By Shirah Bell, Director of Everyday Holiness Program

Learning From Resentment

We are now entering the period of preparation for the High Holidays. Before Yom Kippur, when we pray for forgiveness as a community, we are instructed to apologize to others for mistakes we’ve made and to inform others that they have hurt us and ask them to apologize.
 
Sometimes I have noticed myself hoping that a particular person would come to me to ask for forgiveness for a wrong I felt they had done to me, and I am disappointed when they do not come to me. I notice that I feel it would be petty of me to make my complaint directly or that making the complaint would make me vulnerable. However, in this frame of mind, I am not able to let go of the resentment. Maybe you have situations in your life like that.

Rav Shlomo Wolbe z”l writes extensively about this subject in his chapter on “hakpadah” [resentment] in Alei Shur vol. 2.  He urges us to recognize the tendencies we have toward resentment and anger. He writes that while an outburst of anger is bad, keeping things down and suppressing true negative emotions towards others is even worse. The source for this can be found in Leviticus 19:17: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.”

Maimonides in Hilchot Deot (Laws of Attitudes 6:6-7) explains, “It is a commandment to make one's hatred known to the person who wronged one and to ask him why he did what he did and why he wronged one in the way that he did.” He writes that if one has a complaint against a friend it is a mitzvah to express that complaint. Only if he is able to completely remove the complaint from his heart – not merely suppress it! – is he allowed to not voice his displeasure for what his friend did.  

I asked myself how I would apply this principle in my own life.  A close relative of mine immediately came to mind. I sent him an email shortly after 9/11 suggesting a prayer be said, and he wrote back a harsh reply which included the statement “I don’t want to hear any more about this.” I was shocked and vowed not to write to him about that, and further to stop communicating with him. After all, who does he think he is? You get the drift.

How could I bring this up with my relative? Maybe he’d already forgotten all about it. Would I sound like a childish complainer?

I realized that before I could say anything to him, I needed to be clear about my own responsibility in the matter. I studied the middah of responsibility (achrayut) which led me to realize that I had blamed him in my heart and hadn’t taken the time to see things from his point of view. I had written him off, going away to lick my imagined wounds.

I embarked on a Mussar inventory of middot that could possibly have been off balance. The most obvious was compassion. If I imagined myself in his shoes, I might well have done what he had done. A close second was humility. I probably sounded like I was pontificating or patronizing. After doing some work on those middot, I got clear that I too needed to make an apology. With that recognition, I felt free to call him and ask for his apology as well. We had a loving conversation, I learned something about how he saw the world, and we made some promises about handling future interactions. No longer did I carry hatred in my heart.

I invite you to find one person to whom you bear resentment, and in the next month use your Mussar practices to prepare your heart. If you can eradicate hakpadah completely, mazal tov! If not, prepare yourself to speak with the person and ask for an apology.

If you would like to discuss this approach or have questions, contact me at shirah@mussarinstitute.org.

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