Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof: Teshuvah and Restorative Justice (Part II)

[Go to Part I]

Nothing about Restorative Justice implies naivete about horrendous crimes. Like Jewish tradition, it emphasizes that an individual must make the choice to repent.. If the path of repentance is chosen, anyone can be redeemed.. But the wrongdoer must make that choice. Neither Judaism nor Restorative Justice pardons someone who chooses to continue to follow a path of evil.

The justice system as currently designed, however, fails everyone: it ignores the victim's need for healing while punishing the offender without rehabilitating. It emphasizes vengeance, not redemption. It ignores the long term need of society to create an integrated, healthy community. Unless we are extremely cynical, we must assume that the majority of those involved with the criminal justice system can be redeemed. People are not born with genes for antisocial behavior. being "inside" or "outside" can be a matter of chance, like birth.

Because I have been much involved with working on Restorative Justice over the past year, I am particularly struck this year by the Vidui, the confessional: "Ashamnu, we have sinned" . We confess during this powerful prayer to having committed every conceivable sin, though most of us are guiltless of most of them. Spoken aloud, in the plural, it unites us with the entire community of Jews, and although each of us prays individually, we also accept implicitly our own collective and personal responsibility for allowing those sins to happen.

Transposed to the criminal justice system, this prayer can also say to us: "Ashamnu: we have allowed discriminatory policies to influence our criminal justice system; we have voted for tax reductions because we resent paying for social programs from which we don't personally benefit; we have been unwilling to do with less that others may have a little more..."

Put another way: are we not in part responsible for the overrepresentation of the most vulnerable in our society in our prisons? Should we not also do teshuvah for our part in encouraging--or at least ignoring those factors which lead to social rupture and social pathology, and should we not therefore, take some responsibility for bringing about reconciliation between the offender and the community?

If teshuvah is one side of the scale of Restorative Justice, the other side is tikkun olam, the repairing and healing of the hurts of the world. Judaism is a practical religion, stressing doing good in this world. Our sages recognized that saving the whole world is beyond any of us, that what we can and must do is to start in a small way, where we are, and so eventually bring the entire world to wholeness.

Working for social justice in our society, and reforming our criminal justice system so that it is fair, compassionate, just and rehabilitative is a first step in that direction.

Although the similarities between Restorative Justice and teshuvah are striking and dramatic, I find Jews reluctant to give much thought to reform of the criminal justice system. Indeed, I am repeatedly confronted with the fact that because relatively few Jews are involved in the criminal justice system, Jews as a whole don't see this as an important Jewish issue.

But it is an ethical issue, which makes it Jewish. It is an issue of tikkun olam, which makes it Jewish, and it is an issue of the nature of human beings and their relationship with God, which makes it Jewish--and very appropriate for reflection during the High Holidays, as we look for our own opportunities to teshuvah.

I'm often asked: can Restorative Justice really work? In many cases, it has. Will it always work? Perhaps not. But we do know that our very expensive and destructive adversarial system does not work. It's time to try another approach.

"Is it good for the Jews?" "Why should we put our energies into reforming the criminal justice system which affects so few Jews, when we face so many more pressing issues?" Two answers:

First, the past: remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt, that we have been oppressed and therefore have a duty to help others who are now oppressed by social and economic inequalities. And Jews have historically been adversely affected by social and economic frustration, which often explode into violence and social pathology, including antisemitism. For our safety and for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we need to support all efforts to establish a community based on social justice and compassion.

And, there is a vision of the future: we Jews have been charged with a sacred mission to help bring about a messianic age, in the prophetic words, to "let justice well up like water, and righteousness as a mighty stream."

Alma Norman is a member of Congregation Adath Shalom, a Conservative egalitarian shul in Ottawa, Canada. She is a member of the Women's Spirituality Committee connected with the chaplaincy for the Department of Corrections in Canada. She works with women who have been released from prison and are trying to reintegrate into the community. She is a retired teacher, and is involved in public education with various social action groups including the Raging Grannies and Popular Theatre.