The Gibeonites, a Canaanite group, forged a pact with the Israelites when the Israelites were conquering the land—but, after a series of twists and turns, wound up their permanent servants. The Gibeonites became “hewers of wood and drawers of water for the House of my God,” according to the book of Joshua.

The arrangement persisted for a few hundred years, until Saul became king and slaughtered the Gibeonites. The Bible doesn’t offer details of the massacre, but it does record that many years after Saul died, during the time of King David, God punished the Israelites for the great injustice by bringing about a great famine.

After three years of starvation and want, King David was desperate to save his people. He met with the few remaining Gibeonites and asked how he could make restitution: “What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless us?”

This story is one of the earliest recorded examples of collective apology. King David wants to apologize and make restitution for the sins of a generation long dead—for actions that he had no hand in—but he doesn’t know how to do it. Today, similarly, many Americans are recognizing the importance of making long-overdue amends to the people we have injured—and encountering the same sort of unsettled uncertainty.

These are hard questions: How do the descendants of those who committed a historical wrong find the will to apologize, atone, and make restitution to the descendants of those who were wronged? And how do the people whose forebears suffered so greatly find the courage to negotiate such an apology and ultimately accept it?

My deep interest in collective apology has two roots, one planted in years of work as a rabbi and the other planted in years of activism in social movements. Listening to people recount the hurt they experienced, and the harm they perpetrated, sensitized me to how infrequently we use the tools of apology. Some communities see themselves as inheritors of deep, and unaddressed, collective trauma. Other communities acknowledge past wrongs but feel no personal responsibility for them.

Collective apology seemed like the tool to change the stories that communities tell themselves. It was also a great spiritual challenge, which is why I made it the focus of two years of sermons for the high holy days, that time in the Jewish liturgical year known as the “10 days of repentance,” when the difficult practices of atonement and forgiveness occupy our hearts and minds.

My first sermon drew upon the work of David Lambert, a University of North Carolina religious studies scholar. His book How Repentance Became Biblical shows that our contemporary notion of repentance has few antecedents in the Bible, and instead is rooted in rabbinic ideas that came later on. If our ideas and practices around repentance had already evolved once, I suggested, they could evolve again. I framed collective repentance as a new horizon for American society. Many congregants told me the sermon sparked table conversations over holiday meals. I felt I was just getting started on the topic.

My second sermon drew upon the research of Samuel Oliner, a Holocaust survivor and scholar of altruism and collective apology. Oliner wrote about how large groups of people—societies and governments—collectively pursued alternatives to violence and polarization. In his research, he found that altruism, genuine apology, and forgiveness, though difficult to achieve, often led to reconciliation.

Oliner tracked down more than 100 contemporary examples of collective apologies. The breadth and depth of his list shocked me. Oliner was able to point to five noteworthy examples from the 1990s alone.

In 1993, the U.S. Congress apologized to native Hawaiian people for the American overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i 100 years earlier. In 1995, the South African government established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear from perpetrators of crimes during apartheid. In 1997, British Prime Minister Tony Blair initiated an apology to the Irish people for British responsibility in the 1840s Potato Famine. In 1998, Pope John Paul II apologized to Jews for the Catholic Church’s not doing more to stop the Nazi regime during World War II. In 1999, the president of the west African country of Benin came to the U.S. to apologize to African Americans for his country’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade.

As I studied Oliner’s list, one collective apology caught my attention: a Japanese company’s arduous attempt to apologize to American prisoners of war for harsh labor camps during World War II.

In December 1941, two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces attacked the U.S. Army base on the Philippine island of Luzon. Seventy-six thousand troops became POWs; Japanese soldiers marched them more than 60 miles (an episode later known as the Bataan Death March), beating and killing some POWs, while allowing others to die of disease and starvation. POWs who survived were taken to camps in Japan, and contracted out as slave labor to 14 different Japanese companies.

A generation after the war, many people in Japan began to think it might be time to make a collective apology to American POWs. The process dragged on for decades, as Japanese leaders repeatedly issued and retracted apologies, sometimes issuing denials of war crimes and approving textbooks that suppressed the true history. It wasn’t until 2015 that conditions for a successful apology developed, in large part because of a Japanese American named Kinue Tokudome.

Tokudome was born in Japan just after World War II. In her Japanese high school in the 1960s, no one talked about the conflict; it was only after she moved to California at age 26 that she learned about the war. In 1986, when a book by a Japanese author denying the Holocaust became wildly popular, Tokudome became so upset that she spent a year crisscrossing the U.S., interviewing survivors and translating their stories into Japanese.

As she worked, Tokudome met American ex-POWs who talked of their continued hopes for apologies from the Japanese companies that had forced them into hard labor. Sensing an opportunity, Tokudome wrote letters to the companies. Only one responded: Mitsubishi Materials, which had forced 900 POWs to work in the snowy mountains, mining copper for Japanese bullets and submarines.

Collective apologies require an apology broker, someone rooted in the society that committed the act who is empathetic to the suffering of those who were harmed. In the story of the Gibeonites, this was King David, who asked, “What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless us?” In Mitsubishi’s apology to American POWs, this was Tokudome.

Tokudome, in negotiating an apology, partnered with Jim Murphy, an American who had worked as a POW in Mitsubishi Material’s copper mines for captors who instructed, “You work or you die.” Murphy told Tokudome there were three things he wanted to hear in an apology: “I did it, I’m sorry I did it, and I will not do it again.” In this, Murphy identified the three elements of a successful collective apology: admission, regret, and promise. The 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides prescribed the exact same formula: “How does one confess? He states: ‘I implore You, God, I sinned … I regret and am embarrassed for my deeds. I promise never to repeat this act again.’”

Mitsubishi was willing to listen, and after many talks, scheduled a formal apology ceremony for Sunday, July 19, 2015, in Los Angeles. During the ceremony, Mitsubishi executive Hikaru Kimura described the harsh life in the mines, without food, without water, without medical attention. Through an interpreter, he told Murphy, “When I understand the sad truth of the matter, I feel a pained sense of ethical responsibility as a fellow human being. As a representative of Mitsubishi Materials, I apologize to you, deeply.”

Murphy had seen a draft of the statement in advance, but arrived that day still unsure if he would accept the company’s apology. Then, as he watched, seven Mitsubishi executives stood up and bowed at the waist. The bow lasted for 14 seconds. Murphy formally accepted the apology.

I told this story in my second sermon, hoping my community might see an apology issued to Americans as a model for how we might offer collective apologies.

Each of us has been wronged by someone in our lives. We know the feeling of distance, disconnect, and anger that we harbor before granting forgiveness. And anyone who has wronged someone else knows how guilt accumulates until an apology and reconciliation have occurred. We understand the basic process of an individual apology. If we choose not to apologize to someone we have hurt, it’s generally because we can’t bring ourselves to do it—not because we don’t know what an apology looks like.

But the pursuit of a collective apology is more arduous, fraught, and volatile, as past experience—Biblical and contemporary—shows. Trauma and guilt travel through time, and collective apologies, when they happen, generally occur generations after the initial wrong.

A Biblical teaching connected to the Ten Commandments touches on the idea of cross-generational culpability. “God does not remit all punishment,” reads a verse that is repeated in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, “but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.” This idea may be anathema to our modern sense of individual justice, but there is no statute of limitations for societal sin. Iniquity committed at the societal level is indeed born by future generations, who are responsible for taking corrective action. The bridge of collective apology must span two expanses: the sea of society and the river of time.

This second sermon generated more reaction than the first, probably because I tried to bring the concept home. I reminded my community of the many collective apologies that we Jews have received in recent memory, for the traumas of the Holocaust and for historical Christian antisemitism. But then I also said, “As an American, I can imagine collective apologies that we will one day make to Native Americans for centuries of crimes against indigenous peoples. And I can imagine collective apologies we will one day make to African Americans for our society’s foundational investment in slavery. And as a Jew, having spent time in the West Bank off and on over more than twenty years, I can imagine collective apologies that the Jewish people will one day make to Palestinians.”

Those lines triggered productive discomfort. “Rabbi, should we really apologize to all of those groups? This one, of course, but that one?” Collective apology in theory is one thing. Collective apology in practice is another.

And yet I see signs that more Americans are more willing to consider collective apologies for some of the societal sins embedded in our past. Or at least I can say, I am ready to help pursue such apologies. I pray that others are too. And if those of us who are ready keep talking to others about it, perhaps we can add the United States to the list of societies that mustered the courage to take responsibility for the horrors of their pasts.

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Very few readers today will have heard of Menasseh ben Israel; but in the 17th century he was arguably the most famous Jew in the world, in no small part for trying to move Jews and Christians past centuries of mistrust and hatred.

Menasseh was one of the most accomplished and cosmopolitan rabbis of his time, and a pivotal intellectual figure in early modern Jewish history. He was among the three rabbis of the “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam, a community founded at the beginning of the 17th century that would quickly earn great renown (and envy) worldwide for its mercantile and scholarly vitality. Menasseh played an essential role in that community’s reputation because his books and other writings—in Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, and English—reached a broad and very appreciative audience, among both Jews and gentiles.

Menasseh, a true Renaissance man, did more than anybody in the 17th century to advance the Jewish cause, whether in learning or in politics, and to educate Christians about Jewish religion, literature, and history. He was a scholar, philosopher, diplomat, educator (he was the philosopher Spinoza’s elementary school teacher), editor, translator, printer, and bookseller; no activity seems to have been outside his considerable talents. His network of friends and admirers stretched across the continent. He was, for many, the go-to person for all things Judaic.

And yet, Menasseh felt that, somehow, he did not receive the respect he deserved from his own local community.

He was right.

Menasseh was born Manoel Diaz Soeiro in Lisbon in 1604. His father had suffered horribly there under the Inquisition’s torturers, and there was reason to believe that he would be arrested again; even though his family was converso and ostensibly Catholic, the authorities suspected them of secret Judaizing. As soon as they could, the family fled Iberia, first to Madeira, then to La Rochelle, in southwestern France, and finally, around 1610, to Amsterdam. The Portuguese authorities’ suspicions of Judaizing were well grounded—when the family reached Holland, the men were all circumcised and took the name “ben Israel,” son of Israel.

Unlike almost everywhere else in 17th-century Europe, Jews in the Dutch Republic were allowed to live where they wanted and practice their religion openly. There was no ghetto, and while there were some restrictions on Jewish activities—they were excluded from most guilds—they could socialize and do business as they wished. It was a remarkable display of toleration in a generally intolerant era. Over the course of the century, Amsterdam and other Dutch towns became a haven for Jews fleeing persecution in Iberia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.

Menasseh’s family joined the Beth Jacob congregation, the oldest in Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community, founded just a few years before their arrival in the city. Manoel, now Menasseh, was a precocious student and had a particularly fine command of both Portuguese and Hebrew. By the age of 18, he was appointed rabbi (hakham) of the Neve Shalom congregation. Many non-Jews came to the synagogue to hear his sermons, which were reportedly both rhetorically splendid and intellectually stimulating. He was also praised for his knowledge of Scripture.

Other rabbis of the community, however, had doubts about his skills as a Talmudist. And he took it as a great insult when, in 1639, with the merger of the three congregations, he was appointed third in rank among the rabbis. His relations with the congregation’s lay leadership were rocky, and he chafed under what he believed were undignified limitations put upon him—such as not being allowed to preach as often as he would have liked, and being required to teach in the elementary school. The highlight of his career occurred in 1642, when he was chosen to deliver the welcoming address on the occasion of a visit to the synagogue on the Houtgracht by Stadholder Frederik Hendrik (the highest political and military officer in the Dutch provinces) and Queen Henrietta Maria of England (wife of Charles I). It was one of the few times that Menasseh was actually given a position of honor.

With the narrow scope of his rabbinical duties, as well as his meager compensation, Menasseh had no choice but to direct his energies into other projects. He ran one of the community’s yeshivot, sponsored by the brothers Abraham and Isaac Pereira (Spinoza, as a young adult but before his excommunication in 1656, may have been one of its attendees), and was a beloved teacher. But his work there demanded much of his time.

Menasseh, like the other rabbis, also engaged in business. With his brother and brother-in-law, he imported goods from the West Indies and Brazil. But he felt that having to supplement his salary as a rabbi in this and other ways was demeaning. “At present, in complete disregard of my personal dignity, I am engaged in trade … What else is there for me to do?”

Menasseh’s real love was his printing press. He was the first printer of Hebrew books in Amsterdam, and he quickly gained an international reputation for the quality of his work. He published Pentateuchs, Hebrew Bibles, prayer books, and editions of the Mishnah, as well as numerous treatises and literary works in Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Latin. He even collaborated on various projects with gentile scholars and artists, including, it seems, Rembrandt. Because of Menasseh ben Israel, Amsterdam was, for a time, the center of the Jewish publishing world in Europe.

Menasseh also acquired great fame for his own writings, especially among Christians, to whom some of them were directly addressed. He was seen among non-Jews as the foremost Jewish spokesman of his time. Gentiles sought him out as a teacher and consultant. “[He is] a learned and pious man”, wrote Gerard Joannes Vossius, the celebrated Dutch scholar and theologian whose son studied Hebrew and Jewish literature with Menasseh. “If only he were a Christian.”

Menasseh, more than anyone else, assumed responsibility for explaining the doctrines and beliefs of Judaism to the gentile world. He never shied away from controversy, and he was willing to be the Jewish representative in exactly the kinds of polemical debates that many Christians sought (to convince the Jews of the error of their ways and lead them toward salvation) and most Jews feared. For many of the Portuguese Jews in Holland, Menasseh’s international celebrity was a source of pride. These wealthy Sephardic merchants and professionals appreciated the renown he brought to the community.

His extracurricular activities, however, caused the rabbis and lay leaders of the Amsterdam Portuguese no small amount of concern. They were constantly warning congregants that, since they were still technically refugee-guests in the Netherlands, it would be best to keep a low profile. They were especially cautious about crossing the line that the Dutch had explicitly drawn regarding theological debates between Jews and Christians. Menasseh’s cosmopolitanism and many relationships outside the community may explain the troubles he had with the other rabbis and with the members of the ma’amad, or governing board. (He was even issued an excommunication (herem) on one occasion for a disturbance he had been making over the way one of his relatives had been treated by the board.)

Throughout his life, Menasseh was guided by the Messianic hope for divine redemption and the idea that this would not happen until the people of Israel were completely scattered across the globe. Only then could they be reunited and restored to their kingdom by God’s anointed one. This conviction was behind what Menasseh hoped would be the crowning achievement of his life: arranging for the readmission of the Jews to England, from which they had been banished since 1290.

Accompanied by his son Samuel, Menasseh crossed the English Channel to make his petition for readmission in 1655. In his presentation to the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, he appealed to both theological and (perhaps more importantly) economic considerations. He wanted to bring to Cromwell’s attention the financial benefits that usually accrue to a country with a thriving Jewish community. After noting that “merchandising is, as it were, the proper profession of the nation of the Jews,” Menasseh went on to remind Cromwell that “there riseth an infallible Profit, commodity, and gain to all those Princes in whose Lands they dwell above all other strange Nations whatsoever.”

Cromwell was quite taken with the Dutch rabbi and gave him a sympathetic hearing. Public opinion, however, was by no means so well-disposed toward readmission. Some argued that strong and humiliating restrictions should be imposed on the Jews; they would certainly not be granted many of the privileges or rights that they had been enjoying for decades in Holland.

After several sessions, the conference convened by Cromwell to consider the issue was deadlocked, and in the summer of 1657 it adjourned before anything was formally resolved.

Menasseh was greatly disappointed by this turn of events, particularly since he had devoted several years of his life (two of them in England) to this project. Cromwell’s tacit permission for Jewish settlement would not begin evolving into formal readmission for another decade or so, but Menasseh did not live to see it.

He was devastated by the sudden death of his son Samuel in London that September, and as Menasseh bore Samuel’s body back to across the Channel for burial two months later, he was a broken man. He died several weeks later.

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