Every time Rabbi Linda Holtzman begins to tap out an e-mail starting with the words "I'm sorry," she stops for a moment to question her intentions. "I think, 'Am I doing this because I'm afraid to call the person, or because it really is the quickest way?' "

For Jews, it is the season for such self-examination, a period of reflection, forgiveness and reconciliation that began before Rosh Hashanah and culminates tomorrow on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

"It's funny to think of forgiveness as seasonal," says Holtzman, rabbi of Reconstructionist congregation Mishkan Shalom in Roxborough. "But it's a marvelous system because it forces you, every year, to just jump in and do some serious review."

The practice of forgiveness percolates through the world's major faiths. At the Episcopal Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in Center City, parishioners recite a collective "confession of sin" each Sunday. During Ramadan, which ended last week, Muslims make a special effort to reconcile with family and friends. A Buddhist ceremony, Beginning Anew, aims to forge forgiveness and understanding between people who have been in conflict.

But lately, forgiveness has spilled beyond the doors of temples, churches and mosques, gaining traction as a tool for mediating struggle in workplaces, within communities, or even between warring tribes and nations.

"Forgiveness is getting increasing currency," says Darlene Fozard Weaver, director of Villanova University's Theology Institute, which is sponsoring a one-day conference on forgiveness this month. "There's an explosion of scholarship around the topic." The Villanova conference will include speakers from the worlds of psychology, law, theology and the arts; one is Jane Golden, director of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program.

Forgiveness has gone global: There's an International Forgiveness Day - the first Sunday of August, marked last year in 14 countries, according to the executive director of the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance, Robert W. Plath. And psychologists are learning that forgiveness not only may be beneficial for the soul, but also can enhance physical and mental health.

The direct approach

What does it mean, exactly, to forgive? Clergy, psychologists and philosophers have different definitions, but they tend to agree on what forgiveness is not: It doesn't mean condoning, excusing or dismissing an act of harm.

Eric Hoffman, a Gestalt therapist and visiting professor of philosophy at St. Joseph's University, describes forgiveness as a paradoxical state of mind: "One is holding the judgment of something being wrong and yet intentionally creating an attitude of acceptance."

Most religions have rituals to help people navigate that tricky strait. At Mishkan Shalom tomorrow, some congregants will take part in a forgiveness meditation. At Rosh Hashanah, members gathered by the Wissahickon for tashlik, casting crumbs or pebbles to release missteps or guilt from the last year.

"None of this takes the place of interpersonal forgiveness," Holtzman says. "And sending a group e-mail of apology to 500 people is not the essence. I strongly advise people to have personal conversations."

The same holds true for Muslims, says Iftekhar Hussain, board chair of Pennsylvania's Council on American-Islamic Relations and a frequent Friday-night prayer leader at local mosques. "In Islam, God's forgiveness is conditioned on you seeking forgiveness from the person you wronged."

All faiths agree that forgiveness is a good thing. They also agree that you can't rush it, force it or fake it. "It takes a month" - the Jewish lunar month of Elul, preceding the High Holidays - "to admit to ourselves the ways we have screwed up," Holtzman says. "We are gradually chipping away at something. And the good thing about annual cycles is they always come back."

Good, and good for you

You can see the face of forgiveness at 13th and Erie Streets in North Philadelphia. There, much larger than life, is the painted image of Janice Jackson-Burke. Behind her is the face - unblemished, wide-eyed - of her son, Kevin Johnson.

In 2003, Johnson was paralyzed when he was shot by a group of young men who wanted his Allen Iverson jersey. Johnson publicly forgave his attackers; eventually, Jackson-Burke did, too. After Johnson died in 2006, artist Eric Okdeh painted their story; as a project of the Mural Arts Program, it involved prisoners at Graterford, people from the neighborhood, and Jackson-Burke herself.

"Her ability to rise above the anger and bitterness and hate inspired all of us, including people who passed on the street, to think about the role of forgiveness in their lives," says Mural Arts' Golden.

"It was surprising to me that she was able to forgive," Okdeh says. "It made me think a lot: Could I be as strong?"

According to psychologists, forgiveness can actually build internal strength, while anger and resentment weaken the body, over time. Everett Worthington, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Forgiving and Reconciling, describes it this way: Flares of anger and bitterness trigger a release of cortisol, the "stress hormone" that can damage the digestive, cardiovascular and immune systems.

Worthington and others are quick to note that forgiveness is not incompatible with justice - in fact, he points to the practice of restorative justice, which can include mediated conferences between offenders and victims, as one way to merge reconciliation with accountability.

Angel Flores, chief of the juvenile unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, says a minority of the unit's 9,500 annual cases end with forgiveness. When it happens, though, the catharsis is powerful enough to make Flores teary-eyed along with the people involved. And he remembers the Johnson case. "What a remarkable person this guy was, who found it within himself . . . to forgive. Few examples rise to that level."

Globalization

If forgiveness has the power to transform individuals and heal relationships, can it also help soften decades-old community or global conflicts?

At Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., a project called "Coming to the Table" brings together African American and white members of families that trace their roots to the same plantation; forgiveness is often an ingredient in their dialogues. Forgiveness researchers point to South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings as a model of "remembering and forgiving." And Fred Luskin, a speaker at the Villanova conference and director of the Forgiveness Projects at Stanford University, has taught the tools of forgiveness to Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland, relatives of people killed in the World Trade Center attacks, and schoolchildren in war-scarred Sierra Leone.

At the tribal or national level, forgiveness is harder because of the power of a community story that paints others as "the enemy," Luskin explains. "When you show a desire to get beyond that, or you have a different take, your own group can excommunicate you. That is a price not many people are willing to pay."

Last Tuesday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, about 30 Philadelphia Jews gathered for tashlik on the banks of the Schuylkill. But the sins they were pitching into the water, in the form of small gray pebbles, were not personal misdeeds. Instead, they cited actions of the Israeli government in relation to Palestinians.

"For bulldozing houses, bombing power stations, destroying wells, uprooting orchards, dumping chemicals and sewage," the group read aloud. "We cast this sin away, we will work to make it known, we will work to make it end."

Hannah Schwarzschild, an attorney and peace activist who cowrote the liturgy for the ritual, sponsored by Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace, says the goal was to merge a traditional Rosh Hashanah custom with the politics of justice and reconciliation.

She knows tossing gravel into the Schuylkill won't bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table. "I think it's more about forgiving ourselves for the ways we're implicated," she says. "This is very much part of my political practice, and my spiritual practice, and they're really wedded as one."