Lesson 007 · posted Thu Sep 3 2026
Still Angry at Someone?
What Judaism says about grudges, and who they actually punish: five ideas, each with its source.
What the tradition says about grudges, and who they actually punish. The grudge was never protecting you. Elul is here. This is the season the calendar built for repair.
- 1
The grudge is heavy. Put it down.
לא תטר“Do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge.”Leviticus 19:18
The Torah puts it in the same verse as love your neighbor, as if the two were one instruction. A grudge is a weight you agreed to carry for someone who is not carrying anything. The verse is not asking you to feel warmly. It is telling you to set it down.
- 2
Releasing is strength, not surrender.
למחול“One should be easy to appease and hard to anger.”Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 2:10
Maimonides made it law. When a person sincerely asks your forgiveness, you forgive with a whole heart, and you do not hold out to make them work for it. He calls the one who refuses cruel. Softness here is not weakness. It is the ruling.
- 3
Heaven forgives the way you do.
מעביר“Whoever overlooks a wrong, their own wrongs are overlooked.”Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 17a
The Talmud states the exchange rate in plain terms. The measure you use on the people who hurt you is the measure used on you. Overlook, and you are overlooked. Keep the ledger, and the ledger is kept.
- 4
Some repairs need your voice.
בין אדם לחברו“Yom Kippur does not atone until one appeases their fellow.”Mishnah Yoma 8:9
The holiest day of the year has a limit written into it. It clears what is between you and God. It does not touch what is between you and another person until you go and make it right, in words, to their face. There is no prayer that does that part for you.
- 5
Forgiving is the most Divine thing you do.
רחום“Compassionate and gracious, slow to anger.”Exodus 34:6
When God is described to Moses, the description is a list of ways to let things go. Slow to anger. Abounding in kindness. Forgiving wrong. Every time you release someone, you are doing the one thing the tradition says God does most.
The grudge was never protecting you.
Elul is here. This is the season the calendar built for repair.
Save this before the High Holidays. Send it to the person you are ready to call.
Sources
- Leviticus 19:18 on Sefaria
- Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 2:10 on Sefaria
- Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 17a on Sefaria
- Mishnah Yoma 8:9 on Sefaria
- Exodus 34:6 on Sefaria
Art on the slides: Pietro Longhi (Pietro Falca), The Letter (1746) · Johan Christian Dahl, Mother and Child by the Sea (1830) · Anthony van Dyck, Study Head of an Old Man with a White Beard (ca. 1617–20) · Aert van der Neer, The Farrier (early or mid-1650s) · Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, Winter Landscape, Holland (1833) · Georges Seurat, The Forest at Pontaubert (1881) · Camille Corot, Hagar in the Wilderness (1835). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, open access.