It’s the most famous pun in the history of the foreign office. In 1842, Major General Sir Charles Napier, commander of the British army in India, was ordered to quell an uprising in a province called Sindh, today the region around Karachi in Pakistan. He succeeded, and sent back a message consisting of one word, Peccavi, which is the Latin for ‘I have sinned.’<\/p>\n
Puns aside, the hardest thing to say in any language is just that: I have sinned. I did wrong. Forgive me. Which is why, in Judaism, we have Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins this Friday night.<\/p>\n
For us, it’s the holiest day of the year, and it is given over to saying in a hundred different ways, I have sinned.<\/p>\n
It isn’t easy to do. But it’s essential to a happy life. I have seen marriages fail, families split apart, friends become estranged, whole communities divided, all because neither side was prepared to say: I got it wrong. Forgive me.<\/b><\/p>\n