extremely easy to be wrapped up in oneself and to feel that it’s out-
rageous that the other person doesn’t come to beg for forgiveness. But
that stance, saying, “I am important and you have wronged me, so why
haven’t you come to me?” can easily become narcissistic aggression
and lead to great harm. Human beings are, so to speak, narrative crea-
tures, full of mixed motives, so they need to remember the likelihood of
hidden narcissism, through a sensitive reading of both self and other.
Parties who harp constantly on who did the first wrong, and ask all the
time for acknowledgment of their own moral superiority, may be choos-
ing a doomed and violent path— even if they are right. At any rate, the
Talmudic author suggests that people should take a hard look at the
motives behind their righteous self- assertion, and ponder stories such
as these. If they do, they may conclude that the best question to ask is
not, “Who is more wronged?” but, instead, “How might reconciliation
be achieved?”
The Jewish tradition, too, is complex. Its counterproposal is a cousin
of Christian counter- traditions, less focused on an upsurge of strong emo-
tion and more intent on altering the complicated transactions in which
individuals or groups engage, shifting from a fruitless “blame game” to
a future- directed process of reconciliation. Both traditions make clear
the pitfalls that lie in even an unconditional type of forgiveness; both
commend Transitional thinking and a generosity that makes this sort of
thinking easier.
VII. Acknowledging Human Vulnerability?
A merit often claimed for forgiveness is that it involves an acknowledg-
ment of human vulnerability. Griswold, contrasting forgiveness with
“perfectionist” philosophies, argues that the forgiveness process comes
to terms with, and treats with sympathetic understanding, the flaws that
are endemic to human life.74 Griswold is contrasting forgiveness, which
acknowledges that one has been deeply hurt by another, with moralities
in which one strives to live in such a way that nothing others can do will
inflict a deep hurt. Such Stoic norms are indeed too rigid, I shall argue,
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at least in the realm of intimate personal love and friendship, where we
should live in a way that opens us to the possibility of loss and grief.
I agree with Griswold, then, that we should be ready to acknowl-
edge significant losses. But there is a long step from loss to anger, and still another long step from being angry to engaging in the transactional forgiveness process. We must examine those steps in each of our three realms.
For now, let us only note that the transactional forgiveness process is per-
fectionistic and intolerant in its own way. The list- keeping mentality that
it engenders is tyrannical toward human frailty, designedly so. We must
constantly scrutinize our humanity, and frequently punish it. At least the
Jewish tradition limits the scrutiny to things that a person can be expected
to control. The transactional strand of the Christian tradition contains no
such limitation and is consequently exactly as punitive toward the every-
day as Joyce intuitively feels it to be. Moreover, in its exacting control over wayward desires and thoughts, the transactional strand of the Christian
tradition is highly continuous with (and influen
ced by) the very Stoicism
Griswold criticizes. Stoic philosopher Epictetus’ instruction, “Watch over
yourself as if an enemy is lying in wait,”75 could easily have been said by
many a Christian thinker— or by many a parish priest.
Appendix: Dies Irae
Dies irae! Dies illa
Day of wrath. That day
Solvet saeclum in favilla
Will dissolve the world in ashes
Teste David cum Sibylla!
As witnessed by David and the Sibyl.
Quantus tremor est futurus,
How great a tremor there will be,
Quando iudex est venturus,
When the judge will come
Cuncta stricte discussurus!
To investigate everything strictly.
Tuba mirum spargens sonum
A trumpet, scattering an amazing sound
Per sepulchra regionum,
Through the burial-chambers of the world,
Coget omnes ante thronum
Will compel all to come before the throne.
Mors stupebit, et natura,
Death will be silent with awe, and nature,
Cum resurget creatura,
When creation will arise
Iudicanti responsura.
To reply to the judge.
Liber scriptus proferetur,
A written book will be brought forth,
In quo totum continetur,
In which everything is contained
Unde mundus iudicetur.
From which the world will be judged.
Iudex ergo cum sedebit,
Therefore, when the judge will sit,
Quidquid latet, apparebit:
Whatever is hidden will appear:
Nil inultum remanebit.
Nothing will remain unavenged.
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Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
What shall I say then, wretch that I am?
Quem patronum rogaturus,
What advocate shall I ask for,
Cum vix iustus sit securus?
When even the just may not be safe?
Rex tremendae maiestatis,
King of fearful majesty,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Who freely saves those who are to be saved,
Salva me, fons pietatis.
Save me, source of compassion.
Recordare, Iesu pie,
Remember, kind Jesus,
Quod sum causa tuae viae:
That I am the reason for your journey
Ne me perdas illa die.
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