Quick Take
- Narration: Rabbi Bernath reads his own work, and it shows in every pause and digression. The conversational warmth is the audiobook’s greatest asset.
- Themes: Forgiveness as self-liberation, Jewish wisdom and psychology, letting go without forgetting
- Mood: Warm, honest, and gently challenging
- Verdict: A personally narrated guide to forgiveness that earns its emotional claims through real storytelling rather than abstract instruction.
I tend to be cautious about self-help audiobooks narrated by their authors. The sincerity can curdle into self-congratulation, the anecdotes start to feel rehearsed, and the reader ends up feeling like they have attended a very long after-dinner speech. Rabbi Yisroel Bernath’s The Forgiveness Experiment is a meaningful exception to that pattern. I listened to about half of it during a long train journey on a grey afternoon, and by the time I reached my stop I had pulled out my notebook twice.
The setup is simple. Bernath, a Chabad rabbi and relationship coach based in Montreal, structures the book as a personal journey into the practice of forgiveness. He is not writing from a position of having solved the problem. He is writing as someone who has worked on it, stumbled, found partial answers in Jewish texts and in therapy and in hard conversations, and is sharing what he found. That posture of honest incompleteness is what keeps the book from feeling like a lecture.
Our Take on The Forgiveness Experiment
The central teaching the book returns to is drawn from the story of Joseph and his brothers. One reviewer summarized it precisely: Joseph’s response to his brothers, you intended harm, but I used it for good, functions as the book’s animating insight. Bernath uses it to make an argument that forgiveness is not about exonerating the person who hurt you. It is not about reconciliation, which he distinguishes carefully from forgiveness itself. It is about reclaiming the energy you spend rehearsing the injury.
What makes the book work as an audiobook specifically is Bernath’s voice. He reads with the cadence of a storyteller rather than a lecturer. He digresses deliberately, circles back, and occasionally makes you laugh in the middle of something genuinely difficult. One reviewer described the experience as having a conversation in your head with a good friend. That is about right. The prayers and ancient texts he references are handled without condescension toward listeners who do not share his tradition, which matters for the book’s reach.
Why Listen to The Forgiveness Experiment
Each chapter ends with a structured exercise, which is an unusual feature for a ten-hour audiobook and a useful one. Bernath asks listeners to write down who hurt them, what they did, and then work through a set of questions designed to shift their relationship to the memory rather than the person. One reviewer noted that this format helped them forgive specific people they had been carrying for years: the memory remained, but it stopped occupying the foreground. That is a reasonable description of what the exercises are designed to produce.
The book blends Jewish wisdom with modern therapeutic frameworks in a way that feels integrated rather than bolted together. Bernath draws on figures from Hasidic tradition alongside concepts familiar to anyone who has spent time with cognitive behavioral therapy or attachment theory. The combination does not feel forced because he is not trying to prove a system. He is sharing a practice.
What to Watch For in The Forgiveness Experiment
The audiobook is ten hours, which is a substantial commitment for what is essentially a practical spiritual guide. Some listeners may find that the personal stories, while engaging in themselves, occasionally extend past the point where they are doing structural work. The book is more essay than argument; it meanders productively but does meander. Listeners looking for a tightly organized step-by-step process may want to supplement with the companion PDF, which is available through the Audible library and provides the structural scaffolding that the audio tends to handle more loosely.
The book is explicitly rooted in a Jewish framework, and Bernath does not hide that or apologize for it. He makes a genuine effort to translate the concepts for readers from other traditions or no tradition at all, but if you are strongly resistant to religious framing, some chapters will require patience. Listeners who reviewed it positively were consistently those willing to engage with the spiritual dimension even when it did not map onto their own practice.
Who Should Listen to The Forgiveness Experiment
Anyone who is genuinely stuck on a specific hurt, whether from a family member, a colleague, or a friend, and has found that conventional advice about forgiveness feels either sentimental or impossible will find something useful here. The combination of Jewish teaching, therapeutic structure, and Bernath’s personal honesty gives it more traction than most books in this space. It is also well-suited to listeners who already follow Bernath’s podcasts, particularly Kabbalah Is for Everyone, and want a more sustained engagement with his thinking. Those seeking a short, quick-hit productivity take on emotional life will find the pacing slow; the book rewards attentive listening rather than passive consumption.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to be Jewish to benefit from The Forgiveness Experiment?
No. Bernath draws heavily on Jewish texts and Hasidic teaching, but he consistently translates concepts for listeners outside that tradition. Several reviewers from different religious backgrounds found the book applicable to their own practices.
Does the audiobook include the exercises mentioned in the book?
Yes, Bernath reads through the chapter-end exercises in the audio. The companion PDF available in your Audible library provides a written version that may be easier to work with for the written reflection exercises.
Is this book about forgiving others, or does it also address forgiving yourself?
Both. Bernath devotes significant attention to self-forgiveness and to the ways that guilt over harm we have caused others can be as binding as resentment over harm done to us. The two threads run throughout.
How does Bernath define forgiveness differently from reconciliation?
He treats them as separate acts. In his framework, forgiveness is an internal release of the claim that someone else’s wrongdoing is still controlling your present. Reconciliation, which may or may not follow, requires both parties. Forgiveness requires only one.
