When it comes to Delmon Young, forgive and forget?

Well, forgive at least, according to this piece by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, which boils down to:

“The Days of Awe compel us to believe that everyone deserves a second chance. Does this forgiveness extend to Delmon Young? You bet.”

Rabbi Josh Bennett, a Detroit-area guy, had this to say:

My first reaction was very negative. Obviously as the Jewish community throughout history has been persecuted, we often look for moments like this and say, ‘See, people don’t like the Jewish community!’ And I think that’s what happens in many minority communities. We first look for reasons to feel persecuted or attacked. And then after listening a little bit longer, it became fairly clear that we really didn’t understand the full scope of the story. And even today after talking to Delmon, I still don’t really know the full story. What I do know, though, is that we all make mistakes. And it’s hard to peg somebody’s entire personality on one singular moment of their life. This is not what I would consider to be a Mel Gibson moment, where over and over and over he has proven himself to be fairly anti-Semitic in his actions, in his words. This is one singular moment where a young player made a stupid error under the influence of alcohol. And quite frankly, I don’t even know what he really said. What I do know is in talking to him, he is clear about proving to everybody that he is not anti-Semitic.

 

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