A meditation for your Friday evening. Forgiveness is not automatic, it requires the offender to make genuine amends.
Full text below the cut.
Forgiveness (mechilah) is an expectation of the offended person but only if the sinner is actually repentant.
Maimonides is decisive on this subject: “The offended person is prohibited from being cruel in not offering mechilah, for this is not the way of the seed of Israel. Rather, if the offender has [resolved all material claims and has] asked and begged for forgiveness once, even twice, and if the offended person knows that the other has done repentance for sin and feels remorse for what was done, the offended person should offer the sinner mechilah” (Maimonides, Mishne Torah, “‘Hilchot Chovel u-Mazzik,” 5:10).
For example, a woman who has been battered by her husband, or abused by her father, is not obliged to grant such a person mechilah unless he has, first, desisted from all abusive activity; second, reformed his character through analysis of sin, remorse, restitution, and confession; and third, actually asked for forgiveness several times. Only then, after ascertaining that he is sincere in his repentance, would a woman in such a situation be morally bound, though not legally obligated, to offer the offender mechilah.
The principle that mechilah ought to be granted only if deserved is the great Jewish "No" to easy forgiveness.
