Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Katy Swartz Bat Mitzvah
Shabbat B'midbar
May 22, 2004
The Truly Great are Able to Forgive
( Lessons from Hosea and Gomer)
In our Bible, three prophets are classified as "major" - Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; there are 12 "minor" prophets. "Major" and "minor" are not value judgements. The terms "major" and "minor" refer to the length of the books, the amount of material that the prophets wrote which has been preserved. I would maintain that Amos and Micah and Hosea are major prophets in terms of their religious messages. The Haftorah for this Shabbat from which Katy chanted is a case in point. Hosea's words may not have been as eloquent as some of the other prophets, but his deeds were. Hosea did something which very few human beings before or since have been able to do.
The prophet Hosea had a wife named Gomer who betrayed him. She took all the gifts which he gave her and gave them to other men, her lovers. Hosea had every right and every reason to be bitter and, for a while, he was. Then somehow he found within himself the capacity to forgive her. He took Gomer back after she had been abandoned by her lovers, after she had fallen into poverty and illness and despair. And Hosea nursed her and made her well again. And for doing this, for having such a capacity to forgive, I believe that Hosea deserves to be counted among the giants of the human spirit. I would like to suggest this morning that the dividing line between the truly great and the almost great in this world is that the truly great are able to forgive; the nearly great are not.
Many years ago, Rabbi Milton Steinberg wrote a sermon about forgiveness in which he went through history and pointed out which of the heroes of the past were able to forgive and which were not. For example, consider Michelangelo. Here was a man with golden hands; he could carve marble like no one else who ever lived. He could paint supremely well. And yet there was a flaw in his character, a blot on his soul. Michelangelo was utterly incapable of forgiving. A friend once dared to criticize one of his works. So when Michelangelo drew the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel he drew a picture of Heaven and one of Hell. For the picture of Hell, he drew a portrait of this friend, roasting and being tortured. To this day, this work of Michelangelo is not only a sign of artistic genius, but also a sign of human pettiness.
Dante was an almost great man, not a truly great one, because he did the same thing in the Inferno that Michelangelo did in the Sistine Chapel. Dante described the tortures of the damned and used the name of someone who had once hurt him as the model.
Rabbi Steinberg compares these two - Michelangelo and Dante - with someone like Abraham Lincoln. No one was more mocked, more maligned, more ridiculed than was Abraham Lincoln. All during the Civil War his critics labeled him with harsh words and caricatured him with cruel pictures, yet somehow Lincoln could find within himself the strength to begin his second inaugural address with the words "With malice towards none, with charity for all, let us go forward to finish the task . . ." Could you do that? Could I? The ability to answer ridicule Lincoln's way is a sign of the truly great person.
Consider Joseph. He was beaten up and thrown into a pit by his own brothers. On account of them, he endured slavery for years. He was imprisoned even though he was innocent. Pharaoh's butler for whom Joseph did a favor, interpreting his dream correctly, promptly forgot Joseph as soon as he was released from prison. Wouldn't you be bitter and angry if even half of that happened to you? I would be. And yet Joseph was able to find within himself - not easily, not initially, but eventually - the ability to say to say to his brothers: "Am I in place of God that I should judge you? You meant it for bad, but God has turned it into good." Joseph forgave his brothers and at that moment Joseph was not just a great Prime Minister, not just a great economic planner; Joseph became a great human being.
Perhaps the best example of all is Moses, whom we read about in every Torah portion in this Book of Numbers that we begin in synagogues throughout the world today. In one sedra after another the people rose up against Moses; they defied him, disobeyed him, maligned him, accused him, and they nearly broke his heart. Could you or I have endured the abuse that Moses endured from his People? And yet somehow Moses found within himself the capacity to continue to care for them and to forgive them. When God wanted to destroy the Israelites and make a whole new People out of Moses, the most tempting offer anyone ever received, Moses said: "No, God, either forgive them or wipe me out of your book, for I do not want to live without them." Like Hosea, Lincoln, Joseph - and unlike Michelangelo and Dante - Moses is a model of forgiveness.
All of us are impressed when we see forgiveness in action. We sense that we are in the presence of the sacred whenever we witness it. But how shall we learn to do it? How shall we frail, fallible mortals learn to forgive? It is easier said than done. Scratch a kitten the wrong way and its fur rises. Scratch a person the wrong way and his anger wells up to the surface. So how shall we learn to forgive?
Let me tell you a modern story. It happened a few years ago in New York City, and I think it is key to understanding the strange and inspiring story of Hosea and Gomer. This story is about a young rabbi who was traveling on the D Train from Brooklyn to Manhattan. As the train rattled its way toward its destination, the rabbi sat quietly reading a book, as were many of the other travelers. Two young men, six feet tall, wearing gang jackets, entered the train with a big boom box blasting away.
Near the rabbi sat a little old lady who probably tipped the scale at 80 pounds and who might have been all of five feet tall if she stretched. The little old lady did not like the noise coming out of the boom box, so she yelled out: "Who is going to make them turn it down?" Everyone hunkered down in their seats, taking a deeper interest in what they were reading, pretending they did not hear her - including the rabbi.
One of the young toughs said to the woman: "Lady, if you do not like this music, you can try to turn it off." The old lady shuffled across the subway car with her hand out in front of her, ready to take his dare. The ruffian put down the boom box and hauled back to deck her. Up jumped the rabbi to block the tough guy's punch.
The punk was puzzled and he looked down at the rabbi, who was about a foot shorter than he was and probably weighed only half as much, and said to him: "What is your problem, boy?" The rabbi replied, with a timid smile: "I have no problem. But just do not hit the lady, please." He returned to his seat and went back to his reading. The old lady shuffled back across the car.
The young tough hit the switch on the boom box again and inundated the entire subway car in full force, deep based, woofer and tweeter enhanced, penetrating unmitigated raucous, deafening noise.
The old lady cried out: "Who is going to make them turn it off?" Everyone in the train re-read their previous sentence with increased concentration. The young tough grinned and invited her over. The little old lady shuffled over and once again reached to turn off the power switch on the boom box. The young tough hauled back to hit her, the rabbi jumped up to block, the young tough looked confused and said: "Now you are getting on my nerves, boy."
The rabbi smiled and said: "Sorry. Just don't hit the lady, please" and returned to his seat. The little old lady shuffled toward the rabbi's seat and stood with her back to him and, thankfully, the two young toughs got off at the next station.
As the rabbi settled again into his book, he glanced up at the back of the little old lady and thought: I just risked my life - not once, but twice, to protect her, and she didn't even thank me. And then, after two minutes of self-righteous indulgence, the rabbi stopped in his tracks with an incredible realization. God just performed not one miracle, but two, to save my life, and I did not stop to thank God.
That story is the key to understanding this week's Haftorah portion. The prophet Hosea's unfaithful wife, Gomer, betrayed him, took his gifts and gave them to her lovers. At first, Hosea was filled with a towering rage, and then he realized that what Gomer had done to him we all do to God. God has given us so many gifts - health, love, harvests - and what do we do with them? Instead of thanking God, we spend God's gifts on vanities and self-aggrandizement, on trivia, and we give God's gifts to idols. We give God's generous gifts to us to Mars, the god of war; to Venus, the goddess of beauty; to Mammon, the god of money. If we don't appreciate the gifts that God has given us and the favors God does for us, how can we be angry at those who do not appreciate the favors we do for them?
And yet God forgives us, has patience with us, puts up with us. God gives us a day of life, we fritter it away, and then God gives us another one. If God can do that for us, if God can be that patient with us, then perhaps in gratitude we can forgive each other.
The truth is that the world is cold enough without our adding to its frigidity. Life is cruel enough without our adding to its cruelty. Therefore, we ought to hold hands for comfort and stay close to each other for warmth, and we ought to forgive each other so that we may be forgiven. So that in this terrifying business called living we may find some rest and some peace and some friendship; so that if life must have its sorrows, we will not add too many to them.
May I suggest to you and to me, who needs to learn and absorb this truth as much as anyone, that we try to make Hosea and Lincoln and Moses and Joseph our guides, and not Dante or Michelangelo. May I suggest that we forgive each other so that we may be forgiven.
How shall we to remember to do this? How can we absorb this lesson of Hosea and make it part of our innermost being? I have one quick suggestion. Many of us in the bad old days of our youth would have to begin each day in the public school with the recitation of The Lord's Prayer - Our Father, who are art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, etc. It is actually based upon Jewish prayer. Do you remember the line - "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us"? This line truly demonstrates the Hebrew origins of The Lord's Prayer, because the evening prayer in the traditional siddur says God, in Divine mercy, forgives sin and does not destroy.
The Ari, Reb Isaac Luria, the father of Jewish mysticism, felt that he could not say those words. He simply could not praise God for forgiving, if he himself was angry and full of resentment. So he added a sentence in his prayerbook. He would say: "I hereby forgive whoever has hurt me this day." Then, and only then, did he feel that he had the right to ask God to forgive him.
I believe that the Ari's custom is worthy of our emulation. Many of us pray at the end of each day. I suggest that we include the line: I hereby forgive whoever has hurt me today. Let's add it to our prayers before we ask God to forgive us. This custom may help us become - if not such great moral giants as Hosea and Moses, Joseph and Lincoln - at least we will be a little bit better than we are now. Amen
I learned this lesson from the writings of Rabbi Jack Riemer.
