Most weeks bring at least one public apology; last week has brought a deluge. Familiar figures step forward. Each apology, delivered solemnly, although perhaps calibrated by lawyers and perhaps or with a bit of ChatGPT for flair. What makes our skin crawl is that these heartfelt statements do not arrive at the moment of wrongdoing, but at the moment we find out about it. Can you really mean you’re sorry when you’re caught with your hand in the till?
This has been going on for decades, but last week’s torrent has exposed it in its purest form. The modern apology is no longer a moral act; it is a ritual of compliance. Something uttered only because the evidence has become inconveniently undeniable.
What troubles us is twofold. First, these apologies encourage the fiction that what occurred was a momentary lapse: a misjudgement, a flirtation with bad company, a social misstep. In reality, people are apologising for the presence of long-standing relationships with Epstein. This often meant years of endorsement of a man whose wealth was inseparable from his exploitation and abuse of power. Second, remorse has been replaced by strategy. Denial is maintained for as long as plausibly possible; apology appears only when all other escape routes collapse. This bears little resemblance to contrition.
I see a similar pattern far from press conferences, in the quieter setting of my work as a family therapist, often in the aftermath of infidelity. Couples rarely arrive in my office arguing about whether someone should apologise. More often, the apology has already been delivered – sometimes fluently, even convincingly. Unlike some of the public figures, the wrongdoer may feel genuine shame, fear and regret. But the apology is followed almost immediately by a desire to move on. The speaker wants closure. The past, they insist, has been “addressed”. Revisiting it feels distressing, humiliating, unnecessary. They endure the discomfort only until they feel permitted to leave it behind.
But for the person who was hurt, the apology is not the end of the work. It is the beginning.
This is where our collective confusion lies. We claim to value apologies, but we mistake saying the word for doing the labour. The English language does not help matters. The word “sorry” is the same one used if you spill someone’s drink or if you run over their brother and this has relational consequences. Those with genuine remorse want to make amends – but neither our discourse nor our role models offer guidance on how to do so beyond a single performative utterance.
Jewish moral thought offers a deeper reflection. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that "teshuva”, often translated as “repentance”, actually means “return”. Not merely a performance of regret, but a slow turning back toward recommitting to our innate integrity. In this tradition, remorse is not an emotion but a journey.
Maimonides lays this out with clarity. Teshuva requires four distinct stages: charata (genuine regret), vidui (explicit confession), azivat hachet (ceasing the harmful behaviour), and a concrete commitment not to repeat it when faced with the same temptation again. Crucially, when harm has been done to another person – bein adam lechavero – even God cannot forgive on your behalf. Atonement is suspended until the injured party has been fully acknowledged and, where possible, repaired.
These are some of the pieces missing from our public apologies: humility, accountability and action. Real remorse requires the offender to accept that their moral standing is no longer self-determined. They must listen. They must wait. They must tolerate not being absolved. Jewish ethics insists that forgiveness is not owed, and reconciliation cannot be rushed. Forgiveness may never come, but that does not cancel the obligation to apologise anyway. On Yom Kippur, we recite collective confessions not to move past guilt quickly, but to stay with it long enough for it to reshape us.
In therapy rooms, apologies fail not because they are withheld, but because they are rushed. The injured person needs to feel met. What heals is not eloquence but repair: validation, empathy without defensiveness, and sustained action that rebuilds safety over time. The offender must relinquish control of the timeline. That surrender – so absent from public life – is the beginning of moral humility.
Rabbi Sacks warned that a culture that cannot acknowledge wrongdoing and seek forgiveness may not be able to endure. That capacity for remorse depends on whether we understand it as multi-layered, slow and relational – or cheap, swift and self-protective.
Public apologies fail because they arrive too late and cost too little. “Sorry” should be the beginning of a visible process of contrition and humility, not the fee paid for being caught. Until we insist on seeing that process – and give it as much attention as we give the scandal itself – we will continue to drown in apologies that sound correct, feel empty, and quietly corrode what little trust remains, both in public life and within what is left of our most intimate institutions.
Chaya Chana Hughes is a rebbetzen and family therapist and works for The Abraham Effect supporting Jewish children in British secondary schools
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