Danya Ruttenberg is a rabbi and spiritual teacher with the ability to speak to a broad audience on matters of the utmost importance.

In the language of our Alphabet of Spiritual Literacy here at S&P, what’s essential to Ruttenberg is how spiritual practices combine. She wants to make clear, there is no real forgiveness without listening and justice — and justice involves repair. Ruttenberg writes, “There should never be pressure on victims to forgive. Ever.” For forgiveness to be real, it must represent meaningful repair and change. Victims of harm are too often forced to forgive, and perpetrators of harm are too often allowed to forgive in simple words and empty sentiment.

Ruttenberg writes: “All too often in our culture, forgiveness granted to an unrepentant perpetrator — or to a partially repentant perpetrator, or to one whose inner work is unclear but who can write a compelling social media post expressing regret — is conflated with absolution.”

When we do wrong to another we need to not simply ask for forgiveness, but do the work of transformation and personal change by making amends, aiming to become “the kind of person who doesn’t do that harmful thing anymore.” Even worse, in our dysfunctional cycles of incomplete or pretend forgiveness, is when we blame the victim: “the hard emotional labor is foisted upon the victim, and little to nothing is asked of the perpetrator or the systems that produced the harm.”

Ruttenberg applies these teachings to instances when our institutions need to seek forgiveness (chapter 4), when our nation needs to be forgiven (chapter 5), and in our courts and justice systems (chapter 6). She also offers wisdom on true repentance in personal relationships (chapter 2).


Ruttenberg is skilled at choosing examples from the headlines and popular culture — for instance, when actor Kevin Spacey is accused of sexual assault and when comedian Amy Poehler mocks a disabled girl on Saturday Night Live.


Ruttenberg’s teaching is informed by a deep immersion in classic Jewish texts such as Maimonides, Talmud, and Mishnah, and Christian authors including Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the subject of “cheap grace.” When discussing the history of white racism in America, Ruttenberg quotes both abolitionist Frederick Douglass and our contemporary, Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas. Twelve-step programs also are offered as examples of practicing forgiveness with true repentance — and for understanding how repentance should include self-care.


The great twelfth-century philosopher, Maimonides, is quoted more often than other teacher. Quoting him, Ruttenberg says, “Some of the demands of the deep work of transformation might include ‘crying out in tearful supplication, giving alms according to one’s means, distancing oneself exceedingly from the thing causing the sin … to change one’s identity and … conduct … and exiling oneself from the place of residence … because it leads them to submissiveness and to be meek and humble-spirited.”



Read an Excerpt on Forgiveness


On Repentance and Repair

Making Amends in an Unapologetic World

By Danya Ruttenberg

Forgiveness in classic Judaism.

A Book Excerpt on Forgiveness 

“In Hebrew, two different words, each with its own shade of meaning and weight, are used in the context of forgiveness. The first is mechila, which might be better translated as 'pardon.' It has the connotation of relinquishing a claim against an offender; it’s transactional. It’s not a warm, fuzzy embrace but rather the victim’s acknowledgment that the perpetrator no longer owes them, that they have done the repair work necessary to settle the situation. You stole from me? OK, you acknowledged that you did so in a self-aware way, you’re in therapy to work on why you stole, you paid me back, and you apologized in a way that I felt reflected an understanding of the impact your actions had on me — it seems that you’re not going to do this to anyone else. Fine. It doesn’t mean that we pretend that the theft never happened, and it doesn’t (necessarily) mean that our relationship will return to how it was before or even that we return to any kind of ongoing relationship. With mechila, whatever else I may feel or not feel about you, I can consider this chapter closed.


“Slicha, on the other hand, may be better translated as 'forgiveness'; it includes more emotion. It looks with a compassionate eye at the penitent perpetrator and sees their humanity and vulnerability, recognizes that, even if they have caused great harm, they are worthy of empathy and mercy. Like mechila, it does not denote a restored relationship between the perpetrator and the victim (neither does the English word, actually; 'reconciliation' carries that meaning), nor does slicha include a requirement that the victim act like nothing happened. But it has more of the softness, that letting-go quality associated with 'forgiveness' in English.


“Notably, the Jewish literature of repentance mostly deals with mechila, the former type of forgiveness.”

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