Hebrew words in my LinkedIn feed are the equivalent of shining the bat signal with a star of David knocked out instead. (Somehow my people have a way of making it into my feed, often without me knowing they were Jewish when we connected.) Someone posted about Tikkun Olam, and it reminded me of an article — I greatly admire the words from each of these two brilliant women — discussing repair, apologizing, and accountability.
The interview, by Anne Helen Peterson is with Rabbi Danya Ruttenburg as they discuss why “Nobody is owed forgiveness.” (Side note: Subscribe to both of them).
“The basic idea is this: tshuvah, in Judaism, is often translated as “repentance,” but it really means “to return,” like to get back on the path from where you strayed. Our focus is not so much on whether or not the victim forgives as whether the perpetrator does the work of repair and transformation.”
For me, the idea of coming back to something that hurt you over and over is quintessentially Jewish — as is the idea that we deal with it. We address people who have harmed us and we also seek out those we have harmed to repair, even if it takes all year. We are always seeking closure by returning to the scene of the crime.
Christian patriarchy and White Supremacy don’t like to look back. It’s hard, it hurts. Why suffer? Better to live in a world of new, move past things quickly, suppress and bury the evidence. Better to ignore than to inquire, to be “fine” than be in conflict. Be silent, complicit, and smile.
For Jews, we grapple constantly with coming back, analyzing, revisiting, readdressing, and discussing what it means to exist in right relationship with each other, with the planet, and the universe. Summed up, we are always asking “How do I show up?” One might add, “and deal with it.”
My summary: Reparations are a prerequisite to justice, and how we actualize our accountability.
Addressing reparations seems only fitting given todays news. Consider how much we as a collective owe Black and Latina women. Brittney Griner was released in a prison exchange today, with little more than pats on the back from our leaders. Our country owes her so much; our world does too. I’m relieved and I’m happy for her family but how do we repair that trauma? What could Griner heal with reparations? How can we as a country heal without reparations?
To start, shouldn’t our government take some responsibility for her mistreatment? Given how long it took for them to bring her home — paying her $$$$$ might begin to heal what is likely lifelong PTSD.
What about the inequitable way American society forces female athletes to work for less pay, travel to unsafe places, and perform just to earn a living? If Title IX was worth its salt, they’d all have back pay for decades.
December 8th was also Latina Women’s Equal Pay Day. Lord knows I could talk about the need for economic justice till tisha b’av — the Jewish equivalent of when pigs fly — but suffice to say that Latina women earning $0.54 for every dollar that a white guy makes is rage-making.
As a result, white household wealth is 4.5X higher than Black Households, and 5X higher than Latina households. Reparations for pay inequity and lack of generational wealth due to racism and sexism seems like a no brainer. How else could these populations, these communities of fellow humans, ever catch up?
I have data for days on pay parity or the lack their if. But, we don’t need data to prove financial inequality, wealth and wage gaps exist. We just need to stop pretending we can’t see it, admit we’re all complicit in upholding this fucking b.s. “global economy” and make amends.
The first step is everyone, especially white people owning up to our part in (waves hands) ALL OF THIS. To the wealth gaps, and wage gaps, and poverty, and overt and covert racism, sexism et al that impact Black and Latina (and Indigenous) people exponentially.
We must acknowledge our privilege to slumber in comfort while Griner was slept on a specially-made (extra long) cardboard “bed” on some concrete floor in a Russian penal colony.
The Powers That Be have got to start paying back for all they have taken, too. They need to pay up for the trauma and drama. For the mass shootings (everyone single goddamn one of them enacted by a bro, whose violence the media and often the deranged murderer himself blames on mom.)
Only those with money to burn would say money doesn’t make a difference. Is it a coincidence the people railing hardest against reparations are wealthy, white men?
They need to pay for the mommy tax, and pink tax. For staying silent when we were cut off in conversation or in traffic. For not screaming enough when women in Iran had to cut off their hair, risking life to walk freely. For their part in cutting off our rights to healthcare, because they didn’t support women’s causes (only 2% of funds ever do). They need to cut the shit and cut some damn checks.
How do we heal as a society when so many refuse to own up to their part and take this seriously? When so many dismiss us out of hand with the trope of the nagging wife, some in front of our kids?
How do we heal as a nation without reparations? I concur with Rabbi Ruttenburg’s sentiment below.
Without accountability, can we move forward? Maybe we can move on, but repair? I don’t believe we can.
“Again, I want to unhook a few concepts that so often get tangled up in our culture: Forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, justice, accountability. In my tradition, nobody is owed forgiveness, even to a truly penitent person who has done all the work. It’s a lot more nuanced than that. So the minute I hear demands for forgiveness, my spidey senses go way up — someone is feeling entitled, rather than humble and concerned about the harm they have caused, wondering if they have done enough to attend to the needs of the victim. (Is a demand for forgiveness always abuser behavior? Not going to be able to do a wide enough scan of cases to think about this in a nuanced way, going to try not to get into absolutes. Is it very often abuser behavior? Yep, it sure is.)
Demands for unity or forgiveness from people who have caused harm that do not involve full accountability for harm are not very interesting to me, and most certainly invite us to do a full-on power analysis of the situation: who holds power, what is at stake for whom, and so forth.
That said, can people who have been hurt do healing work? Yes. Does healing require forgiveness? Nope. Is forgiveness a byproduct of healing? Sometimes. Can a person forgive without reconciliation (that is, returning to being in relationship with the perpetrator of harm)? Yep. Does so much depend on context? Sure does! Can there be justice without accountability? I don’t believe so.”
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: mark tulin on Unsplash
From the words of a very wise man I met.
“black people aren’t gonna ever be equal til we let go of the past and take ownership of our present and future”
Attacking strawmen doesn’t fix shit.
The world needs us to be eye-to-eye hand-in-hand, the language being used here is just perpetuating this false idea that people need handouts and versus the hand-up they actually need.