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Hello, I'm Rabbi Maderer from
Congregation Rodeph Shalom

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in Philadelphia, and I
am grateful to be here

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in conversation with
the Reform Movement

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and with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
about her newest book

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On Repentance and Repair:
Making Amends in an Unapologetic

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World.

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Rabbi Ruttenberg,
your book lays out

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so much brokenness in
this world in our lives,

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in our relationships.

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And yet at the same time
through Jewish wisdom,

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it really provides a
path into hope and repair

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and possibility.

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To start us off, can you give
us a definition of t'shuvah.

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T'shuvah is a Hebrew
word that is often

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translated as repentance,
but it actually

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really means returning.

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Like, you in Hebrew
might buy a bus ticket.

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That's haloch v'shuv right, a
going there and a coming back,

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that we're coming back to where
we were meant to be all along.

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T'shuvah is also an
answer to a question.

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So it's a way of coming
back to finding the answers

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to the person that we wanted to
be, to living in our integrity,

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to living in connection
with other people,

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to living in connection
with the divine to living

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in harmony with our
integrity and our values.

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So if the work of t'shuvah is
really the work of the person

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who has done wrong, who has
committed a transgression

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or harmed someone else,
how is it that in the work

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of t'shuvah we are centering the
victim and the victim's needs?

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So the work of naming and
owning the harm that we have

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caused if it's really just
about us, if it's about me,

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me, me, I've done wrong,
I'm so bad, it's all me,

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and we're not really looking
at the person who was hurt

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and really getting what
we did and caring for them

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and really trying to figure
out how we have impacted them

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and how we can try to
the best we can repair

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the hole in the cosmos
that we have created

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and to attend to their needs
and to become the kind of people

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who don't do this thing
ever again to anyone else,

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then we're not doing
the work of repentance.

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We're doing, sort of,
a egocentric exercise.

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And so if our repentance work
does not at all times take

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the victim, the person
who has been impacted's

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needs and care and concern into
account first and foremost,

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then something's missing.

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Now there's the victim who's
been directly impacted,

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but then there may
be indirect impact

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or some kind of witnessing.

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So what are the
layers of impact?

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I mean, it's contextual, right.

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If there's something
that happens

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inside a marriage and the only
two people who are impacted

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are the two people inside
that marriage, that's

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one kind of harm and
one kind of repair work

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that's going to be involved.

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But so often in our world,
harm isn't just the, sort of,

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simple equation, right.

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There is the person
who caused harm.

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There is a person
who is affected.

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There are witnesses
to the harm who

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may be receiving cues about
what's OK and what's not OK.

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There may be witnesses to the
harm who are harmed indirectly

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because they are now put on
notice that suddenly this

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is not a safe space
for them either, right,

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and this is not a
safe culture for them.

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And their own concerns will
not be believed or cared for.

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There may be people whose own
past traumas are triggered,

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and a culture of what is safe
and not safe may be created.

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And if we're thinking
about institutional trust,

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there may be people whose
sense of safety and belief

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in an institution
may be impacted

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by the nature of the harm.

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If we're thinking about a
cultural or national level,

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it has the potential to
shape entire systems of power

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and who has power and how
that power is wielded.

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Now we're using the term
victim, and I've also

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seen the term survivor
or impacted individual

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or targeted individual.

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How are you
approaching your terms?

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It's complicated,
and there is not

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one right magical
answer that's going

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to address every situation.

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I tend to use victim
as an umbrella term

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because there are so many
different kinds of situations

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And so many different
types of harm, right.

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Forgetting to pick
you up at the airport

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and stepping on your foot
are some kinds of harm,

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and systemic racism and sexual
abuse are other kinds of harm.

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And it's hard to describe
them all in one word, right.

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Some people choose to
use the word survivor

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to describe their experience
of coming through trauma.

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And the decision to use that
word is often very personal.

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And for some people
it denotes a process

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of getting through healing.

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And that's really powerful.

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And of course, if that
is the correct word

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to describe your
experience, then

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absolutely you should use it.

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And I try not to
be presumptuous,

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and so I tend to use victim
as a more umbrella term

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to describe someone who has been
impacted or injured by harm.

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And we all do harm.

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We're human beings.

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We are imperfect.

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And so we are blessed
in our Jewish lives

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that we have this
guidance from Maimonides

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and from our tradition.

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Can you tell us how does
Maimonides guide us?

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When I read the
Laws of Repentance,

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I see five distinct steps
that really take someone

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through a process
of repentance work.

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OK, what are the five steps?

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So we've got confession, right.

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Own the harm fully
that you have caused.

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Then we have starting
to change, right.

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Begin to do the work to
become the different person

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and the kind of person
who doesn't do that thing.

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Amends, right, what do
you need to do to repair

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the situation that you caused.

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Then apology and we'll
talk in a moment about why

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apology is so late in the game.

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And then the fifth
and final step

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is when you have the chance
to make that same injurious

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choice, you do
something different.

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You make different choices.

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You naturally and organically
through all the work

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of repentance and repair have
become the kind of person

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who chooses in a different way.

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