What Forgiveness Shares with Forgetting

Forgiveness is on the Jewish calendar these days. Jews pray for it in the sliḥot, the penitential prayers said in the month of Elul before Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur; they sermonize about it; they express their intentions of extending it and their hopes of receiving it—all as if they knew just what it was. Yet few mental and emotional states are harder to define.

Generally, when we speak of liking someone, or being angry at someone, or being irritated or amused by someone, or of numerous other feelings that we have for and toward others, we safely assume that we are talking about the same thing. These are emotions that we recognize as common ones. Even the “I love you” that ranges from the most soulful of declarations to the routine ending of telephone calls refers to a feeling whose different shades of intensity we have reason to think we are all familiar with. Forgiving isn’t quite like that. When you or I say, “I forgive you,” neither of us can be entirely sure what the other means. What is it that I have done when I have forgiven you for something? How do you know that I have done it?

Forgiving is often associated with forgetting, but the nature of the association is moot, and for every folk adage that tells us that “to forgive is to forget,” there is a pop psychology admonition (I quote from one on the Internet) that, when forgiving, “Forget about forgetting. It’s not really possible to forget, nor is it necessary.” Both views are compelling. If to forgive a wrong done us is to forget it, how can we voluntarily forgive anyone, since forgetting is an involuntary act? And if it is not to forget it, how can we know it has really been forgiven if the painful memory of it can keep coming back?