By Amy Hirshberg Lederman, Special to JTNews
The week before Passover I gave a talk in Florida called “Got Guilt?” to a large group of Jewish women. I called my mother before I got on the plane to say goodbye, like I always do. She was quiet, in a surly sort of way, so I knew something was wrong.
“Okay, Mom, what’s up?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing, really. Except that I’m sure you told me you couldn’t come to New Jersey for our seder because you didn’t want to travel so much anymore. And now you’re going to Florida where none of your family lives. But suit yourself.”
I hung up the phone and thought, “Gee, I really don’t need to prepare for this talk. I can just call my mother and put her on speakerphone for a half-hour.”
We have all heard jokes about Jewish guilt, especially relating to Jewish mothers. It’s a topic that everyone can relate to, at least everyone I know. But what is guilt? And is there really such a thing as “Jewish guilt” that differs from generic “I feel awful because I just finished a pint of Ben and Jerry’s” guilt?
I started my research about guilt by asking people I know what they feel guilty about. Ellen feels guilty because she doesn’t call her mother enough, but Janet feels guilty because her 24-year-old daughter can’t do anything without calling her first to check in. Gayle feels guilty because she constantly cheats on her diet while David feels guilty if he doesn’t eat everything on his plate because his father is a Holocaust survivor. Ron feels guilty because he works too much and doesn’t spend enough time with his children, yet Emily feels guilty that she caters too much to her kids’ schedules and has turned them into tyrants.
Boiled down to its simplest terms, guilt is that feeling that haunts us when our ideal of who we should be or what we should do differs from the reality of who we really are. It can be found in any place, relationship or action in our lives — from the food we eat or don’t eat, to the things we say or don’t say, to the religious traditions we observe or don’t observe.
Conventional guilt generally emerges from feelings of low self-esteem and negative self-worth. From my anecdotal research, I found that most people suffer from two types of guilt, which I define as the “not enough” and the “too much” guilt syndromes.
The “not enough” syndrome is when we feel badly about things like not doing enough for others, not spending enough time with family, not exercising enough, and my personal favorite — not feeling guilty enough! The “too much” syndrome surfaces from things like spending too much, eating too much, working too much, or complaining too much as well as from feeling that we have too much but don’t really deserve it.
Jewish guilt is different. It is born from a moral awareness and evolves through feelings of obligation to something bigger than us. Whether it is a sense of responsibility to the Jewish people, Israel, God, special foods or traditions, Jews feel guilty on a regular basis. In fact, we have 613 “guilt trippers” (a.k.a. mitzvot) to contend with as well as guilt that is institutionalized as part of the Jewish calendar and liturgy.
Every year on Rosh Hashanah and during the following 10 Days of Awe (Yomim Norim), we are required to ask ourselves soul-searching questions, the answers to which often make us feel guilty. Questions like: Am I living a meaningful life? Am I on the right path? Am I being kind enough, giving enough, caring enough to those around me? Can I be better person — a more compassionate friend, attentive daughter or supportive spouse?
Then on Yom Kippur, we pound our chests during the service and say, “I am guilty of this, I am guilty of that” and recite, in alphabetical order, sins ranging from arrogance and bigotry to slander and xenophobia. We even acknowledge sins we have never committed, in a sort of “sinning solidarity” with our Jewish brothers and sisters. No one is singled out as being more culpable or reprehensible than anyone else. We say, as a community, that we haven’t done our best and by saying it together, we acknowledge that all of us are human, flawed, and make mistakes.
Is this form of guilt necessarily a bad thing? Jewish guilt can be a healthy response if we use it as our tradition intended — as a catalyst for change. As Jews, we have a mechanism that can make us not only feel better, but become better people and better Jews. That tool is called teshuvah, which means turning, changing, repenting. Our rabbis understood that the most optimistic thing about humanity is our capacity to change. Teshuvah recognizes that all of us, no matter how rich or poor, young or old, observant or secular, have the potential to change. And each year we acknowledge that it is never too late to get it right.
Judaism has a four-point plan for change that is as wise and effective as any I’ve heard from modern day gurus. I call it A.A.R.P., which stands for Ask, Answer, Regret and Prepare. Ask yourself hard personal questions, answer them honestly, regret what you have done and express it to those you have hurt, and prepare to make meaningful changes.
Change is always hard, but committing to positive change is what makes us realize that we have the power, throughout our lives, to live with meaning and purpose. Jewish guilt is meant to inspire us to be able to make positive changes. Our sages said it beautifully when they wrote: “The loudest sound in the universe is that of a person breaking an old, negative behavior and putting a new, positive one it its place.”