Social media has given us a peculiar new ritual in the days preceding Yom HaKipurim. Timelines begin to fill with public declarations asking forgiveness from anyone the writer may possibly have offended during the year.
“If I have offended anyone, please forgive me.”
“If I ever said anything that hurt you, I ask your forgiveness.”
Sometimes these statements are accompanied by elaborate blessings, religious language and conspicuous expressions of humility.
Whenever I read them, I am uncomfortable.
They give me the impression not of a person going quietly to someone he has wronged, but of someone standing before an audience and announcing: Look at me. See how pious I am. See how seriously I take Yom HaKipurim. See me doing what Judaism requires.
Except that this is not what Judaism requires.
Halakhah Requires the Person, Not the Audience
The Mishnah in מסכת יומא — Masechet Yoma — Tractate Yoma establishes the fundamental distinction:
עבירות שבין אדם לחבירו אין יום הכיפורים מכפר עד שירצה את חבירו
For transgressions between one person and another, Yom HaKipurim does not bring reconciliation until the person has appeased the one whom he wronged.
Those final words matter: את חבירו — et chaveiro — his fellow.
Not his followers.
Not his social-media audience.
Not two thousand, four hundred strangers who have never met him and have nothing to forgive him for.
The person he wronged.
The Rambam makes the obligation equally concrete in הלכות תשובה — Hilchot Teshuvah — Laws of Return, 2:9. If I have injured another person, damaged his property, taken what belongs to him, insulted him or otherwise wronged him, teshuvah before G-D is insufficient. I must put right what can be put right and seek reconciliation with the person himself.
The משנה ברורה — Mishnah Berurah — Clear Teaching, commenting on Orach Chaim 606, addresses the matter with remarkable precision: someone who asks forgiveness generally from many people does not fulfil his obligation when he knows that he has wronged a particular individual.
That leaves very little room for misunderstanding.
“If I Have Offended Anyone”
There is also something troubling about the word “if.”
If I know that I publicly humiliated someone, there is no “if”.
If I know that I spoke lashon hara about someone, there is no “if”.
If I know that I cheated someone, insulted someone, deceived someone or caused someone injury, there is no “if”.
Teshuvah begins with recognising what I actually did.
The formulation “if I offended anybody” conveniently removes almost everything difficult from the process. There is no identified wrong. There is no identified victim. There is no acknowledgement of responsibility. There is no restitution. There is not even necessarily an admission that anything happened.
Instead, responsibility is transferred subtly to the injured person: If you happen to have been offended by something I did, forgive me.
That is a very different proposition from: I wronged you. What I did was wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me.
Teshuvah Is Not Performance
This is where social media has introduced another danger.
Something intended to diminish the ego can become an opportunity to feed it.
A person publishes his request for forgiveness and immediately receives the rewards of public religiosity: likes, approving comments, blessings, reposts and people assuring him that there is nothing to forgive.
The supposed penitent becomes the centre of the ceremony.
That turns the entire principle on its head.
Teshuvah requires us to confront ourselves. It requires the uncomfortable recognition that I did something wrong. When another person is involved, it may require the even more uncomfortable experience of going directly to that person and admitting it.
There may be no audience.
There may be no likes, no reposts and no applause.
There may be considerable embarrassment.
Good.
That discomfort is part of what makes genuine teshuvah so different from its performance.
The Problem of Ego
Indeed, I believe that the public catch-all apology creates precisely the spiritual problem it purports to remedy.
Instead of subduing the ego, it can magnify it.
Instead of saying privately to another Jew, “I have examined my behaviour and recognise that I wronged you,” the public declaration can effectively say, “Everyone look at my righteousness as I publicly demonstrate my humility.”
Humility displayed for an audience is a dangerous contradiction.
I cannot know the kavvanah in another person's heart, and I do not pretend to know why any particular individual publishes such a statement. That belongs between that person and G-D.
But I can say what these performances communicate to me when I encounter them, and I can say what Halakhah requires.
The two are not the same thing.
No Camera, No Audience
If I have wronged Reuven, I need to speak to Reuven.
If I owe Shimon money, a post asking the Internet to forgive me does not repay Shimon.
If I embarrassed Levi publicly, asking thousands of unrelated people for forgiveness does not restore Levi's dignity.
And if I have genuinely forgotten an offence or unknowingly caused hurt, a general expression of regret may have some human value. But it cannot be transformed into a substitute for addressing the wrongs of which I am actually aware.
The essential work of teshuvah therefore takes place somewhere social media finds profoundly uninteresting.
No camera.
No audience.
No likes.
No reposts.
No public demonstration of one's piety.
Just one human being standing before another and accepting responsibility.
And ultimately, one soul standing before G-D.
Perhaps one of the most appropriate preparations for Yom HaKipurim is therefore not to tell the world how sorry we are.
It is to find the people to whom we actually owe an apology — and tell them.
That is not performative piety.
That is teshuvah.