Cancel Culture and Forgiveness - Yom Kippur Sermon

One of the most tragic characters in all of Jewish literature is a Rabbi named Elisha Ben Abuya, though the Jewish tradition does not see him this way. In fact, according to our ancient Rabbis, Elisha is the ultimate villainous. And like any good villain, he has an origin story. 

One day, Elisha ben Abuya is walking down the street and hears a father ask his son to go to the top of a tree and gather eggs for him. As the boy begins to head toward the tree, his father reminds him to shoo away the mother bird so she won’t have the anguish of seeing her young taken. 

According to the Jewish tradition, this boy deserves merit for his actions. Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, only two promise the reward of a long life: honoring your parents and sending away the mother bird when collecting her eggs. By all accounts this boy had done both. He must have great things coming to him. 

That’s why, when the boy tragically slipped and fell coming off the ladder, dying in the process, Elisha could not contain himself. He looked at the shocked father and exclaimed, “There is no justice, and there is no judge.” Or to put it another way, God is dead, there is no order to the world. 

Quickly, Elisha ben Abuya became a pariah. In his world, no one could question God, let alone deny God’s existence. He was immediately cast out of the community. In fact, the Rabbinic leadership decried that henceforth, no one should utter his name. He would forever be known as Acher, the other one, Voldemort's precursor, the first “he who shall not be named.” 

The reason I called Elisha’s life a tragedy is that the same religion that developed the ideas of the High Holy Days – namely, that no one is beyond reproach and that everyone has a pathway toward forgiveness and reconciliation – casts him out. Elisha is not embraced in his questioning. He is not brought back into the fold. He is ostracized and alienated. To employ an anachronism, he is canceled. 

Whether you know the term “canceling” or not, you have seen it at play in today’s discourse. It's the attempt to erase a person, often a publish figure, from society.  You might stop buying a person’s books because of something they said in an interview or delete their music because of a tweet you find offensive. And you might advocate that those you know do the same. In fact, “canceling” has become such a central part of our society that Miriam Webster added it as a definition to the verb “to cancel” in 2019. It is no longer just slang. 

Though the term “cancel culture” has become politicized and is often used by as a sort a cuddle by public figures to deflect against repercussions when they are called out for their words and action, the sentiment behind the term stands. Today we are quick to punish those who offend us without a pathway back into our good graces. 

Earlier this year, Harper’s magazine published an open letter by some of the world’s top academics entitled “A letter on Justice and Open Debate” where they condemned the troubling trend of “swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.” 

They continue by citing the many instances where this takes place, “Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.” 

The publishing of the letter was met with mixed response. Many people lauded the commitment of these writers to open dialogue and free speech. Judaism has always supported open debate. We should be in conversation with those we disagree. After all, we are told, that when two scholars debate, they are like two flints who strike against each other, both getting sharper in the process. 

However, others condemned the letter. As they explain, we only have a limited number of tools at our disposal to effect change. And if someone gets their cultural currency by others paying attention to us then sometimes the only way to get them to listen is to place our attention elsewhere, thus ignoring them.  

In fact, “canceling” is and has always been at the heart of the way marginalized communities have sought progress. In fact, some scholars draw straight lines between today’s cancel culture and that of the civil right’s movement. As Anne Charity Hudley, the chair of linguistics of African America for the University of California Santa Barbara has said, canceling is ““a survival skill as old as the Southern black use of the boycott.” Continuing in an interview with Vox, Hudley explains, ““Canceling is a way to acknowledge that you don’t have to have the power to change structural inequality. You don’t even have to have the power to change all of public sentiment. But as an individual, you can still have power beyond measure.” 

Elu v’elu divrei Elohim Chayim, says our Talmud 

Both opinions are the words of the living God.  

Indeed, both the authors of the Harper’s letter and professor Hudley are correct. Our current moment necessitates that we use every apparatus possible to advocate for a better world, yet at the same time, we live in a toxic culture that does not always distinguish between hate speech and honest dialogue, between fair and unfair critique, between a position in need of education and one in need of eradication.  

And because of that, because people are so vitriolic online and because the apparatus for punishing even minor infractions is so harsh, many are afraid to voice their opinion if at all controversial. Case in point, in April 2019, the New York Times published in its international edition a horribly anti-Semitic cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu depicted as a dog with a Jewish collar, being walked by a Kippah-wearing Donald Trump. The blowback against them was swift and warranted. And though it was later discovered that this mistake was one by a rouge editor and caused insufficient checks on the content of their international editions, the Times had tasted the wrath of the masses. Apologies were not enough and attacks continued well after the crisis had been addressed.  

Then, two months later, the Times announced that they would no longer run cartoons in either their international or domestic papers. Knowing that they were likely to cross boundaries when dealing with politics and humor, they decided it would just be safer to avoid any controversy and stay away from the attention of twitter’s mobs and trolls. Lamenting this decision, PEN America, who advocates for free speech wrote: 

Free speech and open discourse demands an understanding that mistakes and offenses will occur, and a determination that these not be answered by shutting down expression to avert future lapses. In an age of fast-evolving social mores and heightened awareness of offenses, political cartooning has become a risky business. But if outlets like the New York Times retreat from this unique potent form of political commentary, it may hasten the death of a form that has contributed immensely to our political conversation over time. 

I’m sure by now you are asking yourself why I am preaching a sermon about “cancel culture” on the High Holy Days? The answer is simple. At the core of how we respond to others when they offend, hurt, or alienate us is the duel notions of their Teshuvah, their repentance, and our forgiveness. 

As I mentioned before, it’s OK to turn up the heat from time to time, to call out, to castigate, even to cancel. What makes cancel culture problematic is not that it happens, but that we as a society do not provide an avenue for someone to return from it, to become uncanceled, to climb back into our good graces. And to learn how to do that, we need look no further than our sacred Jewish sources. 

For centuries, Jews have wrestled with notions of forgiveness. There is little question that our tradition speaks unequivocally about the need to forgive. In fact, so important is forgiveness that our Rabbis teach “one who overcomes their natural tendencies [to hold onto a grudge] and instead forgives [finds all his] sins are forgiven. (Rosh Hashanah 17a).  

However, not everyone who asks is deserving of forgiveness. Writing about the importance of forgiveness, Maimonides lays out the steps one must take before they can reasonably assume others will let them back in. He writes: 

The offended person is prohibited from being cruel in not offering forgiveness, 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 forgiveness (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Chovel u-Mazzik, 5:10). 

Take a minute and notice what he says. Forgiveness is an imperative but only after a person is truly contrite. They may have to pay back money, they may have to try multiple times, they must prove that they have changed, but at that point it cruel not to bring them back. We move from the victim to the victimizer when we deny a person a pathway to redemption. 

Today, it’s not always easy to know if a person has authentically changed. We live in an era of canned apologies. Often the news cycle moves so quickly that a person can wait it out, assuming that people will forget about their missteps. Others will employ PR teams to remedy their tarnished image rather than face the hard work of actually earning back their community's trust. 

But most of us need and want to be forgiven and we are willing to take the steps to do that. 

In her book, Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, outlined a number of factors we should consider when deciding when to bring someone back into the fold.  

She first asks: are you persuaded by their contrition? I think most of us by know can sniff out an insincere apology. They include lines like “I’m sorry you feel that way” or “I’m sorry if I offended you.” It shirks ownership and turns the onus on the offended.  But if it’s truly a sincere apology we should be able to listen with whole heart. We should see a person, open and ready to face their mistake, willing to learn what comes next. 

Next, we have to ask if the offending behavior is departure from a person’s character or indicative of it. She asks, should a professor who has no history of racism and who accidently insults a student of color be treated the same as someone with a proven record of bigoty? “Should a single offensive slip by a television anchor mean that the person goes off the air permanently?” No one is beyond forgiveness, but a person with ingrained beliefs or behaviors deserves a longer road toward redemption than one who simply makes a mistake. Unfortunately, our current climate does not usually make this distinction. 

Finally, she asks us to look at what the person has done to earn absolution. Have they simply apologized and expected society to move on or have they worked at it, pro-actively seeking to right their wrong. To illustrate this point, Nossel pointed to comedian Tracy Morgan, who was called out for a “homophobic riff onstage.” Not only did Morgan issue an apology, but he “met with representatives of LGBTQ organizations, recorded an anti-bullying ad, and spearheaded an episode of his regular television show 30 rock, that fictionalized his transgression and made fun of his apology.” Today, because of his hard work, Morgan is well on the way to rehabilitating his image. 

I know that these steps won’t work for everyone. There are countless examples in the Jewish tradition of people who cannot achieve absolution. Their sins were too great or their obstinacy was an obstacle to change.  I’m sure you would agree that someone like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby could work for the rest of their lives and not get back to where they were before their misdeeds were discovered. In their case, the finitude of time will ensure they remain perpetually canceled. But for every Cosby or Weinstein, there’s someone else waiting before an open door, excited to walk through toward forgiveness, if society would only let them in. 

We cannot every wash our hands of anyone.  

Last night, each of us heard a prayer uttered before the Cantor sang Kol Nidre inviting in a group known as the avaryanim to pray with us: 

By the authority of the heavenly court and of the earthly court: with the consent of God and this congregation, we give permission to pray with avaryanim, with sinners in our midst. 

So who are these sinners? 

Scholars think that they are those who have faced excommunication. They are like Elisha Ben Abuya. Society has canceled them. And for one night, they are all invited to return. Every single one of them is permitted into the synagogue to sit among friends, pray beside family, feel the community that has turned them away. 

One has to imagine the power of this moment. For one night, everyone is back in. And sitting next to their neighbor, suddenly the humanity of the outcast is on full display. How much that must have galvanized those in attendance to seek reconciliation and move toward forgiveness. 

Today we don’t have this practice. In fact, most of us never see the people we call out. We hit send on an email, cancel a subscription, or sign a petition and we are done with them for life. They are acher, some unnamed other to which we give no second thought. 

But there is wisdom in our ancestor’s Yom Kippur practice. Today, I want to challenge you to think about who you want to bring in. Who are you ready to engage, who are you ready to forgive?  

There is power in remaining part of the conversation. Each of us has a choice to preach from the outside or teach from within. Ostracizing another may offer a catalyst for change but it won’t cement it. People will not grow if they feel attacked by you. But they will listen to you forever if you speak to them with love.