For a second year our friends at G-dcast invite us to download their delightfully fun Yom Kippur e-Scapegoat, an app to anonymously submit, showcase and view "sins" to be "absolved" by the digital Yom Kippur goat.  A favorite of mine from last year was "I said it was gluten free." 

The app is great because it's fun.  It's fun to read other people's submissions and it's fun to participate as a penitent.  But does it work?  Did the gluten free saboteur feel absolved of their sin following last year's confession? 

G-dcast's approach towards repentance didn't come from thin air - the roots of the scapegoat, (the origin of the expression) are found in the Torah and in the original Yom Kippur ritual where the High Priest would symbolically heap the collective sins of the community against God- sins that hurt no person, but broke religious law - onto two sacrificial goats. A symbolic act of communal repentance, absolution, and forgiveness all wrapped up in one. 

 Through introspection and repentance, the people of Israel would be born anew, cleansed of all their wrongdoings; but only those against God, ben adam l'makon.  For the sins we commit against each other, ben adam l'adam, those require an apology and forgiveness. 

 Asking for forgiveness is scary, especially if you're not sure you're going to be forgiven. But being forgiving, that's something else.  To be able to forgive can be as transformative an experience for the forgiver as it is the forgiven.  In a 2012 Study at Iowa State University, researchers found "[forgiveness] to be very effective at helping people not only cope with anger and work through those negative feelings, but also to move the person to a 'better' place of acceptance and even human flourishing." 

So how can we cultivate a culture of forgiveness in our homes, workplaces, and communities?

Listen to a shofar.  It is said that the sound of the shofar evokes forgiveness. The story goes, the shofar reminds God of the Ram sacrificed in place of Isaac, Abraham's son.  It reminds God that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son if God wanted, and because of that willingness, God is then inspired to be merciful and forgive.

Look inward.  The introspective weeks leading up to the High Holidays is an opportunity to make a cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of your soul. "Search your life, inspect your deeds and repent" says the High Holiday liturgy. This year, while you reflect on the people you've wronged, also spend some time thinking about the people who've wronged you. Who suffers because they treated you poorly?  Which relationships are mired down because you can't let something go?  Take an accounting of your soul and then give yourself a gift, forgive. 

Let go. The Mayo Clinic advises us to "move away from your role as victim and release the control and power the offending person and situation have had in your life.... As you let go of grudges, you'll no longer define your life by how you've been hurt. You might even find compassion and understanding." 

Say the Shema at night before bed.  In the traditional liturgy of the Jewish bedtime prayer, you'll find the following paragraph:  "I hereby forgive all who have hurt or wronged me, deliberately or by accident, through speech, deed, word, thought, or notion, whether in this incarnation or in another. May no one be punished on my account..."  It suggests forgiveness as a constructive kavanah, intention to take with you at bedtime.

Read a book. This year, the book selection for our One Bay One Book program is The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis, a story with themes including forgiveness, the ways in which we do forgive, the ways in which we don't forgive, and how those choices impact our lives.  So do read the book and join one of the hundreds of conversations that will spring up all around the bay area this year. Join in the conversation. 

Devoting an entire chapter to forgiveness, Maimonides acknowledges that asking for forgiveness is not easy.  He describes in great detail the important steps of apology and repentance.  But in the end, Maimonides challenges the one who was wronged to forgive.

Can you move on?  Can you forgive?  Perhaps we can bring the intention of forgiveness with us into the holiday season.  Perhaps we can bring the intention of letting go.

By Rabbi Joshua Fenton

Associate Director, Jewish LearningWorks