“I forgive you!”

Those words are meant to be liberating. They suggest magnanimity and grace, as well as a strength of character that transcends the darkest human impulses. But sometimes, forgiveness can be confusing, or even disturbing.

Last week, Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, stunned the world by publicly forgiving her husband’s murderer. “That young man … I forgive him, I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it’s what Charlie would do.”

News bulletins led with the story, and podcasters and bloggers couldn’t get enough of it. Most praised her declaration as a shining example of Christian love and mercy — an extraordinary display of turning the other cheek. And yes, on one level, it is moving: a grieving widow finding the strength to release her pain and anger rather than being consumed by it.

But others found it unsettling. And truthfully, Judaism is deeply cautious about such an act of forgiveness. After all, what right does Erika Kirk have to forgive a murderer for murder? She can forgive him for the pain he caused her — that much is hers to grant. But she cannot absolve him for the life he stole. Only the victim himself could do that, and as much as she may imagine that’s what Charlie would have done, he is gone. 

And beyond that, justice demands that such a heinous crime be punished. Otherwise, what is left of law, of morality, of human dignity?

The Rambam makes this caution concrete. If you wrong another person, there can be no teshuva until you go and ask forgiveness from them directly. God will not erase a sin committed against your fellow human unless you first seek reconciliation with the person you wronged. 

But even once human forgiveness is granted, you are not off the hook with God. Because when you hurt another person, you also wrong God Himself — the One who created that person in His image.

This tension between forgiveness and justice isn’t just a private, personal dilemma. Whole societies have had to wrestle with it. 

After World War II, the world was faced with horrors on a scale that defied imagination. Those few Jews who had survived the concentration camps and death marches were walking skeletons, barely able to function.

The Nazi atrocities were so vast and so grotesque, that trying to address them via normal legal channels was deemed utterly impossible. Some suggested that it would be best to move on, bury the past rather than let it fester – as it had with Germany after World War I, which created the perfect storm for the next world war to erupt a quarter of a century later.

But brighter heads prevailed, and the Nuremberg Trials were a bold statement that there can be no reconciliation without accountability. You can’t just forgive mass murderers and architects of genocide – people who set out to murder an entire people – in the name of peace. Clemency without justice would have mocked the victims and denied the truth.

Half a century later, another society faced its own reckoning. When apartheid finally collapsed in South Africa, the country stood at a dangerous crossroads. The white minority feared violent retribution, the black majority demanded justice, and the entire nation was teetering on the edge of civil war.

This time, a different kind of solution was devised. Archbishop Desmond Tutu presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which wasn’t perfect by any means – but it was ingenious. It didn’t simply grant blanket forgiveness in the name of “moving on.” 

The TRC set a bar. Amnesty would only be offered to those who came forward, confessed their crimes in detail, and faced their victims in person. The premise was down-to-earth yet profound: reconciliation can only occur when truth is spoken, guilt is acknowledged, and victims can find some measure of catharsis.

Both Nuremberg and South Africa teach the same lesson: real reconciliation is never cheap if it is going to be meaningful. You can’t just wave the magic “I forgive you” wand and wish away the bad stuff. 

Forgiveness must always be bound up with accountability, acknowledgement of wrong, and some kind of reckoning. Otherwise, it’s not reconciliation at all — it’s denial. And even then, even once you have faced up to what you have done wrong, it doesn’t imply that you have reconciled with God. That is the next step in the process.

When you wrong another person, you’ve committed two sins at once: you’ve harmed them, and you’ve also rebelled against God, who created them in His image. 

Making amends with your friend, your neighbor, your colleague — that’s essential. Rambam says you cannot move forward until you’ve done it. But even if they forgive you, you are not finished. You still need to turn to God and admit, ‘I fell short of what You expect from me.’

That is the beating heart of Yom Kippur. We don’t just fast and wear white as if the day itself works some kind of cleansing magic. We come together to confront the truth of who we are, and to speak it out loud in viddui — confession. We don’t sugarcoat and we don’t hide. We stand in front of each other, and in front of God, and we say: ashamnu, bagadnu — we have sinned, we have betrayed.

It is truth first, reconciliation second. And when those two steps come together — when we seek forgiveness from people we have wronged, and then seek forgiveness from God Himself — only then is atonement real. Only then is reconciliation complete.

So what about October 7th? Can we – now that an end to the war is finally in sight, and all the remaining hostages are hopefully on their way home – do what Erika Kirk did and say to Hamas, “we forgive you”? 

The answer is a resounding no. To do that would be neither acceptable, nor appropriate. You cannot forgive mass murder, rape, and barbarity with a wave of the hand, nor can you forgive on behalf of those who were slaughtered, mutilated, or abducted.

First, there must be acknowledgment by Hamas — a confession of wrongdoing. Then, there must be a process of reconciliation with those whom they harmed. Only after that, if it ever happened, could the question of human forgiveness and divine forgiveness even be contemplated. 

Until then, notwithstanding the need to end the conflict and rebuild, justice must be pursued, the truth must be spoken, and our dignity as a people must demand that forgiveness can never be cheap.

The author is a writer in Beverly Hills, California.