On Repentance and Repair
Making Amends in an Unapologetic World
Winner NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice
Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award
A crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm—from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unresolved issues.
American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator’s obligations or recompense for harmed parties. As survivor communities have pointed out, these emphases have too often only caused more harm. But Danya Ruttenberg knew there was a better model, rooted in the work of the medieval philosopher Maimonides.
For Maimonides, upon whose work Ruttenberg elaborates, forgiveness is much less important than the repair work to which the person who caused harm is obligated. The word traditionally translated as repentance…
$24.00
September 12, 2023Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is the author of Suprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion and 2016 National Jewish Book Award finalist Nurture the Now: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting and editor of several books including Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism. She has been published in a wide variety of books and periodicals, including Encyclopedia Judaica, Best Jewish Writing 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Bitchfest, and The Women's Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism. A contributing editor to both Lilith and Women in Judaism, Ruttenberg received rabbinic ordination from the Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles in 2008. Find her online at www.danyaruttenberg.net.