Yom Kippur theology

[cellio]

This year the contrast between two statements in the machzor (special prayer book for these holidays) struck me. We have both of the following statements:

1. For transgressions against God Yom Kippur attones, but for transgressions against other people, YK does not attone until you have made peace with that person. [1]

2. The "release": I forgive those who have wronged me and please don't punish them on my account, and I hope they say the same about me. (This is a paraphrase.)

If I am "off the hook" for something I did via #2 (the other person made this blanket statement) but I never actually made amends, how can I attone under #1 -- we didn't make peace? Or is the point to be strict on my own actions (I must make peace) but liberal on others'? I could think that #2 is for unknown offenses (I can't make amends if I don't know I wronged you), except that the text of the release says "intentional and unintentional".

(Am I correct in assuming that #2 is not a liberal innovation? I've never actually used or studied a traditional machzor, though I am motivated to find one now because a number of the translations [2] in ours struck me as wrong and I want to know what the Hebrew really says.)

[1] There's what amounts to a good-faith exclusion here, so you can't be hosed by someone who consistently refuses to forgive you.

[2] Reform prayer books before Mishkan T'filah feature a mix of loose translations and "alternative readings" (usually but not always marked as such). I am in the position of knowing enough Hebrew to see the issues but not enough to be able to just translate the text myself.

Comments

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Re 2, I know the phrase "let no one be punished on my account" was somewhere in the C liturgy I grew up with (Silverman machzor, 1930s), and I believe it's traditional. I'll try to find the wording once my machzors (and the car they're in) return.

ETA: On the theological point, I think there's a tension between the idea of sins being weighed and numbered, as it were, and the idea that what you're really there to do is teshuva, turn your own heart. I'd venture that the first idea is generally older than the second, which I think of as a medieval concept developed heavily by Rambam. There's a certain degree of ambivalence in the liturgy about just who is capable of granting the cleansing effected by atonement -- whether it's something you can do yourself or whether it's something others do to you. And since you're there all day... why do we have to choose?

[cellio]

This?

"I hereby forgive all who have hurt me, all who have wronged me, whether deliberately or inadvertently, whether by word or by deed. May no one be punished on my account. As I forgive and pardon those who have wronged me, may those whom I have wronged forgive and pardon me, whether whether I acted deliberately or inadvertently, whether by word or by deed."