Hebrew College Psychology
Professor Solomon Schimmel
To Speak at Newton Library
By Susie Davidson
Advocate Correspondent
NEWTON - This Monday evening,
noted Newton author and Hebrew College psychology professor Solomon Schimmel
will appear at the Newton Free Library, as part of their ongoing speaker series
coordinated by Programs Director Beth Purcell.
Schimmel will speak on his new
book, "Wounds not Healed by Time:
The Power of Repentance and Forgiveness", which discusses themes
particularly relevant to this time ofyear. A signing will follow the talk,
scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m.
Schimmel, a former Fulbright
Senior Research Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, England
and current Professor of Jewish Education and Psychology at Hebrew College,
previously authored The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian and Classical
Reflections on Human Psychology (both
books are published by Oxford University Press), and numerous articles and book
chapters on Jewish thought, psychology of religion, and Jewish education as
well. He received a BA from the
City College of New York and MA and PhD from Wayne State University, and has
been a National Science Foundation Research Fellow at Harvard University and a
Visiting Professor and/or Research Fellow at Brandeis University, the
University of Texas, Bar-Ilan University and Hebrew University.
“Wounds Not Healed by
Time” examines the obligation of a victim to forgive his offender. It
also, however, focuses on the equally critical concepts of repentance and
reparation, in order that justice, personal responsibility and accountability
are also fulfilled. “Substantial sections of the book,” explained
Schimmel, “are devoted to clarifying terms such as revenge, justice,
mercy, repentance, remorse, reconciliation. Other sections provide practical
guidelines to potentially implement in individual and in group conflicts and
strategies of repentance and of forgiveness that can help make our lives and
our world more pacific and peaceful, imbued with love rather than hate,
reconciliation rather than conflict, and repair rather than guilt and
shame.”
Schimmel has had a longstanding
interest in the psychology of religion as well as what psychology, especially
in emotional contexts, can learn from religious traditions. Apparently, there
is always much to learn in these realms.
“In the fifty-six years
since the end of World War II,” he stated in the book’s
introduction, “there have been numerous instances of fresh crimes against
humanity, the World Trade Center bombing being among the most recent, though
far from the most destructive of human life. The ‘killing fields’
of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; the Hutu massacres of the Tutsi in Rwanda; the
Serbian ethnic 'cleansing' of the Muslims in the former Yugoslavia and of the
Albanians in Kosovo; the unbelievable brutalities of civil wars in Angola,
Sierra Leone and many other countries. The same questions of revenge, justice,
forgiveness and repentance, and the proper balance between them, arise
repeatedly. Humanity's inhumanity makes us ask, ‘from whence does this
evil derive and how shall we deal with the evil in others and the evil in
ourselves?’.
The emotion of anger, and how to
deal with it, was analyzed in his 1997 book, "The Seven Deadly Sins:
Jewish, Christian and Classical Reflections on Human Psychology." His
research led him to another level, the study of forgiveness, and subsequently
to the new release.
"Anger is one of the infamous
seven deadly sins,” said Schimmel. “When I was studying and
analyzing anger, I noted that few secular psychologists wrote about the role
that forgiveness can play in helping us deal with the anger, resentment, and
hatred that we often feel towards a person who has hurt us, or who we perceive
to have hurt us. Yet forgiveness is an important value in religious traditions
and there is much that can be learned from religious teachings about how
forgiveness might be helpful in healing wounds that are not healed simply with
the passage of time.”
For further information on this
free event, please call the Library at 617-796-1360.