“He who is kind to the cruel ends by being cruel to the kind.” This teaching from Midrash Tanchuma is not merely a moral aphorism—it is a warning, a spiritual red line. Judaism is rightly known as a religion of compassion. The world, we are told, is built on chesed (Psalms 89:3). The Jewish people are praised by the Talmud as rachmanim b’nei rachmanim, compassionate children of compassionate ancestors (Yevamot 79a). Mercy is not just a virtue; it is a pillar of the Jewish ethical world. And yet, our tradition does not mistake mercy for moral relativism. There is such a thing as being too forgiving, and it is not pious—it is dangerous. There are moments in Jewish thought when mercy becomes not a balm, but a betrayal.
Maimonides (Rambam) makes this point unflinchingly in Hilchot Teshuvah. Forgiveness, he insists, is not owed automatically. It must be earned. He writes, “It is forbidden for a person to be cruel and not be appeased. Rather, one should be easy to pacify and difficult to anger. But if the offender does not ask for forgiveness, he is not obligated to forgive” (Hilchot Teshuvah 2:10). This is not a loophole for bitterness or resentment—it is a theological assertion that forgiveness has moral prerequisites. Teshuvah requires more than regret. It demands verbal confession, genuine remorse, restitution, and behavioral change. Without these, forgiveness is not an act of generosity—it is a denial of justice.
This idea is reinforced in Yoma 87a, where the Talmud teaches that when someone wrongs another, the wrongdoer must seek forgiveness three times. Only then is the injured party expected to forgive. The rabbis understood something we are too quick to forget: that forgiveness without repentance is not reconciliation—it is erasure. It places the emotional burden on the victim while allowing the offender to escape transformation. A culture that prioritizes forgiveness over justice teaches the wrong lesson to the guilty and the wounded alike.
Rav Kook, whose mystical writings are often invoked to emphasize spiritual inclusivity, also articulates a hard moral limit. In Orot HaKodesh, he distinguishes between failings that can be uplifted through repentance and forms of evil so entrenched they must be destroyed. “The pure tzaddikim do not complain about evil—they add righteousness,” he writes. “But there are times when evil becomes so thick, so embedded in reality, that it must be destroyed outright.” Rav Kook’s point is not that compassion is invalid, but that it must be applied wisely. Evil is not always a spiritual wound waiting to be healed. Sometimes, it is a systemic rot that must be opposed without apology. The idealistic refusal to call anything irredeemable risks blurring the moral boundaries that protect society from collapse.
This tension between mercy and justice finds its most agonizing expression in post-Holocaust theology. After Auschwitz, the traditional language of repentance and forgiveness was thrown into crisis. Emil Fackenheim insisted that Jews are forbidden to forgive the Shoah—not out of vindictiveness, but in fidelity to the dead. “We are forbidden to forgive in the name of the victims. It is not ours to grant. The dead are mute, and we must not speak for them,” he wrote. To extend forgiveness to perpetrators who never repented, to systems that never broke, is not healing—it is desecration. Fackenheim’s famed “614th commandment”—not to grant Hitler a posthumous victory—includes within it a moral imperative to resist premature absolution.
Eliezer Berkovits, writing in Faith After the Holocaust, emphasizes that God’s mercy is not incompatible with divine justice—but it cannot override it. Mercy that bypasses justice is not love; it is abandonment. He writes, “Where was God? Perhaps we should first ask: Where was man?” In that haunting question lies a powerful truth. To be human is to demand justice before mercy. In a world capable of genocide, to speak of forgiveness without moral reckoning is not grace—it is nihilism.
These post-Holocaust insights echo in our own time, particularly in debates around restorative versus retributive justice. Restorative justice, which emphasizes dialogue, healing, and reintegration, has deep affinities with Jewish models of teshuvah. It values confession, personal growth, and communal repair. But restorative justice fails when it is applied universally, without discernment. Not every act of harm is equal. Not every victim wants reconciliation. Not every perpetrator is sincere. In cases of abuse, systemic violence, or chronic exploitation, restorative approaches can be manipulated to pressure victims into premature forgiveness or to silence dissent under the guise of healing.
Retributive justice, while often caricatured as harsh or outdated, plays a vital role in affirming the dignity of the injured and the boundaries of the moral world. It asserts that some acts are not just harmful—they are intolerable. The Torah’s repeated command to pursue mishpat (justice) is not a concession to anger; it is a sacred obligation. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” cries the prophet Isaiah, “who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights” (Isaiah 5:20, 23). Justice is not an alternative to compassion—it is its condition.
This is the mistake made by those who preach forgiveness as the highest good, regardless of circumstance. There is a spiritual allure to unconditional mercy. It makes us feel morally elevated. But Jewish tradition does not measure morality by feelings alone. It demands discernment. Forgiveness without teshuvah is not holiness—it is weakness dressed up in piety. As the Midrash warns, “He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to the compassionate.” There are times when the refusal to forgive is not a failure of the heart—it is a triumph of the conscience.
The Zohar speaks of God wearing two crowns—din (judgment) and rachamim (mercy). To walk in God’s ways is to carry both. We do not demand perfect justice, nor do we reject the possibility of redemption. But we do not pretend that every sinner is ready to be redeemed. Jewish ethics is not utopian. It is covenantal. It knows that the world is broken, that people can change—but only when they are willing to change. And it knows that premature forgiveness can destroy not just the chance for repentance, but the moral credibility of the community.
Forgiveness is holy. But holiness is not softness. Sometimes, the most righteous act is to say no: no to false apologies, no to empty reconciliation, no to the comforting lies that protect the oppressor and retraumatize the oppressed. To withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant is not a lapse in kindness—it is an act of moral clarity. It is love for the victim. It is solidarity with the wounded. It is a refusal to betray the sacred covenant between memory and justice.
We are called to emulate God—but not the god of sentimentality. We emulate the God who forgives and judges, who remembers and redeems. The God of Sinai and the God of the Psalms. “Chesed u’mishpat ashirah,” sings David—“I will sing of love and justice” (Psalms 101:1). It is this duet, not a solo of mercy, that constitutes a Jewish ethic of forgiveness. And it is this duet that our broken, confused, mercy-saturated world needs to hear again.