Although the apology was accepted, I later questioned whether I had handled
this the right way.

In the fast-paced world we live in today, in which many social interactions
are already conducted online, can apologizing on social media be considered
true atonement? JNS.org surveyed Jewish religious leaders across denomina-
tions on the subject.

Popular Jewish blogger and social media expert Rabbi Jason Miller strongly
argues against technology-facilitated atonement.

“I’m a fan of face-to-face communication or, when not possible, a phone
call. It’s important for people to hear your voice when you apologize. Sending
an email, text message or Facebook message is a good start, but it’s not sufficient
for the performance of teshuvah” (atonement), Miller says.

Yet Miller does acknowledge that “our communication preferences change
as new technology emerges,” which “means that what our society considers
acceptable for sincere communication, like asking for forgiveness before Yom
Kippur, also changes.”
“There was a time when it wouldn’t be considered appropriate to perform
teshuvah over the phone,” Miller says. “That changed as people moved farther
away and there were not opportunities for face-to-face communication. Soon,
email and then texting became ‘tacky’ ways of performing teshuvah — until
these were the most common ways that we engage with each other.”
Even so, Miller maintains that face-to-face communication should remain
the preferred mode of teshuvah, because it is much more difficult to ask for
repentance in person.

In fact, according to Rabbi Joshua Rabin, director of kehilla enrichment
(organizational development) at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism,
people often tend to apologize via social media “because sometimes it’s just
easier to type a message to somebody than to look them in the eye.”
Rabin says that these days, when “more and more people use technology
— whether it’s text messaging or social media — to communicate with each
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other about important things, it actually is all the more reason why a face-to-
face personal apology is the most meaningful thing you can do. It’s that much
different from the typical option.”
But there’s one exception, Rabin argues: “If the wrong you committed was
actually through social media.”
“If you were to write a really nasty tweet about somebody … I think that
any teshuvah process should involve your actually apologizing through that
medium to begin the process, because that’s where the wrong was committed,”
he says.

Rabbi Roni Handler, director of community learning for the Reconstruc-
tionist Rabbinical College and executive editor of Ritualwell.org — a website
committed to blending Jewish tradition with innovation — also believes that
if the sin being atoned for is directly connected to social media, “there’s actually
something really powerful about stating that [apology] online.”
“If we are atoning for something like spending too much time on social
media and not paying attention to our family, then putting out a statement
like that might serve to hold us accountable and show our recognition of having
a problem in this area,” Handler says.

“But it shouldn’t be that we just state it and then go back to our regular be-
havior,” she adds. “That, in fact, is not doing teshuvah according to any Jewish
scholar.” In the Reconstructionist movement, explains Handler, “we value commu-
nity a lot, and obviously the face-to-face community is really special and pow-
erful. But we are always thinking about other ways in which we can connect
as well. I don’t know that [social media] should replace face-to-face connection,
but we do recognize that community is important and there are a lot of different
ways to connect.”
Handler believes there is a difference between posting a public apology on
social media and sending a direct social media message to an individual.

Posting a public apology has its place and value, though in many cases it should




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