Why I’m not apologizing to everyone this year

The Talmud tells of a man who wished to convert to Judaism and learn the entire Torah while standing on one foot. The common interpretation is that he was seeking – either sincerely or as an exercise in pre-Internet trolling – a basic maxim upon which the entire legal and spiritual construct could be balanced, an all-encompassing, grand unified principle.

Naturally, he sought out to the two pillars – or legs, as it were – of the proto-rabbinic era: Shammai and Hillel. First up was the legalistic Shammai, who, throughout the corpus of Jewish literature, embodies the idea that God is in the details. But Shammai rebuffed him – literally, pushed him – with, appropriately enough, a measuring stick, the implication being that there is no sweeping precept in Judaism: It would be impossible to impart the innumerable minutiae of the Torah to a man who’s standing on one foot.

But Hillel didn’t turn the man back. He embraced the challenge (I like to think he embraced the man as well), and replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

Hillel’s statement is a riff on the golden rule that lies at the foundation of the social contract: That civilization will crumble if we all act on our impulses, and that if one wishes to enjoy certain rights and freedoms, one must be willing to uphold those selfsame rights and freedoms when it comes to one’s fellow. There’s nothing unique about the idea. After all, variations of the ethic of reciprocity are indigenous to all of the major religions and figure in the thought of many political philosophers. No, Hillel’s hiddush is that this reciprocity is the foundational principle of Judaism, the “one foot” upon which the entire Torah is balanced.

Beyond the “I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me” contractual aspect of Hillel’s dictum, a positive reading will reveal an imperative to be empathetic toward the other: One must be mindful of the other’s feelings in order to ensure that one doesn’t hurt the other or trample on her rights. Later, Rabbi Akiva would stress the positive side of Hillel’s dictum in stating that the Torah’s commandment to “love your fellow as yourself” is a major tenet of Judaism.

Thus, the Torah essentially says, one must endeavor to transcend one’s narrow interests and refrain from seeing other people as means to an end; to acknowledge that my needs don’t take precedence over anyone else’s; to see people as subjects rather than objects. The fact that the interpersonal imperative is a foundational tenet of Judaism (perhaps, according to Hillel, the foundational tenet) implies that a failure to love others, denying them the right to exist in our minds as fully formed human beings – the sin of solipsism, in short – is a grievous sin.

That’s it, right? We said we’re sorry, so it’s all covered. Now we can enter Yom Kippur secure in the knowledge that we’ll be forgiven by everyone – God and man

Yom Kippur is widely thought of as the holiest day of the year, a day of personal salvation, when God magically expunges our tarnished records, gently cleansing us of our sins and their grimy residue.

However, we are told, lofty as it may be, even Yom Kippur cannot atone for our interpersonal trespasses, for the wrongs we commit against others – only for transgressions against God.

These days, though, it seems there’s a surefire solution to that age-old problem: Just pick up the phone and call anyone we may or may not have sinned against, saying something along the lines of “I apologize if I’ve wronged you in the past year” (better yet, we can target everyone we know with a single apologetic Facebook post). That’s it, right? We said we’re sorry, so it’s all covered. Now we can enter Yom Kippur secure in the knowledge that we’ll be forgiven by everyone – God and man.

But I won’t be making blanket apologies on Yom Kippur, and I secretly (okay, the secret’s out) cringe when I get the inevitable faux-contrite phone calls before the holiday commences. Not because I have nothing to make amends for (God knows I’m no saint), but because I refuse to make my fellow a vehicle for my personal salvation. A generic, sweeping apology for wrongs one may or may not have committed but whose specifics one can’t be bothered to dredge up – all for the sake of checking the right boxes and passing the Yom Kippur test with an A+ – objectifies the recipient of the apology.

No, I won’t be offering blanket apologies to all of my fellows this year. That would be a grievous sin. And if anyone wants to apologize to me, they’d better have a damn good reason for it.