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From Rabbi Pete Tobias of the Liberal Synagogue, Elstree:

As the football season comes to an end, I’m sure there are fans of other teams looking at those sitting the top of the table who might say that, thanks to some refereeing decision or other, they’ve been robbed.  Tempting as it is to spend my entire Pause for Thought talking about football and Watford - ‘the Golden Boys’ - my thoughts this morning are actually about a painting known as the Woman in Gold. The family to whom it belonged were robbed of that picture and many other valuable items by the Nazis in 1938. A member of that family – Maria Altmann, played by Helen Mirren in a new film I saw a couple of days ago – struggles to reclaim what had once belonged to her family – the picture was of her aunt – and touches on various issues relating to restitution and forgiveness.

Owning things has always caused trouble. Ever since biblical times, laws have existed to deal with the theft of property. Their emphasis is on justice: ensuring that a crime is solved, the stolen item returned and the perpetrator punished.

If the picture in the film is returned then justice will have been done. But there are other issues at stake. It wasn’t just the theft of the picture that mattered, but the cruel manner in which it was taken, and the brutal treatment of its owners by those who took it. If humankind is to grow, then somewhere in the legal process, I think, there should be a requirement for apology.

Restitution isn’t just about returning what’s been stolen but also saying sorry for the wrongdoing. That can only happen when whoever illegally took possession of the item acknowledges their wrongdoing and apologises to those who have been robbed. That may not work if you feel you deserved a penalty, or thought that last-minute equaliser was offside. But in the world of stolen possessions if there is justice without acknowledgement of guilt, the legacy of theft will be resentment and the potential, perhaps, for further crime. Only with apology can there be forgiveness; and only with forgiveness can we truly develop healing and mutual trust, so necessary for us to grow as a society.

Heavy stuff - and it was just supposed to be a quiet Monday night at the movies!