Saying Sorry and Meaning It - Kol Nidre Sermon
When I became a parent, I’m not sure I appreciated just how different two kids can be. Same parents. Same household. Wildly different personalities. In the debate between nature and nurture, I’ve now swung widely into team nature.
To take one small example, my kids have radically different views on how and why to say “I’m sorry”. I don’t remember a time when Lev, who by the way is a really good kid, didn’t understand that apologies are essential “get out of jail free” cards. I’ve actually watched him say he’s sorry AS HE’S HITTING HIS SISTER.
But Amalia is different. She will not say she is sorry unless she means it. It’s actually uncanny. Lev will do something to annoy her, she’ll smack him, and then nothing. We will put her in time out. Explain to her what she did wrong. Remove her from the situation. An hour will pass, and unless she’s cooled down, unless she is ready, Amalia will refuse to apologize.
I actually admire her for her fortitude.
The sad thing is that Amalia will not be like this forever. I’m already starting to see a change now that she’s pushing two-and-a-half. Soon, Amalia is going to learn what her brother already knows; saying you're sorry is often meaningless. It’s a necessary step in the process of forgiveness – in lowering the temperature, in placating the person you have hurt – but it need not include actual contrition.
I wish I could say that most of us are much past where Lev is on the power of apologies, but I’m not sure we are. In our culture, in our day, “I’m sorry” barely means anything anymore.
One of the best satires I’ve ever read on the meaning and purpose of apologies was found in novel from about 10 years ago called A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee. In it, Helen, the protagonist, begins working at a PR firm and realizes she has a gift; she can convince CEOs of big companies to apologize and their problems simply go away. What she learns is that the right sounding apology, delivered quickly after a scandal, can placate the public and salvage a reputation. As one might expect, a lot goes wrong for Helen in the book, yet throughout, her outlook on the meaning of apology remains consistent; saying you are sorry can diffuse a difficult situation. It serves a purpose, even if you don’t mean it.
Sadly, art mimics life here. Think of all the faux apologies that institutions have put forth.
To use one example, you may remember a few years ago when United Airlines oversold their flight and elected to kick Dr. David Dao off and re-book him at a later date. After he resisted, explaining that he had to get back for his patients, he was dragged off the plane, losing teeth in the process. But rather than issue a heartfelt apology United’s Chief Executive Oscar Munoz issued a statement, saying: “This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened.”
Notice what this statement doesn’t say. It doesn’t acknowledge the hurt caused. It doesn’t speak about ways one might prevent this from happening again. But despite its inadequacy, the apology served its purpose. Although there was a short-lived backlash against United for not taking the episode seriously, Munoz’s non-apology checked a necessary box and allowed people to move on.
The same lack of contrition that one finds in the corporate world can be found in our interpersonal interactions. Part of the reason apologies don’t mean much is that when we hear the words “I’m sorry” one of two situations is often true: someone is apologizing for something that doesn’t need an apology or the hour calls for an apology but it is not done in a genuine way.
We all know examples from this first category. How many of us use the words “I’m sorry” when we haven’t done anything wrong. We say “I’m sorry” when we squeeze into an elevator, even though there might be plenty of room for us. We hear “I’m sorry” spoken at meetings, usually before a person rightfully asserts themselves, but fears that others will not take their comment seriously. Others say “I’m sorry” before the words, “can you repeat that?” often when the speaker themselves is at fault, having mumbled or spoken too quickly. In each of these circumstances, saying “I’m sorry” undercuts our message. We deserve that last space in the elevator, that platform at the meeting, to hear the conversation that’s right in front of us. But since we know people like to hear “I’m sorry,” because it endears us to them and diffuses uncomfortable situations, we overuse the phrase, watering it down and making it meaningless. Overusing “I’m sorry” takes away its power when we actually mean it.
And even when we should be apologizing, we often do it wrong. How often do the words “I’m sorry” become filler before we get to what we really want to say? If the words “if” or “but” are part of your apology, you weren’t actually ready to say you were sorry. You wanted to defend yourself and were hoping the apology could forge an opening.
The same goes if there are strings attached to your apology. I’ve sat with congregants who are looking to repair a broken relationship. They are ready to apologize in the hopes that they might win back a friendship, a spouse, or a child’s affection. Each time this happens, I’ve tried to steer them away from this mindset. I caution them not to apologize with the hope of getting something in return, even if it’s just their relationship back. The point of a good apology is the apology itself, without expectation.
To apologize well we have to make ourselves vulnerable. We have to be willing to have another curse us, yell at us, call us names. But how many of us preserve our own sense of wellbeing, rather than fully bare our souls, open to the consequences of our apology.
Rabbis around the world love to tell us that the word cheit or sin in Hebrew was originally an archery term which means “to miss the mark.” (As an aside, I’m not convinced this is true – it's based on a passing reference in the book of Judges (20:16)). But even if it is, there is a reason rabbis love this teaching so much. If it’s true, it means that we are fundamentally good and our misdeeds are nothing more than shooting an arrow a little too far to the right or left. It leaves us intact. It takes away the sting of our errors.
Sometimes this worldview is helpful, especially if we tend to beat ourselves up over mistakes. But for more of us, seeing our mistakes as simply “missing the mark” is a defense mechanism. It keeps us from acknowledging that our mistakes are more than a slight error in aim. It doesn’t do justice to the fact that we might actually cause real hurt.
It’s for this reason that when Pepsi made an insensitive ad staring reality star Kendall Jenner a few years back that seemed to say that drinking its product would bring about world peace and solve racism, belittling the Black Live Matter Movement in the process, they issued an apology that used these very words:
“Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.”
As it happens, Pepsi employed an outside company to help them issue the apology. Too bad they didn’t realize that they were using canned language. After Pepsi issued their press release people starting unearthing old apologies from other cooperate giants - Budweiser, Avon, Dove and Heineken – all of whom claimed to have “missed the mark” during their latest mistake. It was an easy way for each to say, “give us a break; we do good too.”
Much of the reasons these non-apologies are so troublesome is that they run antithetical to our Jewish values. Our rabbis have no shortage of metaphors for why. In one instance they imagine a person who goes through the motions of repenting, whether apologizing or confessing on Yom Kippur, and without doing the hard work of actually trying to change to a person. This person, they explain, is akin to someone who tries to purify himself in a Mikveh, a ritual bath, while holding a dead lizard (Ta’anit 16a). You may think that you are cleansed, but the minute you get out, that lizard will make you as impure as if you had never gone in the water. The goal is to throw away that lizard, to actually take steps to change, and only then will you find that the Mikveh works.
With all this in mind, I want to lay out a few criteria I think make for a genuine apology.
The first step to really saying “I’m sorry” well is that we have to actually feel bad about what we did. We have to take the time to understand why our misdeed were hurtful. Only then will our apology actually mean something.
Our Rabbis understood something powerful about shame. While too much of it can be crippling, the lack of it is much worse. As Pascal famously wrote, “the only shame is not having any.” For this reason, the Talmud counts shame as the three defining features of a good nation along with mercy and kindness. Likewise, in the ancient temple, the high priest would wear a special crown called a tzitz whose whole purpose would be to engender shame in anyone who saw him wear it. In feeling this overwhelming sense of shame, they take to heart the need to change their ways (Zohar Vayakhel 218).
What this all means is that you have to learn, first, to sit with the discomfort if you have erred. We often apologize quickly because we know it’s the first step to healing. But the quicker we say “I’m sorry” the more likely it will be perfunctory or a reflex, rather than a genuine display of our remorse. Only if we pause a moment and let ourselves understand all the dynamics around our apology will it actually be sincere.
Next, we have to learn to apologize for its own sake. In our tradition, the fact that we apologize is much more important than finding forgiveness. In fact, Jewish law is clear that if you should genuinely apologize three times to another but if they don’t accept your apology, you need not go back (S.A. Orech Chayim 606:1). Getting the right answer, finding absolution, is not what matters. What matters is that you express your remorse. This is why you are permitted to go the grave of someone who has passed away and offer them an apology. If saying “sorry” was about attaining forgiveness, saying you are sorry to a dead person will be a futile exercise. But if apologizing is about expressing genuine sorrow, then even if the person you are approaching cannot respond, you have done your duty.
Then, after expressing regret, we have to do what we can to make things right. In Jewish law, words matter, but so do actions. Let’s say I hit someone with my car. According to Talmudic law, I owe the person I hit payments across five categories: for the physical damage to his body, for his pain and suffering, for his medical costs, for his loss of work during the time he was recuperating, and for the shame and humiliation he might feel by my actions (Bava Kama 83b).
Building off the spirit of this law, no matter the injury I have caused, I have to take into account the full scope of what my actions did to another. How exactly did my actions hurt them. Did it affect them emotionally, physically, financially? Then, I need to do what I can to make it all right. It might mean resigning from a job or position. Or it might mean putting safeguards in place to make sure others don’t make the same mistakes I do.
Finally, we have to take steps to ensure that we don’t make the same mistakes again. Maimonides, Judaism’s most important legalist and philosopher, explained that true teshuvah or change means that if we are put in the same situation again and have the ability to err a second time, without any negative consequences, we would avoid making the same mistake because through the act of reflecting and apologizing we are different.
This mandate, by the way, is not easy. We all make the same mistakes again and again. I once heard it said that most married couples will have the same fights they do when they are 80 as they did when they were 30, they will just have them in a 10th of the time. Breaking out of the cycle of continued errors is hard. And those false apologies are the unfortunate mechanisms that facilitate our constant failure to change.
And because change is hard, we sometimes have to go to drastic measures to force ourselves into transformation. According to Jewish law, if we can’t stop erring we may need to humiliate ourselves out in public. We may even have to move or change our names.
For most of us, these actions are a bit too extreme. You don’t need to have changed for an apology to be heartfelt. Saying “I’m sorry” can be the first step in a process. A genuine apology can buy us time and goodwill to get where we want to be, but if don’t start down that path, those we hurt will quickly lose trust in us to ever get there.
This year, let your apologies mean something. Take time to know why you are saying them. Identify the pain of the other. Let go of any strings. Don’t lead with defensiveness. Know that the apology is about them, not you. Then do what you can to make it right, for them and for the world. And should you do all that, you will be transformed.
I’m not upset that my kids don’t understand the meaning of a true apology. Kids can’t. They are incapable of nuanced, symbolic thinking. And they haven’t yet gotten past their own experiences enough to truly embody empathy. I want Lev and Amalia to learn to say they are sorry, even if it doesn’t mean much, because I want them to have access to that muscle when they do mature.
But when they grow, I hope they start to question that knee-jerk urge to say “sorry.” I hope they realize that Amalia's stubbornness in not apologizing until she means it, is actually a kind of nascent wisdom. I hope they figure out that those words matter. How we say "I’m sorry” matters as much, if not more, than that we say it at all.
