Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
A crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm—from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unresolved issues.
American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator’s obligations or recompense for harmed parties. As survivor communities have pointed out, these emphases have too often only caused more harm. But Danya Ruttenberg knew there was a better model, rooted in the work of the medieval philosopher Maimonides.
For Maimonides, upon whose work Ruttenberg elaborates, forgiveness is much less important than the repair work to which the person who caused harm is obligated. The word traditionally translated as repentance really means something more like return, and in this book, returning is a restoration, as much as is possible, to the victim, and, for the perpetrator of harm, a coming back, in humility and intentionality, to behaving as the person we might like to believe we are.
Maimonides laid out five steps: naming and owning harm; starting to change/transformation; restitution and accepting consequences; apology; and making different choices. Applying this lens to both our personal relationships and some of the most significant and painful issues of our day, including systemic racism and the legacy of enslavement, sexual violence and harassment in the wake of #MeToo, and Native American land rights, On Repentance and Repair helps us envision a way forward.
Rooted in traditional Jewish concepts while doggedly accessible and available to people from any, or no, religious background, On Repentance and Repair is a book for anyone who cares about creating a country and culture that is more whole than the one in which we live, and for anyone who has been hurt or who is struggling to take responsibility for their mistakes.
Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
A crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm—from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unresolved issues.
American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator’s obligations or recompense for harmed parties. As survivor communities have pointed out, these emphases have too often only caused more harm. But Danya Ruttenberg knew there was a better model, rooted in the work of the medieval philosopher Maimonides.
For Maimonides, upon whose work Ruttenberg elaborates, forgiveness is much less important than the repair work to which the person who caused harm is obligated. The word traditionally translated as repentance really means something more like return, and in this book, returning is a restoration, as much as is possible, to the victim, and, for the perpetrator of harm, a coming back, in humility and intentionality, to behaving as the person we might like to believe we are.
Maimonides laid out five steps: naming and owning harm; starting to change/transformation; restitution and accepting consequences; apology; and making different choices. Applying this lens to both our personal relationships and some of the most significant and painful issues of our day, including systemic racism and the legacy of enslavement, sexual violence and harassment in the wake of #MeToo, and Native American land rights, On Repentance and Repair helps us envision a way forward.
Rooted in traditional Jewish concepts while doggedly accessible and available to people from any, or no, religious background, On Repentance and Repair is a book for anyone who cares about creating a country and culture that is more whole than the one in which we live, and for anyone who has been hurt or who is struggling to take responsibility for their mistakes.
Reviews-
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July 8, 2022
Rabbi Ruttenberg's (Surprised by God: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Religion; The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism) latest book, a study of atonement and forgiveness, opens with a content warning: survivors of trauma, assault, racism, ableism, and genocide, take heed; many of the book's examples of such offenses could be triggering. Readers might recoil from the book's lumping together of these various violations, but the author's concern is genuine. This is a work earnestly demonstrating a path to both repentance and repair. The fulcrum upon which the book rests is Judaism and specifically the 12th-century philosopher Maimonides's systemization of repentance, forgiveness, and atonement. According to Ruttenberg, forgiveness is not possible without the work of repair. And an apology does not necessarily compel a victim's forgiveness. To the book's credit, it plainly recognizes that cultural or social systems cannot force repentance or forgiveness since atonement itself is a theological/devotional act, not necessarily an institutional one. Examples of how not to publicly apologize (Louis C.K.; Germany's reparations over the Holocaust) are easy ones. Missing from Ruttenberg's book is a fulsome consideration of the Catholic Church's shameful response to sexual abuse by clergy. VERDICT Ruttenberg's book sets out guidelines for full-hearted repentance--the kind of atonement that people should do, but often don't.--Sandra Collins
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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September 1, 2022
In this excellent, necessary book, rabbi Ruttenberg (Nurture the Wow, 2016) addresses a problem: ""people hurt one another,"" she writes, and ""American society is not very good at doing the work of repentance and repair."" Ruttenberg offers a practice model for repentance and repair based on the work of Maimonides, a twelfth-century scholar and philosopher of Jewish law. After laying out the model's steps on a long and intentional path, Ruttenberg applies it to a variety of situations on individual, public, institutional, and national scales, considering examples from apology tweets to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The author then asks what systems of justice actually affect, whether forgiveness is necessary, and what freedoms await in meaningful atonement. Her careful and thoughtful writing frequently includes the voices of others, centering the needs of victims and holding the words of perpetrators to account. The book's introduction includes a blanket content warning as painful examples abound, yet readers will find a readable, digestible text that offers a deeply needed framework.COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
