Forgiveness. I don't know whether you've ever noticed, but Chuvat, the whole cycle of repentance and forgiveness,

plays no part in the early dramas of humankind. It doesn't in the story of Adam and Eve.

As for Cain, God mitigates his punishment but doesn't forgive him for his crime.

There is no call to repentance to the generation of the flood, or the builders of Babel, or the

people of Saddam and the cities of the plain. The first time God forgives is after the sin of the

golden calf. He hears Moses' prayer and agrees, although this is a stiff-necked

people, said Moses, forgive our wickedness and our sins, and take us as your inheritance. And God did.

Moses pleaded again to him after the sin of the spies. Forgive the sin of this people, just as you have pardoned

them from the time they left Egypt until now, and God replied, Salachi Kidvarecha, I have forgiven them as you asked.

So the question is, why the change? Why does God forgive in the book of Exodus, but not in the book of Genesis? The answer,

I think, is extraordinary, and it made a huge difference to me when I realized it. You see,

the first recorded instance of forgiveness in all of literature is the moment when Joseph, by then

viceroy of Egypt, revealed his identity to his

brothers, who had long before sold him as a slave. He forgave them. He said it wasn't you, it was God.

He said, don't be distressed or angry with yourselves for selling me here because it was to save

lives that God sent me ahead of you. And it wasn't only then that Joseph forgave them.

After their father Jacob had died, the brothers were anxious that now Joseph would take revenge,

and once again Joseph forgave.

And on that note, Safferbureeshit, the book of Genesis, ends.

God didn't forgive human beings until human beings learned to forgive one another. It took

Joseph to bring forgiveness into the world, and that is what God was waiting for. Had God forgiven

first, he would have made the human situation worse, not better. People would have said, why shouldn't I harm others? After all, God forgives. We have to forgive others before God can forgive us. So before Yom Kippur, take time to apologize to others you may have offended. Forgive others who offended you. Resentment is a very heavy load to

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