There are things a person cannot honestly say he has forgiven.

A friend once shared with me that the most difficult prayer for him is not one said in moments of crisis, but one said quietly at the end of the day.

Each night, before sleep, we say words that are easy to recite—yet far more difficult to live:

הֲרֵינִי מוֹחֵל לְכָל מִי שֶׁהִכְעִיס וְהִקְנִיט אוֹתִי אוֹ שֶׁחָטָא כְּנֶגְדִּי,בֵּין בְּגוּפִי בֵּין בְּמָמוֹנִי…וִיהִי רָצוֹן… שֶׁלֹּא יֵעָנֵשׁ שׁוּם אָדָם בְּסִבָּתִי.

“I hereby forgive anyone who has angered me, provoked me, or sinned against me—whether against my person or my possessions… May it be Your will that no one be punished on my account.”

He paused when he said it.

“There are things people have done to me,” he admitted, “that I cannot honestly say I forgive.”

It was not said with anger, but with clarity.

And then he added something else.

“But I am careful about one thing. I do not allow myself to hate them. I may struggle with what they did—but I do not turn that into hatred of who they are.”

“That,” he said, “is the only peace of mind I can live with.”

It is a striking distinction.

We tend to think the Torah asks us to let go—to move on, to feel differently. But it directs us somewhere else entirely.

לֹא־תִשְׂנָא אֶת־אָחִיךָ בִּלְבָבֶךָ“Do not hate your brother in your heart.”(Vayikra 19:17)

The Torah does not begin with forgiveness. It begins earlier—at the point where something first takes hold.

Not in action, and not in speech—but in the heart. Because what is held there rarely remains contained—it spreads.

A person may justify hatred as honesty. The Torah does not permit it.

A person may struggle with what was done. He may carry the weight of it. But he is not permitted to turn that into hatred of the person himself.

The Zohar deepens this further. Hatred is not only a private emotion; it is a force of separation. Where it takes hold, something fractures—between people, and within the bond that should hold them together.

To refuse hatred, even when the pain has not yet resolved, is to resist that fracture—and preserve the possibility that what is broken is not beyond repair.

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler offers another perspective. We often believe the inner world must change before action can follow, but in truth the process often moves in the opposite direction. A person does not always act because he feels differently; often he comes to feel differently through how he acts.

Restraint, then, is not suppression. It is formation.

Each time a person refuses to allow resentment to become hatred, he is shaping something within himself—quietly, but decisively. Over time, that inner discipline becomes part of who he is.

Rabbi Abraham Twerski expressed this with characteristic clarity. Holding onto anger does not preserve justice; it prolongs suffering. To release hatred is not to deny what happened—it is to refuse to let it define who a person becomes.

Seen this way, the mitzvot of Kedoshim are not only moral directives; they are protective structures. They begin with guarding the inner space in which forgiveness might one day emerge.

And alongside these laws, the Rabbis placed something quiet—almost unnoticed—a daily practice.

Each night, a person says the words: “I forgive…”

Not always because it is fully true, but because saying it begins to loosen what has hardened. It creates a space—however small—in which something else might one day take shape.

Forgiveness is not always immediate. But hatred is not inevitable.

In that space between the two, a person learns not only how to live with others—but how to live with himself.

Forgiveness may take time. But hatred must never be allowed to take root.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)