Three months ago, I was violently assaulted and abused by my girlfriend in the middle of the night. We are both Jewish. (What a shanda!)We are going through the criminal courts as I speak.
I am over the relationship. But I feel that I must forgive her to move on with my life and allow new love into my heart. How do I forgive one who so viciously assaulted and abused me?

only with Gods grace can we do the impossible. it is good you are able to talk about it. it is the first step. i wish you good luck on your quest and i will keep you in my prayers. smiles….bella

I just moved to an ethnic neighborhood in a large city in the Midwest, and the ethnicity is not Jewish. I moved across the country on a day’s notice, leaving car behind, because I’d been out of work for months and the job came with free use of a house. In a rough neighborhood, but you can be and do a lot of good in a rough neighborhood, and at least it is heated and they stocked the pantry for me.
The temples here are generous to newcomers, but I’m thinking bus, two transfers, rough neighborhoods, ten miles, I should let someone else benefit from tickets. But I am out of clean socks so late Friday afternoon I decide, if I can’t be holy, I can at least not be stinky. I go to the laundromat about 5 o’clock.
I am by myself for 45 minutes, until in walks a white man with a shaved head and an attitude. With only me there, he starts shouting in a Fundamentalist preacher’s style, “Adolf Hitler was right. We need to band together to kill all the N—–s, Jews, and towel heads all over the world to make it safe for white people.”
I’m thinking, “Better I had taken the bus to temple.”
Anyway, I decide to let the man go on, and it turns out he is recruiting for the KKK. He reveals he has “a large can of stew” in the bottom of the garbage sack to hit someone with and a large butcher knife, too. I’m thinking, “Yes, much better I had taken the bus to temple.” At some point I ask him a simple “What happened to you?”
It turns out he says, and I can believe it, assaulted when he took the same bus downtown, beaten on the head. The prosecutors ignored his case, he lost his job, he did not qualify for disability. He was facing tough times and responding with hate–a totally ineffective hate, unless you happened to be the unfortunate in range of his can of stew.
He never thought to ask if I might be a Jew. As it happens, I have an ancestor, a great-great grandparent who was Black and Jewish. But I let him speak his peace and wished him peace as I went out the door. Maybe I should have said, “Shalom,” but there was the can of stew and the butcher knife thing.
I don’t know what the lessons are here. Next year, I definitely intend to go to temple. And if I am the only Jew in America who took a job for $7 a hour plus a house, well, maybe I can have some good influence in this neighborhood of unfortunates.

It’s so grace!

“And may everything that hurts us also be a little funny.”
Thanks for sharing that with us, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield. Sometimes we need to stop taking things so seriously and be able to laugh at ourselves.

It’s not always so simple to turn devastating events into “funny” though. Granted in relationships it does usually take two to tango- and noone is perfect. But matters of love and trust in long term relationships are hardly a laughing matter. I am not jewish, but an open-minded Christian who was partnered in a same-sex relationship with someone jewish. I would literally have trusted this person with my life, without question. We were together for almost ten years. But a couple of “small” habits became “big” habits, and in one case unhealthy and unsafe. By becoming more firm in my concern and dislike for this habit, my dear partner moved out when I was out of town. I had not been mentioning this because I was a “control freak”- and certainly not because I wanted my partner to leave. But because it needed to be addressed in order for our relationship to be healthy, and our spirituality and bond to grow. Well five years have gone by, and it has been a heartbreaker for me. Many times I have questioned whether or not I did the right thing, but sometimes we have to take a stand not only for our own comfort and security, but hopefully for their’s too. Rabbi Hirschfield, I have learned to laugh at myself more often, and it is definitely good for the heart and soul. I know and understand that I cannot make choices for others, nor would I want to be responsible for the one’s they make. It helps to lighten up, and hope we all find some valuable lessons, blessings, and prayers to guide our future in a “happy” direction.

there is a lovely universality to this post, underscoring our similarities over our differences… I’m going to read it to my yoga class tonight comprised of people from all walks of life and beliefs. Shanti! and thanks for sharing… Diane