Dear Members of Congregation Beth Sholom,

 

       

I want to tell you a story of this one time where I was a real jerk. It was during college where I joined an intramural soccer team made up of 6 or 7 teams out of people interested in some casual soccer fun. I really enjoyed it, but I was definitely not the best player, not even close. So anyways, we get through the season and it’s time for the tournament. It’s a pretty simple system where if your team loses you are out, but if your team wins you move up. So, we won our first game in the tournament and we were able to move up. The problem was that since I wasn’t one of better players, I didn’t get that much play time. I found this frustrating since this was supposed to be casual soccer. So, in our second game towards the end, I demanded that our coach/team member to put me in. She was really hesitant since the game was tied up. Anyways I was pretty forceful and so she subs me in. Right as I get out there the ball whips by me and I miss capturing it. It then flies right into our goal and the time runs out and we lose our chance to continue to play in the tournament.

       Whenever I think about this story I cringe internally. If I had been more of a team player by putting the team before my play time, we could have won that game. I have made other mistakes, but I don’t get the same cringe as I do when thinking about me being a soccer jerk. I think it’s because I never really apologized or asked for forgiveness. At first, I was in denial that I did anything wrong, by the time I was ready to accept that I had been a jerk it was like a year later and I had no one to apologize to. So, it stays in my memory banks just generating internal cringes.

       Believe it or not our Torah attempts to prevent this kind of problem from happening. In Numbers 5 it says, “When men or women individually commit any wrong toward a fellow human being, thus breaking faith with Adonai, and they realize their guilt, they shall confess the wrong that they have done. They shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it, giving it to the one who was wronged.” This of course describes the Jewish value of T’shuvah.

       The thing that strikes me in this passage, is the statement, “And they realize their guilt.” This I think is much harder than the text gives it credit for. It’s hard to admit when one is wrong. Like so very hard. It took me over a year to recognize my own guilt in that soccer story. I just didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t want to think of myself as a jerk and for over a year I avoided that personal narrative. Yet when I finally embraced that narrative, I was rewarded with a lifetime supply of internal cringes. It became a no-win situation for me, because I was unable to realize my guilt. At least not in a timely manner where I could apologize for my behavior.

       Now our Torah does try to solve this problem, if the person is no longer alive or available, by asking God for forgiveness through the priests. In fact the priests have a very specific ritual in which you offer them the compensation for wrong you committed against another. The problem is that this isn’t the way we do Judaism anymore. I just can’t ease my guilty conscience by giving away money. I’m not sure who I would give the money too. But I do think there is a modern lesson here. The guilt I experience may generate lots of cringes but it also helps me to realize my guilt sooner. I don’t want another soccer jerk scenario. I want to acknowledge my mistakes and offer an apology as soon as possible.

       If I’m being honest with myself, I would say that this mistake where I was jerk changed me. This may be the other reason why we have hard time realizing our guilt. Because most people don’t like change and it’s hard to accept that a mistake can be an agent for change. But, accepting that our experiences can change us, can help us embrace those changes better. At the end of the day this memory of me being a Jerk is still a cringe factory. However, the good that it accomplished in teaching me that I need to get over myself and apologize earlier has made this mistake meaningful. So, ideally as our Torah says, we should try to realize our guilt, but if we don’t do that in timely manner than we should at least make our guilt meaningful.

 

Rabbi Abram Goodstein