Rabbi, I just found out my best friend and business partner has been stealing money from our company for years. I am devastated and angry and don’t know what to do. I love my friend, but I can’t believe she did this to me. What can Judaism say to help me with this?
I am so sorry to hear you are dealing with something so difficult. It is completely normal to feel blindsided, betrayed, hurt, and sad when confronting something like this. The first thing you should do is give yourself permission to feel all the big feelings you are encountering and be kind and patient with yourself as you navigate how to move forward.
Judaism certainly has a great deal to say about how to be ethical in our business practices. Whether it be through fairness in our weights and measures (Lev. 19:36) or a distaste for taking bribes (Deut. 16:19), the way we conduct ourselves in our work is an extension of the values we carry with us into our lives. That being said, this doesn’t feel like a question about the ethics of the situation; you know what she did was wrong, and I bet she knows that, too. Instead, this is a conversation about teshuvah.
Teshuvah is the Jewish process of repentance and forgiveness. We most commonly talk about teshuvah on Yom Kippur, when we seek forgiveness from God and from one another for the wrongs we have committed. One of the most beautiful things about our tradition is that we have a process for how to fix the wrongs we have committed and a way to work back toward the trust and care we have lost.
The first step along the path of Teshuvah is asking for forgiveness. It is impossible to allow your relationship with your friend and coworker to heal if the other person isn’t willing to admit they did something wrong. During any conversation like this, it is also important that you be allowed to be honest and upfront with how you are feeling. We can’t fix feelings that you keep to yourself, and you deserve the right to tell your friends how they hurt you. But it is the next step that is perhaps the hardest, both for her and for you. Because what comes next is a change in behavior.
An apology that doesn’t come with growth and change isn’t worth anything to you or to Judaism. That kind of repentance only works to clear the other person’s conscience, not actually make anything better. Yet, a person who has done wrong and learned from their mistakes is considered by Maimonides (one of our people’s greatest sages) to be even more righteous than someone who had never erred in the first place. Judaism believes deeply in the power of doing better and making things right. But that also requires our willingness to allow someone else to grow.
This is not to say you should blindly and wholeheartedly move on and trust your friend again. She has a lot of work to do to prove that she is willing to grow from this experience, and you deserve to be incredibly angry with her along the way. But when the opportunity to do better presents itself to her, Judaism asks that you have the patience and compassion to at least see growth when (or if) it happens.
All told, Judaism teaches us how to be the best version of ourselves and be present with others as they struggle to live up to the same. Our tradition permits us to feel hurt and angry when we are wronged, but it also helps to give us a road map to other feelings when the timing is right. The ball is in your friend’s court to right the wrongs she has committed. All Judaism asks is for you to be open to the work she is willing to put in and not to let your anger turn into a weapon you wield against her or yourself.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
