There are rare moments when the world changes and a new possibility is born: when the Wright brothers achieved the first man-made flight in 1903; or in 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon; or when five thousand years ago someone discovered that marks made in clay with a stick could, when the clay dried, become permanent signs, and thus writing and civilization were born.

The birth of forgiveness is one such moment. It is one of the most radical ideas ever to have been introduced into the moral imagination of humankind. Forgiveness is an action that is not a reaction. It breaks the cycle of stimulus-response, harm and retaliation, wrong and revenge, which has led whole cultures to their destruction and still threatens the future of the world. It frees individuals from the burden of their past, and humanity from the irreversibility of history. It tells us that enemies can become friends.

Forgiveness, writes David Konstan in an important philo­sophical study, did not exist before Judaism.¹ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). It is, on the face of it, an odd claim to make. Surely every culture has a need to avoid the sheer ­destructiveness of anger and vengeance that arises in every society when one person wrongs another. That is true, but not every society develops the idea of forgiveness. The ancient Greeks, for example, did not. Instead they had something else often mistaken for forgiveness, namely the appeasement of anger.

footnotes: ¹ David Konstan, Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea

When someone harms someone else, the victim is angry and seeks revenge. This is clearly dangerous for the perpetrator who will then seek to calm the victim and move on. They may make excuses: It wasn’t me, it was someone else. Or, it was me but I couldn’t help it. Or, it was me but it was a small wrong, and I have done you much good in the past, so that on balance you should let it pass.

Alternatively, or in conjunction with these other strategies, the perpetrator may beg, plead and perform some ritual of abasement or humiliation. This is a way of saying to the victim, “I am not really a threat.” The Greek word sungnome, sometimes translated as forgiveness, really means, says Konstan, exculpation or absolution. It is not that I forgive you for what you did, but that I understand why you did it – you were caught up in circumstances beyond your control – or, alternatively, I do not need to take revenge because you have now shown by your deference to me that you hold me in proper respect. My dignity has been restored. The result of excuse or self-abasement is that, in the phrase of the book of Esther, “the anger of the king abated” (7:10). Appeasement is a way of defusing anger but it is not repentance and it does not lead to forgiveness.

There is a classic example of this in the Torah itself. In Genesis 32–33, Jacob is terrified at the prospect of his meeting with Esau. Twenty-two years earlier, Jacob had fled into exile after taking Esau’s blessing and hearing that his brother had vowed to kill him as soon as their father was dead. Now they are about to meet. Jacob hears that Esau is coming with a force of four hundred men. His response is a paradigm case of appeasement. He sends Esau gifts, accompanied by messengers. When Esau finally appears he abases himself, prostrating himself seven times to the ground. Repeatedly he calls Esau “my lord” and himself “your servant.” Esau is placated. The two brothers embrace, weep and go their separate ways. Anger has been averted. But between them there has been appeasement, not forgiveness. ­Forgiveness plays no part in the story.

I. The Idea of Freedom

Before forgiveness can enter the world, another world-changing idea had to appear: the idea of human freedom. Despite its centrality to Western thought, freedom – the ability to choose between alternatives and act in accordance with one’s choices – is anything but self-evident and has been challenged in most cultures and ages.

The ancients did not think about it much, and when they did, they were more inclined to deny it than affirm it. The human person was a boat adrift on the waves of an ocean, chaff blown by the wind, a plaything of the gods, a pawn moved by other hands, a slave, not the master, of his fate. We are what we are and we cannot change what we are.

Once our fate has been decided, there is nothing we can do to avoid it. Laius was told by the Delphic oracle that his son would kill him and take his place. Laius tried every way to ensure this would not come about. So did his son, Oedipus. Yet each plan they made to avoid the outcome helped make it happen. This – the idea of moira, inevitability, or ananke, blind fate – is at the heart of Greek tragedy and is central to its bleak view of the human situation.

Free will has been denied many times in history. Spinoza did so in the name of natural necessity: our acts are the result of causes beyond our control. For Marx, the shaper of human behavior was economics; for Freud, the play of unconscious drives; for the neo-Darwinians, our genetically encoded instincts. Science has never given a compelling account of free will. For if there can be a complete scientific account of human behavior, it would tell us that our acts have causes such that we could not have acted other than we did.

Radical unconditioned freedom enters Western civilization in the first chapter of Genesis when the free God freely creates the universe, saying, “Let there be.” Making humankind in His image, after His likeness (see Gen. 1:26–27), He endowed us too with freedom. We may be dust of the earth but there is within us the breath of God. The human person is, as Pico Della Mirandola put it in his Oration on the Dignity of Man, the one being in creation that is neither angel nor beast but can be either depending on his choice. To be human, said Jean-Paul Sartre, is to know that our existence precedes our essence. We have no essence. All we have is choice.

All life was created. Humans alone are creative. Every life-form has drives, inherent instincts of survival. Humans alone are capable of what philosophers call second-order evaluations, deciding which drives to pursue and which not. Other animals act. We alone bear responsibility for our acts because we could have chosen to act otherwise. ­Freedom is God’s greatest gift to humankind but it is also the most fateful and terrifying. For it means that we alone have the power to destroy the work of God.

Genesis tells a troubled story. Gifted with freedom, almost immediately humans betray that gift. Adam and Eve sin. Cain, the first human child, murders Abel his brother. By Genesis 6, the world has become a place of violence and random cruelty, and God regrets He created man. The modern world with its extermination camps and gulags, its oppression and terror, seems hardly to have advanced at all. Technically, humans have excelled. Morally they have failed and continue to fail. For freedom is a double-edged sword. The freedom to do good is inseparable from the freedom to do harm, to commit sin, to practice evil. The problem of evil is the problem of humanity.

Yom Kippur is the answer.

For if freedom means that humans will sin, then God must have accepted in advance that they would sin, which means that He ­provided a mechanism for their forgiveness – a mechanism that, without releasing people from moral responsibility, acknowledges that they can ­recognize that they did wrong, express remorse for the past and dedicate themselves to learning from it and growing thereby, in short, that they can do teshuva. They can repent. This is the meaning of the following remarkable midrash:

Rabbi Yannai said: From the beginning of creation God foresaw the deeds of the righteous and wicked. The earth was void – this refers to the deeds of the wicked. And God said, “Let there be light” – this refers to the deeds of the righteous. And God separated the light from the darkness – this means, the deeds of the righteous from the deeds of the wicked. God called the light “day” – this refers to the deeds of the righteous. The darkness He called “night” – this refers to the deeds of the wicked. And there was evening – the deeds of the wicked. And there was morning – the deeds of the righteous. One day – this means that God gave them [both] a single day. Which was it? Yom Kippur. (Genesis Raba 3:8)

The midrash is based on the observation that the Hebrew text of Genesis calls the first day of creation “yom eĥad,” literally “one day,” when it should have said “yom rishon,” “the first day” (see Numbers Raba 13:6). Evidently, then, the Torah does not mean “the first day.” It means the singular, unique day of days, which in Jewish terms means Yom Kippur.

But the midrash is clearly saying something deeper. It is asserting that divine forgiveness preceded the creation of the first humans, for without a mechanism for repentance, the creation of Homo sapiens does not make sense. Without it, our guilt would accumulate, as it did in the generation of the Flood. There would be no way of mending the past or moving on from it. The human condition would be tragic. We would live weighed down by the burden of remorse, or worse, we would seek to liberate ourselves from the voice of conscience altogether, and we would then become lower than the beasts.

Repentance and atonement alone redeem the human situation, telling us that though “there is no one on earth who is righteous, does only good and never sins” (Eccl. 7:20), still God accepts our fallibility and failures so long as we acknowledge them as such. Indeed, when we grow through our failures, we become greater than those who never failed. “Where penitents stand,” said the sages, “even the perfectly ­righteous cannot stand” (Berakhot 34b).

God gave us freedom, knowing the risks. Because we are free, we bear responsibility for our deeds: we need to repent. But because we are free, we can change, so we are able to repent. This Jewish insistence on freedom – that morally, we become what we choose to be – is one of its greatest contributions to the ethical imagination. Economics may make us rich or poor. Genetics may make us tall or short. But it is our freely made choices that make us good or bad, honest or deceptive, generous or mean-spirited, altruistic or self-centered, patient or irascible, courageous or cowardly, responsible or feckless. Judaism is the world’s great ethic of responsibility, born in the vision of the free God seeking the free ­worship of free human beings honoring the freedom and dignity of others.

God, who made us in love, forgives. Only on this assumption does the creation of humanity make any sense at all.

II. Before God Forgives, Man Must Forgive

Oddly enough, though, it takes time for forgiveness to make its appearance in the Torah. This is strange. If, as the Midrash states and logic ­dictates, God created forgiveness before He made man, why does it play no obvious part in the early stories of Genesis? Did God forgive Adam and Eve? Did God forgive Cain after he had murdered Abel? Not explicitly. He may have mitigated their punishment. Adam and Eve did not immediately die after eating the forbidden fruit. God placed a mark on Cain’s forehead to protect him from being killed by someone else. But mitigation is not the same as forgiveness.

God does not forgive the generation of the Flood, or the builders of Babel, or the sinners of Sodom. Significantly, when Abraham prayed for the people of Sodom he did not ask God to forgive them. His argument was markedly different. He said, “Perhaps there are innocent people there,” maybe fifty, perhaps no more than ten. Their merit should, he implied, save the others, but that is quite different from asking God to forgive the others (Gen. 18).

The first time we encounter a clear instance of forgiveness is when Joseph, by now viceroy of Egypt, finally reveals his identity to his brothers. Years earlier, they had contemplated killing him and eventually sold him as a slave. They have come before him in Egypt twice without ­recognizing who he was. Now he discloses his identity and, while they are silent and in a state of shock, goes on to say these words:

I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. (Gen. 45:4–8)

This is the first recorded moment in history in which one human being forgives another.

So astonishing is this forgiveness that the brothers cannot entirely believe it. Years later, after their father Jacob has died, the brothers come to Joseph fearing that he will now take revenge. They concoct a story:

They sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers for the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. (Gen. 50:16–18)

The brothers understand the word “forgive” – they use it in their speech – but they are uneasy about it. Did Joseph really mean it? Does someone really forgive those who sold him into slavery? Joseph weeps that his brothers haven’t really understood that he meant it when he said it. But he did, then and now.

David Konstan, in Before Forgiveness, identifies this as the first recorded instance of forgiving in history. What he does not make clear is why Joseph forgives. There is nothing accidental about Joseph’s behavior. In fact the whole sequence of events, from the moment the brothers appear before him in Egypt for the first time to the moment when he announces his identity and forgives them, is an intricately detailed account of teshuva, repentance, the key act of Yom Kippur itself.

Recall what happens. Joseph, having been sold into Egypt as a slave, then thrown into prison on a false charge, eventually rises to become second-in-command in Egypt, having successfully interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams. As he predicted, there are seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine and drought. Lacking food, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy grain, and there they meet the viceroy, not recognizing him as their brother. He is, after all, dressed as an Egyptian ruler and goes by the name Tzafenat-Pane’aĥ. Coming before him, they “bowed down to him with their faces to the ground” (Gen. 42:6).

At this point, by the logic of the story, something should happen. As a young man Joseph had dreamed that one day his brothers would bow down to him. They have just done so. We now expect him to announce his identity and tell the brothers to bring Jacob and the rest of the family to Egypt. His dreams would be fulfilled and the story would reach closure.

Eventually this happens, but not without the longest detour in any narrative in the Torah. Seemingly without reason, Joseph embarks on an elaborate and convoluted stratagem whose purpose is initially far from clear. He keeps his identity secret. He accuses the brothers of a crime they have not committed. He says they are spies. He has them imprisoned for three days. Then, holding Simeon as a hostage, he tells them that they must now return home and bring back their youngest brother, Benjamin.

Slowly as the plot unfolds we begin to get a glimpse of what Joseph is doing. He is forcing the brothers to reenact the earlier occasion when they came back to their father with one of their number, Joseph, missing. Note what happens next:

They said to one another, “Truly we are guilty [aval ashemim anaĥnu] because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us….” They did not realize that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter. (Gen. 42:21–23)

An echo of those words, aval ashemim anaĥnu, “truly we are guilty,” will reverberate throughout our prayers on Yom Kippur. They represent the first stage of repentance. The brothers admit they have done wrong and demonstrate remorse.

The brothers duly return with Benjamin. Joseph receives them warmly and has them served with a meal. The food comes from Joseph’s own table, a sign of royal favor. There is only one discrepant note. The text says that Benjamin, the youngest, is served with a portion that is “five times the size” of that of the other brothers (Gen. 43:34). At this stage we do not know why.

The next morning, the brothers are on their way home when an Egyptian officer pursues them, accusing them of stealing a precious silver cup. It has been planted deliberately in Benjamin’s sack. The cup is found and the brothers are brought back. Benjamin has been found with stolen property in his possession. Judah then says this:

What can we say to my lord? What can we say? How can we prove our innocence? God has uncovered your servants’ guilt. We are now my lord’s slaves – we ourselves and the one who was found to have the cup. (Gen. 44:16)

This is the second stage of repentance: confession. Judah does more. He speaks of collective responsibility. This is important. When the brothers sold Joseph into slavery it was Judah who proposed the crime (Gen. 37:26–27) but they were all (except Reuben) complicit in it.

Joseph dismisses Judah’s words: “Only the man who was found to have the cup will become my slave. The rest of you, go back to your father in peace” (42:17). He gives the brothers the opportunity to walk away, leaving Benjamin a slave as they once left Joseph. But Judah, undeterred, mounts a passionate plea to be allowed to take the guilt on himself so that Benjamin can be reunited with his father: “So now let me remain as your slave in place of the lad. Let the lad go back with his brothers!” (42:33). It is at this point that Joseph breaks down, discloses his identity and forgives his brothers.

The reason is clear. Judah, who had many years earlier sold Joseph as a slave, is now willing to become a slave so that his brother Benjamin can go free. He has just demonstrated what the Talmud and Maimonides define as complete repentance, namely when circumstances repeat themselves and you have an opportunity to commit the same offense again, but you refrain from doing so because you have changed.² 86b; Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 2:1.

footnotes: ² Yoma

We now, in retrospect, understand Joseph’s entire strategy. With great care and precision he has set up a controlled experiment to see whether the brothers have changed. Will they abandon Benjamin as they once abandoned Joseph? Like Joseph, Benjamin is a son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel who died young. The brothers – sons of the ­less-loved Leah or the handmaids – might be expected to be jealous of Benjamin as they were of Joseph. And just as Joseph had his “many-colored coat” (37:3), so Benjamin at the feast is given five times as much as the others. Will they be provoked by envy yet again?

The parallel is complete. The brothers are free to repeat their crime and no one would blame them. It was, after all, the Egyptian ruler who seized Benjamin through no fault of their own. But they do not repeat the crime. Judah ensures that they do not. He offers to sacrifice his freedom for the sake of Benjamin’s. The villain has become a hero. Judah is the first ba’al teshuva, the first penitent, the first morally transformed individual in history. Joseph’s behavior has had nothing to do with his dreams, or revenge, and everything to do with repentance. Where there is repentance there is forgiveness. The brothers, led by Judah, have gone through all three stages of repentance: (1) admission and remorse (ĥarata), (2) confession (viduy) and (3) behavioral change (shinui ma’aseh).

Forgiveness only exists in a culture in which repentance exists. Repentance presupposes that we are free and morally responsible agents who are capable of change, specifically the change that comes about when we recognize that what we have done is wrong and we are responsible for it and must never do it again. The possibility of that kind of moral transformation simply did not exist in ancient Greece or any other pagan culture. Greece was a culture of character and fate. Judaism is a culture of will and choice, the first of its kind in the world.

Forgiveness is not just one idea among many. It transformed the human situation. For the first time it established the possibility that we are not condemned endlessly to repeat the past. When I repent, I show I can change. The future is not predestined. I can make it different from what it might have been. And when I forgive, I show that my action is not mere reaction, the way revenge would be. Forgiveness breaks the irreversibility of the past. It is the undoing of what has been done. Repentance and forgiveness – the two great gifts of human freedom – redeem the human condition from tragedy.

Now we can return to our original question. If God created ­forgiveness before He made man, why does it play no part in the stories of Genesis from Adam and Eve to the patriarchs? We cannot be sure of the answer. The Torah is a cryptic work. It leaves much unsaid. It has, as the sages said, “seventy faces” (Numbers Raba 13:15). More than one interpretation is possible. But one suggests itself overwhelmingly: God does not forgive human beings until human beings learn to forgive one another.

Consider the alternative. What would happen if God forgave but humans did not? Then history would be an endless story of retaliation, vendetta, vindictiveness and rancor, violence begetting violence and evil engendering new evil – in short, the world before the Flood, the world that still exists today in the form of tribal warfare and ethnic conflict, the world of Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Darfur, a world of victims seeking vengeance, thereby creating new victims and new vengeance in a process that, without forgiveness, never ends.

The first act of forgiveness in the Torah is Joseph forgiving his brothers, to teach us that only when we forgive one another does God forgive us. Only when we confess our wrongs to one another does God hear our confession to Him. Only when we repent and show we are worthy of being forgiven do we show that we have learned the responsibility that goes with freedom, without which, as Yeats wrote, “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Humanity changed the day Joseph forgave his brothers. Only when the book of Genesis reaches this note of forgiveness and reconciliation can the drama of Exodus and the first Yom Kippur begin.