Or tried to make amends, like “Here’s a replacement for that thing of yours I ruined”? If so, how did you react? Did you ever get a call/email to that effect from someone you’d forgotten about, and forgotten whatever they were atoning for? Did you ever make a personal apology or amends, and how was that received? An inquiring Baptist wants to know.
My cousin emailed me one year and apologized for anything she might have done to me that year.
Which was appreciated, but ridiculous, since she’s darling, and has never offended me in any way.
This year I’m working on giving up hope of ever getting an apology out of some people. It’s like… yeah they did me a doo-doo, and now it’s time for me to move on. So tomorrow evening and Monday during Yom Kippur, that’s what I’m thinking about
I’m going to apologize to several people for expecting an apology from them.
Yeah, both of your posts illustrate what I’m really getting at – the disconnect between what the apologizer thinks they should apologize for, and what the apolog-ee thinks they’re owed an apology for. I’m thinking specifically of this convo from a few years ago:
“Someone called/emailed me, out of the blue, to apologize for something I’d forgotten about. Haven’t thought of it, or this person, in years. I’m like WTF, then I remember it’s Yom Kippur…Well, why? The circumstances that brought us together no longer apply. They’re not in my life any more, so the incident no longer bothers me, and I’m not in their life any more, so why do they care?”
Me: “Wouldn’t that make it more sincere, though? They don’t ‘have’ to atone in order to work with you or get through Thanksgiving, or whatever. If they don’t gain anything by apologizing, maybe that makes it pure.”
“Mmmmmaybe. At least, I like that explanation better than what I was thinking before…That they chose me to atone with because they’re avoiding someone they really need to make amends with. Knowing I was neutral about hearing from them, as opposed to someone who might say ‘Oh, you think that makes it okay?’…Well, I know them and you don’t.”
On preview: Elmer, hee!
I’ve spent many an hour thinking about “forgiveness” and what it means in terms of healing. An apology is part of the process but it’s not the entirety. For one thing, it depends on the gravity of the offense, and there’s a notion of group or collective responsibility as well, sometimes inter-generational suffering and guilt. In 12 step programs they talk of “making amends” and sometimes it’s not really possible to completely undo the damage. That’s a weight that never fully goes away.
Parts of an apology:
- Expressing remorse. Not regret, remorse. With empathy. Acknowledging the “harm” in terms of the other person’s experience. “When I called you a b* it hurt your feelings and kept you up all night in agitation.”
- Taking responsibility without quibbling. “I knew better and there’s no excuse for what I did. Yes, it was annoying when Nancy broke my favorite heirloom, but I am still responsible for my own anger issues, not you.”
- Pledging to do better. This is tricky. “In the future, I will pause before yelling.” (no “try” because that mostly means “I intend to fail”)
- The last part… actually DOING better… is often lacking, and negates the entire process.
On the other side – this was suggested by martial artist / author Ellis Amdur – forcing someone to forgive a third party is an act of violence. Therapists do this, clergy, and sometimes family members. Usually to make THEMSELVES feel better. Ellis was on a podcast, link below, which is an hour long. The bit I’m thinking of starts around halfway through and is around 10 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg4bMmpqLPk at around 26:46
In the midst of this is Yom Kippur, which I’m still figuring out.
I think in some (not all) instances it’s important to the person who is making the apology to accept that they did something wrong (whether a major or minor thing) as part of striving to become a better person. So in some (not all) instances it’s not as much about you as about them.
In other instances they might feel it was more of a transgression than you do. Well, different people often have different views of the same situation.
Do some people use this sort of thing to avoid a larger wrong? Sometimes. But I’m not sure how you can determine that because a person you don’t associate with much has apologized for something they did to you in the past. You just don’t know what else is going on in their lives, do you?
People differ in how they approach Yom Kippur. For some it’s very performative, it’s about how to behave in public and put on what they believe is an appropriate show of atonement. For others it’s more private and sincere. And for yet more others they just go through the motions.
I’ve known a handful of Jews in my life (we’re kind of thin on them in places where I’ve lived), the last being about 15 years ago. The entirety of our relationship consisted of the fact that we worked in the same building over the course of a couple of weeks. He called me a “mensch” once, and when I looked at him confused, he told me that was a good thing.
Yes, one. I think it was heartfelt but… all I could think was “it’s Yom Kippur. Are you really sorry or is it because it’s Yom Kippur?”
I ignored it.
We had a huge family blowout at my father’s shiva which was 3 years ago just before Rosh Hashanah. It was 50+ years in the making between my brother and sister, but precipitated by my adult niece throwing my then 15 year old daughter under the bus. We are all still waiting for the apology.
I once got an apology out of the blue. I sent an email to everyone in my college class, something about the upcoming reunion. I got a reply from someone whose name i didn’t recognize apologizing for an incident i didn’t remember.
After some thought, i decided the decent thing to do was to reply and accept the apology. I still feel a little weird about the whole thing.
On Yom kippur i strive to forgive all the people who hurt me during the year. Partly so “god can forgive them”, but mostly because it’s good for me to get that resentment off my chest. Forgiving is hard, and it helps me to have a time to do it and to practice it.
I generally try to make my apologies in real time, and not wait until the holidays to do that. But it’s certainly also a time to reflect on what i can do better.
Yes to both directions. I like it as a practice.
Okay, say Ariel called Belle to apologize, and Belle was ranting to me about it. I didn’t know Ariel, but Belle did, and past experience told her that it was likely Ariel was, as you say, avoiding a larger wrong. She also saw Ariel was someone she was lucky to not have to deal with any more. My take on it was like what you said – it seemed like a big step forward for Ariel to admit that not everything was someone else’s fault, then maybe something was “going on in her life” that was changing her for the better.
FinsToTheLeft: Ouch! Sorry to hear that.
But even on Yom Kippur, people aren’t going around apologizing for things that they don’t actually feel any regret about, are they?
I have never encountered the attitude that the spirit of the Yom Kippur holy day makes it mandatory for everyone to explicitly apologize to someone for something, or else they’re not fulfilling their spiritual obligations. (In the way that everybody’s conventionally supposed to give their sweetheart something for Valentine’s Day, for example.)
On the Day of Atonement you’re supposed to honestly reflect on things you did that call for atonement, and make a good-faith effort to atone for them. But you aren’t required to make false apologies for stuff that you don’t actually believe you owe any atonement for. IMHO.
Huh, okay. As I said, I haven’t seen the attitude that one is supposed to visibly and explicitly “perform” atonement in order to be doing Yom Kippur “right”. People I know, they just fast and go to shul and maybe complain a bit about being hungry. 
Any specific acts of atonement are private interactions with the injured party/ies.
Doesn’t have to be in public in front of a hundred or more people to be “performative” in my mind. It comes down to the motivation. We all know people who are falsely sincere and others who walk the walk.
I got one from a young lady on here actually years ago. It took me by surprise to say the least. I just said thank you and moved along smartly.
Part of the service is, in fact, confessing to a long list of sins. “I have hurt people this way and this other way and also like this…” This is don’t in the synagogue, in front of (and with) potentially hundreds of others. So of course that can be performative. (And the list includes stuff you probably haven’t done. The prayer is literally an alphabet of sins, and they have to stretch for some of the letters.)
But no, there’s no requirement to apologize to individuals that would lead you to apologize for stuff you don’t feel guilty about.
Yes, I am aware, having just participated in such a group activity a couple hours before posting this.
There’s a group confessional, going over the inadequacies of the community as a whole (hence the continual “we” recited before each transgression). Which is different than individual atonement, at least in my mind. And going down an “alef bet” of sins in a group activity is different than what the OP was talking about, which are individual actions.
Personally, I don’t wait for Yom Kippur to say “I’m sorry” and try to fix things. It does strike me as somewhat bizarre that some people either do this, or think that that is the normal thing for the average Jew to do.
I can also see where spending a day ruminating on one’s sins/inadequacies/mis-steps might lead one to remember something naughty that had been forgotten in the press of every day life so sure, I can see that prompting an apology, but something from years and years ago…?
And yes, the public services are indeed performative, as are all public services. But I think what was referenced in the OP was not group activities/apologies but rather individual instances. Given the propensity of some people to make everything a contest I could see this morphing into “well, I apologized to 10 more people this Yom Kippur than Myrtle did!”. I just don’t think that’s a common thing.
Keep in mind I’m no expert on any of this and I’m speaking from my own life and not anyone else’s.
You would have to know the person to know why I wonder.