Two Jewish Boomers Visit Germany and Talk About Forgiveness

For the video of this episode, go to https://youtu.be/NFNHWEpG2nM.

In my book Betrayal and Forgiveness, I define forgiveness as an “inside job.” Among other things, that means that you can forgive people who have committed acts of pure evil—because forgiving just means you can think about what happened without being consumed by anger or panic. Forgiveness is about healing yourself. To paraphrase Anne Lamott, forgiveness gets the rat poison out of you. Then you can think about how to handle the rat.

Defined in that way, forgiveness has essentially nothing to do with your relationship with whoever hurt you. You can forgive people you still don’t trust. You can forgive people you’ll still divorce, or sue, or prosecute. You can even forgive people you went to war against, and would do so again if necessary.

I commented in the book that this implies that I, a Jew, could forgive the Nazis.

Well, Judy and I put that to the test. We returned recently from a Jewish heritage trip to Germany. It was…well, listen and see what you think!

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Bruce’s latest book, Betrayal and Forgiveness: How to Navigate the Turmoil and Learn to Trust Again is available! More information at https://brucechalmer.com/betrayal-and-forgiveness/. And here’s the link to leave a review.