Dance of Forgiveness - Kol Nidre

We’ve all been hurt at some point in our lives, and it’s natural to cling to our resentments. But schlepping resentments is like getting up every morning and filling a big wheelbarrow with old garbage and bringing it into the new day. If a husband or wife, or two siblings, or friends carry resentment, if they do not forgive each other, love is unlikely to survive, no matter how deeply the two people once cared for each other.

This speech describes the steep price we pay for holding on to resentment and asks us to have the courage to forgive. Yet while many would love to forgive, they find it too difficult. This speech provides five strategies and insights from Torah and Chassidus to help us work through our anger and find a path to forgiveness.

• Along the way, we encounter:
• The saddest love story in the Bible
• The Rabbi who daringly disobeyed the king
• How Jerusalem’s Shaar Ha’Ashpot (Dung Gate) got its name
• The surprising etymology of mechilah (forgiveness)
• The Rabbi who just couldn’t apologize
• The husband who just couldn’t win
• The critical life lesson from the effects of toxic waste near Niagara Falls
• What to engrave in sand and what to engrave in stone
• Why atheists find it harder to forgive

Today, we stand at the gate leading to a New Year. We want to enter it pure.  So, we ask G-d to wash off those resentments, those grudges, and that lingering anger. As they melt away, may we dance together as one people, into a sweet New Year.