The Veil that Reveals the False Ones

Abstract

Forgiveness does not turn back time, nor does it delete words and deeds. But it has the power to make us reborn, to raise us to new life, to collect and receive our hurt body and turn it into a new and different one, where the scars are replaced by a face shining with light. The earth is still alive because every morning there are people who, forgiving and accepting forgiveness, are capable of new alliances after great betrayals, of writing new promises on new tablets after the first had been broken by our wickedness. It is also the capacity to forgive and restart that really makes something immense out of the human being, who is ‘little lower than the heavenly beings’ (Psalm 8). If there is a time when women and men are truly worthy of their divine image it is when they forgive. Forgiveness is the spiritual act that is closest to the creative act of God, because it re-creates our relationships from the nothingness where we let it fall and it generates new alliances.

Between the separate commandments were noted down all the precepts of the Torah in all their particulars, although the tables were not more than six hands in length and as much in width. It is another of the attributes of the tables, that although they are fashioned out of the hardest stone, they can still be rolled up like a scroll. When God handed the tables to Moses, He seized them by the top third, whereas Moses took hold of the bottom third, but one third remained open, and it was in this way that the Divine radiance was shed upon Moses’ face.

(L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Vol. 3).