Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg On Repentance - And Why Forgiveness Is Overrated
American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator’s obligations or recompense for harmed parties. As survivor communities have pointed out, these emphases have too often only caused more harm. But Danya Ruttenberg knew there was a better model, rooted in the work of the medieval philosopher Maimonides.
For Maimonides, upon whose work Ruttenberg elaborates, forgiveness is much less important than the repair work to which the person who caused harm is obligated. The word traditionally translated as repentance really means something more like return, and in this book, returning is a restoration, as much as is possible, to the victim, and, for the perpetrator of harm, a coming back, in humility and intentionality, to behaving as the person we might like to believe we are.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710956/on-repentance-and-repair-by-danya-ruttenberg/
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
And to say that I have an amazing guest today would be an understatement.
Somebody who many of you listening will be very familiar with from Twitter, from her writing, from her books, from all over the place, and that is Rabbi Daniel Rutenberg.
So Rabbi Rutenberg, thank you for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
Let me tell people about you, and it's going to take a second because you've done a lot of things, so I'm going to tell them.
You're an award-winning author and writer, serve as scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women.
Was named by Newsweek and the Daily Beast as one of the 10 rabbis to watch, as one of the 21 faith leaders to watch by the Center for American Progress, and by The Forward as one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis.
Has been a Washington Post Sunday crossword clue.
And that is just, I mean, come on, let's just stop and appreciate that.
My most coveted accomplishment, I'm not going to lie.
Written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Salon, Time, Newsweek, and many other places, and the author of seven books, including Nurture the Wow, Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting.
I'm going to talk about your most recent book here, which we're which we're going to focus on today.
But I just want to say that of all your accomplishments, you are a crossword clue.
And you got the word poop into a book title, which and it's a very serious book.
From a very serious press on very serious things.
I mean that is genius.
I mean you have lived a genius life Just by those two things and not to mention all the other like amazing things I've already read here and and and recounted so your newest book is on Repentance and Repair, and it's out now, friends, on Repentance and Repair, Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, and we're going to talk all about that.
So, once again, Rabbi Rudenberg, thanks for taking the time to be here at Straight White American Jesus.
This book originated, like a lot of things, I think, these days, in many ways, on Twitter, social media, in the context of the Me Too movement, and you kind of provided a thread and some thoughts on the differences between Or among repentance, forgiveness and atonement.
And I'm just, you know, wondering if we can hover there on the origin story of this book.
Why did the Me Too movement provide kind of such a fruitful context to discuss things like repentance and forgiveness and atonement?
And are there other things happening today?
I'm sure there are, but that might mean we should probably keep discussing things like repentance, forgiveness and atonement.
Oh, yes.
Last I checked, people are still harming other people and not cleaning it up correctly, so... Unfortunately, we still have stuff.
Uh, but yeah.
So this got started because someone I know was working on a story about how do we know when to let basically famous men who had been named as abusers, like, when do we know if they've done the work and how do we understand, you know, how do we make sense of that and what, what are the lines and who forgives and blah.
And so I wrote in some ideas and, you know, she's, Excuse me.
They used one sentence of my response, as one does, and I just dumped the rest in a Twitter thread.
Because I, you know, I was like, oh, maybe this would be interesting for people.
And the response was the thing that was notable.
People were like, whoa, talking about A, that repentance and atonement are not the same thing.
At least in Judaism, repentance is the work that is incumbent upon the harm-doer during the process of A, owning the harm that they caused,
B, doing the work of repair such as is possible, and I imagine at some point we'll get into the steps of this process, but the doing the cleanup work after they have actually harmed another human being or a community or something, right?
Doing that work of repair and transforming to become the kind of person or institution or nation that does not do that thing anymore.
That's repentance.
Forgiveness is the thing that the person who was harmed can do or not do, can choose to do, and whether or not they do is not the business of the harm-doer.
And they're really, like, really separate concepts.
They are separate tracks.
The person can do their repentance work, at least in Judaism, and get totally, like, if they do it really sincerely, they can get even right with God and go Ask God for forgiveness on Yom Kippur even if they've never been fully been forgiven by the person that they harmed.
You have to forgive me so I'm off the hook business doesn't exist in Judaism.
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