The following is a transcript of Episode 7 of the TEXTing Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description. 

Both pride and shame can be counterproductive, and even destructive. On my first date with my husband, we were actually talking about what we did the previous summer. And this is a, it’s a story that kind of lives in my head forever about pride and shame. I had been teaching in an immersive learning program at a Jewish camp. And he asked pretty innocently if I remembered what I had taught. Now it was February, so summer had been a little while back. So I thought to myself, of course I remember what I taught. What does he take me for? Does he think I’m not serious? About my teaching, about my scholarship, about my Jewish learning. 

Out of a sense of pride, I answered so defensively that looking back, it was actually kind of comical. My sense of pride and being worried about being shamed colored my whole interpretive lens. Meanwhile, this poor guy was just curious if I remembered what I had taught. 

Pride and shame seem to be on a spectrum. Too much pride leads to stubbornness, making everything about ourselves, to entitlement, inability to admit wrong. While too much shame leads us to self-doubt, even humiliation, self-censorship, and decline. And yet in some doses, and in some contexts, you need some pride, or you need some shame, for a healthy ego.

I know that people are going to want me to talk about certain people and their pride and their shame problems in the Israel-Hamas war right now. But I don’t want to do that. I want to have a less charged conversation and think about how we as individuals in our daily lives manage feelings of pride and shame. 

And to do that, I’m joined by Christine Hayes. And we’ll be looking together at a passage in the Talmud that starts off asking about the pride and shame of monarchs, continues with the same about Torah scholars, and, implicitly, about the every person. It’s tractate Yoma page 22B. 

Hi Chris, welcome.

Chris: Hi, it’s good to be here.

Elana: Can I start by asking whether you agree with my categories? You think it’s pride and shame or you think it’s something else?

Chris: No, I agree with your categories. Those are the extreme ends of a spectrum, and so I think as you move a little bit more towards the center of that spectrum, you might find that pride can be toned down to something which is simply a sense of one’s self-worth and the importance of one’s voice being heard.

And on the other end, moving a little bit from the center of shame, there is, as you said, a humility and there is, you know, all of life is a balancing act, isn’t it? It’s always a question of figuring out which is the right response to any given situation, how far to move along the spectrum and one end or the other.

And that’s the questions we’re dealing with. 

Elana: So, let’s take a look at this Gamara in Yoma, 22b. And I’m, I’m fascinated by the fact that, first of all, it starts with King Saul, with Shaul. And he’s an interesting person to start with because he isn’t so successful, meaning he loses his monarchy. And so he’s kind of a right person to look at and say, hey, how come this first king who, you know, on the one hand you want to say he had so much promise, on the other hand it was actually a little bit of a controversial thing to have a king to begin with. But they’re going to take it in the direction of, hey, if there was potential here, how come it wasn’t actualized? What happened here? And the answer is going to come back to shame and pride. 

Okay, so first we start with Rabbi Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel, why didn’t the kingship of Saul continue into succeeding generations? Why doesn’t he become a dynasty the way that King David ultimately becomes a dynasty? And interestingly enough, the answer is not because of something he did, but the Talmud says, mipnei she’lo hayah bo shum dofi, because there was no flaw in his ancestry, right? 

There’s a very interesting flaw in his ancestry. De’amar Rabbi Yochanan mishum Rabbi Shimon ben Yehotzadak, for Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon the son of Yehotzadak, we do not appoint a leader over a community unless they have, and I love this image, unless they have a box full of creeping animals hanging behind them, kupa shel shratzim, hanging behind them, so that if they become haughty, people say, hey, turn around and look at what’s behind you. 

So, look, implicitly, who’s the foil? The foil is King David. Right? He does have flawed ancestry, the Tamar story, Tamar and Yehudah. Very uncomfortable situation where she tricks her father-in-law into sleeping with her. But, I mean, it’s a joke. Because David came from flawed ancestry, his dynasty worked. And because Saul didn’t come from flawed ancestry, his dynasty…?

Chris: It’s an incongruity, right? And it’s, why doesn’t his kingship continue? You fully expect the answer to be, he committed some terrible sin or something like that, but we’re going to get two answers and both of them are completely counterintuitive, completely unexpected. One is that he didn’t have flawed ancestry. We’ll see in a minute, the second one is equally incongruous. And as you say, the implicit foil here is David.

Elana: This carrying around a box of creeping animals behind you, it’s a sense that you have to be walking around with something that is going to force you into a humble posture.

Rav Yehuda says in the name of Rav, same Rav Yehuda, in the name of a different teacher, though, why is it that Saul was punished, right? Now, punished seems to be that right after his coronation, there’s an attack on the people, right, from an outside enemy. And the answer is, because when he became king, he was willing to forgo his own kavod, his own honor, as it says, if you take a look in the first book of Samuel, chapter 10, verse 27, that there were a group of what I would call nudniks, the Navi, the Prophet, calls them Bnei Biliya’al, who said, oh, this guy, how is this guy going to save us? And they disparaged him, and they didn’t even bring him a gift for his coronation. But Saul made it as though he didn’t hear them.

So he’s punished for this, that he had excess humility, that he did not show enough pride, because right afterwards, in the very next chapter, it says Nachash the Ammonite marched up and encamped against Yavesh Gilead, against a Jewish encampment, and King Saul was forced to have his first war right after his coronation. 

And what’s funny is that at the end of that first war, people say, hey, who were the people who were talking badly about Saul? Let’s kill them. And he’s like, no, no, no, nobody’s going to die today. So he keeps that posture, actually. So here it’s, he didn’t have enough pride. So you tell me, which is it? He didn’t have something that was forcing him to be humble, and therefore it didn’t work out? Or he didn’t stand enough on his own station?

Chris: I think the point is, the extremes are what are being pointed to here. In one case, being too prideful, a leader can imagine that they are a leader because of some virtue of their own. They must be good and special and they must be important or they wouldn’t have their position of authority. But of course, they’re human. And success in those respects is not a sign of virtue, any more than suffering or failure is a sign of sin. But people who do interpret it as a sign of their virtue, don’t see any flaw in themselves, and feel that they can do no wrong and that they need no counsel or advice other than their own opinion. And all of that is just not true. It’s not human. And that kind of belief is going to lead to disaster. So, of course, that’s sort of criticized on one end. 

But the inability sometimes to assert oneself, and this is a question we have. Is the problem that he doesn’t defend the institution of kingship, which has been approved by God? Or is it a more kind of realpolitik, that any leader who fails to make it clear that they are in authority and they have power and they will not tolerate dissent is just opening themselves up to future attack.

Elana: Yeah, it’s one thing to be a private individual. It’s another thing to be a representative of a group of people whose destinies, whose fate, are actually sometimes dependent on how capable you look, right? And in the case, it’s so interesting because when we talk about Israel, I mean, it’s so interesting because the question of, do you want to be feared or do you want to be loved, right? That question and the realpolitik of needing to be feared, but you don’t want to become a Ben Biliya’al yourself. You don’t want to become someone who is incapable of seeing your own weakness, incapable of seeing your own limitations. 

Chris: It is interesting that this seems to tap into a larger pattern that we do see in the Bible, this idea that a leader needs to have some sort of flaw, right? I mean, this is the way God operates in the Bible, right? Right from the beginning, when God first decides he’s going to create a people, who does he choose to be the father of this great nation? A really old couple, you know, like, this ordinary, sort of old couple. It seemed unprepossessing. You know, he always chooses the underdog, the younger son. You know, Jacob is this rascally trickster who lies to his own father, to his face, dupes his brother. Moses is another sort of reluctant hero at the burning bush. 

One of the, one of the funniest and most interesting stories in the Bible, which people should read again, where God comes to tell him he’s going to send him on this great mission. And Moses says, who, me? You know, are you sure you have the right person? And God says, well, yes. And he said, well, I, but I, who am I going to, no one’s going to believe me. And I’m a bad speaker. And God finally at the end gets angry and says, you’re going.

I mean, it’s the most anti-heroic, anti-climactic, you know, scene of choosing, and true of Israel too, right? God makes it really clear that I’ve chosen you, but for no particular reason, and you’re even the least of the peoples on the earth, but I have just, I choose who I choose. And so the idea that there’s some virtue that attaches to being, what one might think of as the chosen one, either a leader, a people, that’s definitely not the biblical message, right? The biblical message is that there’s no place for arrogance here. 

Because on the one hand, it reminds people to remain humble, to not, to not judge others or yourselves by measures of success or failure. But at the same time, it also sends the message that God doesn’t expect an impossible virtue before we can be the hero of the moment or the leader of the day, or do what needs to be done. We don’t have to be so judgmental of ourselves, right? That’s pulling back towards the shame side. We can’t say, well, who am I? I’m not worthy, right? You can be an instrument of doing something positive or good or be a leader there. We don’t expect an impossible virtue, but at the same time knowing that you don’t have an virtue is, is important to keep you humble. So it’s, it’s an important balance.

Elana: Look, one thing I’ll say about this is that they’re not equal and opposites here, where Saul’s reign didn’t continue because he didn’t have a problem in his lineage, versus Saul’s reign didn’t continue because he didn’t stand for his own reverence, right, because one is something that he really couldn’t control, it’s where he comes from. And the other is something that he does actually control. 

And so it’s interesting to me to think about, you know, times in life where you kind of look back and you say, ooh, I’m not deserving of this because of where I come from. And then you realize that actually, that’s specifically why it’s a good thing for you to be in this position. And times where you think that I actually have to decide how to act here, and maybe I go back to the way I was as a private individual, and I’m told that’s not the right thing to do. You’re not a private individual right now. What you do is actually going to have a serious impact on people. 

Let’s move to a little bit more of the world that the rabbis were in. There’s the world of being a Torah scholar. What did it mean to be a Torah scholar? Which, I think, it’s not that that is necessarily the every person, but at the same time, in the rabbinic period, that sort of was their community of people. So they are talking to a group of people and the way they want to behave. Do you want to continue with Rabbi Yochanan? 

Chris: Sure. So Rabbi Yochanan now is saying in the name of Rabbi Shimon Ben Yehotzadak, who we’ve also heard from before, kol talmid chacham, any Torah scholar, she’eino nokem v’noter k’nachash, it’s very strong. Any Torah scholar who doesn’t take vengeance or bear a grudge, like a snake, eino talmid chacham, he isn’t a Torah scholar. Pretty fascinating.

I mean, we’re from the king, as you said, to the Torah scholar. We’ve just had the second statement or the second explanation of Saul’s noncontinuation as a king, that he tolerated a certain amount of disrespect, and one shouldn’t tolerate a certain amount of disrespect. So now that principle seems to be being applied to the rabbis, the leaders in their day, I suppose. 

And someone who doesn’t take vengeance, but notice the language that’s being used here, right? This is, this is powerful language. And they’re going to tell us in a minute, if we want to move on to that stage already, that this seems counterintuitive because it contradicts a really important principle in Vayikra, right?

So Leviticus 19:18, which says, quite clearly, lo tikom v’lo titor et bnei amecha, you shall not take vengeance and you shall not bear a grudge against, you know, your fellow Israelites, you know, your people. 

And so the Gemara points this out, wait a minute, how can you say this, Rabbi Shimon ben Yehotzadak, that a Torah scholar should take vengeance and bear a grudge, like a snake even, right? Some striking, fast, sharp, deadly, you know. When we have, that just seems to go completely against what we have in Leviticus 19:18, which, of course, you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge is immediately followed by v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha, you should love your neighbor as yourself. So it’s such a foundational, important principle, one that the rabbis continually pull out as being really the essence of the Torah.

Elana: So do you think that looking at a scholar, have we made like a fundamental shift in the conversation of who we’re talking about with their pride and their shame? Because the idea that somebody who’s a Torah scholar is supposed to take vengeance if they’re insulted, if they’re mistreated, is that, again, is that because they represent something bigger than themselves? Or is that just an example of people should sometimes stand up for themselves?

Chris: Exactly. That’s the question. And I think that’s really what was sort of in the back of my mind when I asked the question about Shaul. Was the problem that he didn’t stand up for the kingship? Not so much because his own pride was hurt, but because he’s God’s anointed king. And he represents a certain authority and a certain divine authority, not that he himself is divine, obviously, but the office of the king was inaugurated by Samuel, a prophet, and people should respect that. And that’s the issue. 

And in the same way, as a Torah scholar, the representative of Torah, which is, you know, understood to be, in essence, the expression of God’s will on earth for the community. And therefore, if someone is insulting the Torah scholar, it’s really not about him himself, but about his Torah, that is really the honor of the Torah, that he has no right to waive. You know, you can’t, it’s not up to you to be able to waive, an insult to the Torah, if that’s what you represent.

Elana: But what’s so, what’s so interesting is that the next line in the Talmud doesn’t seem to indicate that it’s about Torah. It says, oh no, 

Chris: Makes it about him. Right. 

Elana: It says, oh, no, no, the, the prohibition of you don’t take vengeance, you don’t bear a grudge, that is a prohibition that has to do with financial matters rather than personal insults, right? And the example that they give is what’s considered revenge and what’s bearing a grudge. Revenge is, you know, somebody says, lend me your sickle, and the person says no, and then the next day, the one who had refused to lend their sickle says, hey, can you lend me your axe? And if that person says, I’m not going to lend to you just as you didn’t lend to me, that’s revenge, right? Or bearing a grudge, right? Somebody says, lend me your axe, the guy says no, or the gal says no, the next day, the person who refused to lend the axe says, lend me your robe. And the person says, oh, I’m not like you. I’m going to give you my robe, unlike you giving me your axe. That’s your grudge, right? 

But just notice these examples. This is not, the Talmud could have said, 

Chris: This is very ordinary.

Elana: Yes. The Talmud could have said when it comes to, when it comes to Torah, you are allowed to take revenge. But that’s not what it says. It says, you’re not allowed to take revenge in financial matters like this, which is basically borrowing and lending from each other. 

Chris: And applies to all humans. 

Elana: Right, but on the other hand, when it comes to something that’s like a personal insult, you can. I would have thought that’s exactly where you’re not supposed to be, or exactly where you’re not supposed to take revenge. It’s almost like this passage is essentially saying, look, sometimes you have to not be a doormat. You have to not be a doormat.

Chris: No, I think that’s absolutely right. And you’re right there. There’s a lot of slippage in this particular passage. There are a lot of shifts between the conversations and you realize, wait, these, these don’t quite line up. So, you know, but first we’re talking about kings, but then we switched to a talmud chacham, but we don’t seem to talk about them as a talmud chacham because it’s really not about the Torah. It’s about things that all humans experience. So we actually seem to be just talking about them as human beings. 

So it’s very slippery and that’s why sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what’s being isolated here. But no, you’re absolutely right, at this stage anyway, they’ve done a distinction to try to resolve this contradiction between a teaching that says that a talmud chacham, and let’s just say a person right now, because it really does seem to move in that general direction, should take vengeance, should bear a grudge, that contradicts Leviticus 19. So it’s situational, right? We have an okimta, a division. It’s, one is true in one case and one is true in the other case. So you don’t take vengeance or bear a grudge in the ordinary course of life, in the business dealings in your, in matters of property.

Elana: The one thing I will say is that I do think that based on the example that’s given of what is, what’s vengeance and what’s a grudge, applied in the financial area, it’s like, do you let people borrow or not let them borrow, do you throw it back in their face? I’m wondering, applied to the area of personal insult, what would it look like? Right? Cause saying that you’re going to be venomous like a snake sounds a lot more intense than just saying, you know, when somebody says to you, hey, you did X, I’m allowed to turn around to them and say, oh, I did X, you did Y. Right? I’m actually allowed to have that tet a tet, but the venomous aspect feels very shocking.

Chris: Even more shocking and this isn’t in our particular sugya, but there are a couple of places elsewhere in rabbinic literature where God himself exemplifies this and is actually criticized for it.

There’s a passage in Brachot 7B where one of the rabbis is commenting on the verse in Exodus, in Shemot 33, where Moses asks God to show him his ways and let him see his glory. And you will recall that in the biblical text, God says, you cannot see my face, right? There’s a cleft of a rock over there. I’m going to place you in that. I’m going to shield your eyes with my hand, and then I’ll remove my hand and you’ll see my back. 

And one of the rabbinic interpreters, Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Korcha says that actually this was petty vengefulness on God’s part. What he says is, well, when I wanted to show myself to you, Moses, back at the burning bush, you turned your face away and now you’re so eager to see me. So it’s payback time. I’m not going to show you my face. I’m going to cover your eyes. You only get to see my back. 

It’s really interesting that they would cast God in that role, right?

And it is part of a sugya that has some interesting kind of criticisms of God. There’s another one in Eicha Rabbah, where Abraham comes to plead for mercy when God has punished Israel at the time of the destruction. And God won’t see him and the angels are crying that, you know, they’re listening and they’re hearing and they’re crying. And he refuses to listen. 

And the angels say, why won’t you, why won’t you listen to Abraham? And again, it’s just this petty tit-for-tat. He says, you know, since Abraham has died, he hasn’t once come to visit me. So why should I see him now that he wants to see me? And he goes on to be to be criticized in this, it’s a long, long story where God is just very unfeeling, just this sort of petty jealousy. 

And what breaks it at the end is when Rachel, after all the patriarchs have pleaded and Moses has pleaded, and everyone has presented these cases and the prophets as well, and Rachel finally shames him.

So it’s interesting. His pride is broken by shame. Because she says, listen, if I was willing not to shame my sister and on her wedding night to my beloved Jacob, I laid under the bed while he was making love to her and I spoke on her behalf so she wouldn’t be discovered. And I was willing to put aside my love. 

And here you are. You’re jealous of idols who are nothing. They have no substance and out of that petty jealousy for something that has no substance, you kill all your people? And God listens to Rachel and he’s shamed out of his pride, if you will. And says, I promise I will bring them back from exile.

Elana: Okay, this, what you’re helping me understand through these comparative texts is that the relationship between the one who has been hurt and the one who has hurt them is actually critical in determining what the right response is,

Maning, these examples are the people, whether it’s Abraham, whether it’s the people of Israel, have you know, upset God, insulted God, and the rabbis are saying, God, we need you to be magnanimous. We need you not to stand on ceremony, not to stand on your honor. 

But what if it had been Amalek that did it? What if it had been a pagan cult that did it? I do not think that the rabbis would have said the same, and I think part of what you’re helping me realize is, part of the discussion of pride, shame, humility right now is that when people accuse you of things, not because they’re your friends and they’re trying to help you, but actually it’s because they fundamentally don’t care about you. 

Chris: There has to be a relationship.

Elana: Yes, and I, I think that’s really key here.

Right, so Talmud goes on and says, okay, wait a second, but isn’t there a prohibition against vengeance, even in like personal insult, right? Don’t we have a baraita, don’t we have an early rabbinic teaching, that those who are willing to take insults, but they don’t insult others, those who can hear themselves being shamed, but don’t respond, right, think Saul, right? Those who act out of love for God, presumably, and who are happy even in their suffering, about them, scripture states in Judges chapter 5 that those who love God are like the sun when it goes forth in its might. 

So meaning, no, no, no, no. You should always be forgiving. You should always, I’m going to go with it and say, turn the other cheek. And then the Talmud says, oh, no problem. We can resolve this. Are you supposed to be somebody who for your own personal insults, you’re allowed to take vengeance or not? Or are you supposed to be somebody who is willing to hear their own insults, but they don’t insult back? 

Well, here’s the difference. Actually, you’re allowed to keep the resentment in your heart. Don’t act on it. But you’re allowed to keep the resentment in your heart, right? Which, by the way, even that is giving people a little bit of space that you might not have thought. But for a healthy ego, it’s like, I mean, you can’t, you’re not going to forget what someone did to you. 

And by the way, maybe it’s not a safe idea to forget what somebody did to you. Like, you forget that it also means you open yourself up to it again. You know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. 

I’m just thinking about this in sections, the first section is how did Saul not succeed, right? And it’s, look, he didn’t succeed either because he was too entitled or he didn’t succeed because he didn’t take the realpolitik seriously enough of needing to not just be for himself. 

And now we’re asking, how should somebody of good values behave? And we’re essentially saying, look, you can’t just ignore what somebody’s done to you. But we want you to be somewhere on the spectrum of, you’re not going to do anything about it. You’re going to listen if it’s a matter of financial matters. But if it’s a matter of personal insult, we don’t expect you to completely forget that this happened. 

Chris: There’s a certain psychological realism here, right? Again, we’re not asking for an impossible virtue, because that just tangles people up in knots, you know? So they have said, you can keep it in your heart, they don’t want you to act on it.

But they’re gonna press even further now and say, no, maybe you should completely eradicate it from your heart. They have this teaching, v’ha’amar Ravah, kol hama’avir al midotav, ma’avirin lo al kol p’sha’av. 

So anyone who forgoes, we’ll come back to what it is you’re forgoing in a second, but anyone who’s willing to overlook or forego something, all of his sins will be overlooked. So midotav, how he behaves in response to other people, how he measures out his behavior to other people, anyone who’s willing to just forgo that and not respond to other people’s insults, then his own sins are going to be forgiven.

So it seems to be saying you should, you should totally eradicate any kind of accounting of insults or harms that are done to you and all your sins will be forgiven. This is a big prize that’s being held out here, right? And yet they’re going to pull back from taking the prize. They’re going to say, uh, well, no, there’s a difference. We’re not going to go that route and say, yeah, you should totally forgive people and then all your sins will be forgiven. They say, no, you can keep it in your heart. 

When? What’s the difference? When should you totally forgive and when should you keep it in your heart? The difference is, d’mifaysu lei u’mipayes, somebody, those who seek to apologize or seek to appease you, that’s the person that you should mifayes, that you should be appeased towards.

But if there’s no apology, if there’s no relationship, as we were sort of saying before, that would inspire an apology, if there’s no relationship, if this person, you forgive them and they’re going to turn around and they’re going to strike you down again, right, nobody is asked to be forgiving to the point of self-extinction. 

So this is where we land. It’s not as if Leviticus 19:18, you shall not have vengeance. You shall not bear grudge has been eliminated. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It applies, certainly in all business matters, you should always treat people as you yourself want to be treated and not do things you wouldn’t, you know, you want something lent, you would hope that others would lend to you and you do that to them.

And even in the area of personal insult, there too, it still applies as much as possible, but they have left one small space where it’s okay to remember pain, to not forget that there is someone there who’s trying to harm you. 

Elana: It’s so interesting because at the outset of this Sugya, we said that Saul’s problem is that he was silent against those who were essentially mocking his coronation and saying he can’t do anything for us. And by the end, we come back to the people who mocked him instead of talking about him and saying, what’s your responsibility? Saying, well, what’s the responsibility of the people who did harm here, to begin with?

Now you actually have to think about the only way you build relationship is through people apologizing. Through people saying, I did wrong. And what does it really, what does it really include to actually come and try to appease someone? Right? I assume it’s taking steps to show that you want to do something different. Meaning, it’s not a bandaid. There’s an adaptive shift that has to happen here.

Chris: Well, I think in general, the rabbis are always interested in action more than they are in merely internal states. You know, even the phrase love your neighbor as yourself, it comes as the summary conclusion of a list of things you shouldn’t do. Don’t do this to someone. Don’t do that to someone. Don’t take vengeance. Don’t bear a grudge. Love them as yourself. It’s not an abstract statement that’s saying, have this emotional love for people. It’s a summary statement of concrete actions you shouldn’t take. Don’t do any of these things because you would not want them done to you. 

That’s why it’s the source of the negative golden rule of Hillel, right? You don’t want someone to treat you in all those ways. That’s what it means to love someone as yourself. Don’t do it. Don’t do what they wouldn’t do. And here too, I think the interest is going to be on the apology side of it. It’s going to be on not simply words or, or a feeling of contrition and flagellating yourself. That’s not helpful to the other person indicating that there’s been a change, a change in posture, a change in attitude and that’s going to lead to a change in action.

Elana: Right. And that there can be a change. So I’d like, thinking about the situations of abuse, where, oh, it’ll be different. I can do better. And it’s possible that the person cannot do better. And if they cannot do better, you dare not be ma’avir on your middot. 

Chris: Right, exactly. Yeah. 

Elana: You dare not ignore it. Can’t do better, won’t do better, has incentives not to do better. Right? Which is really, really scary. It’s a scary thing. 

Chris: It’s scary, and it’s even a move a little bit beyond where the Sugya lands, because what they’re saying to us by the end is that it’s okay when you’re dealing with someone who has harmed you and is unrepentant, that you keep that in your heart. That’s a way of affirming your own truth and your own sense of self-worth, regarding the interaction that you had.

But you’re even pushing it a little bit beyond that. It might be that someone is repentant. But they may not be capable for whatever reason. Life circumstances sometimes don’t even allow us, sometimes, to be in a healthy situation with someone, but sometimes the person themselves just may not be capable and that, that’s the much harder one and particularly when it is in a relationship, right?

We were talking before we were making a division as if it was people with whom we have a relationship. We assume that they’re the ones who want to change and can change and with, but it’s not the case. It’s sometimes the people that we are in relationship with and want to be in relationship with. So that’s when I think it’s really, a question of forgiving without forgetting. We have to separate those two things. And I know I certainly have spoken with friends who have. Been struggling with this kind of situation of being with a partner who is not someone that they could really ever trust and, finding it, on the one hand, healthy for themselves to forgive the person, because they carried around so much anger otherwise, so they, I remember saying to some, something I have heard before, and it’s not something I’ve made up, but I can remember saying to someone, you need to forgive them not because they deserve it, but you deserve it. 

But once you’ve forgiven them also, you can’t forget, meaning that you can’t go back into that situation. And these are all slightly different things that have to be calibrated to each situation. 

Elana: Yeah. So we’ve kind of moved from a very, like, political frame of, what does it take to lead a nation, to a somewhat more personal frame of trying to figure out the places where it’s appropriate to actually be able to, to fight back to the question of, hey, it takes two to tango. We’re not just talking about a one-sided virtue ethics of what kind of person do I want to be? There is a relationship or lack of relationship here.

And I’d imagine that people listening, they’ll apply it in their own ways to lots of different things, right? Some people are gonna think about Israel and advocacy. Some people are gonna think about antisemitism. Some people are going to think about personal relationships. And I think all of that is in play and that’s kind of what it means for this kind of Torah to be timeless. Right? It’s the way that people engage with each other. 

Chris: Absolutely. 

Elana: Thanks for learning with us. And special thanks to Christine Hayes. 

Chris: Thank you. It’s always a pleasure.

Elana: TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter and our executive producer, Maital Friedman, with production assistance from Tamar Marvin, and a study guide written by Jessica Fisher. M Louis Gordon is our senior producer. This episode was mixed by Ben Azevedo at Bear Cave Audio, with music provided by Luke Allen. 

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