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This week the Oxford English Dictionary expanded their Word of the Year to a list that includes the term Cancel Culture. Cancel Culture is a superspreader phenomenon online and on social media. It boycotts people and targets their reputation and right to livelihood because of their perceived actions or views, which are often branded as irredeemably offensive. Even questioning Cancel Culture could get you cancelled! But cancellations are often honourably motivated as reactions to the persistence of systemic injustice. Girls and women constantly attest to being harassed in public, including being catcalled, followed, groped, flashed and upskirted. Black Lives Matter propelled us into addressing devastating and pervasive racial injustice. Last year, hate crimes against transgender people rose very sharply as did those against LGB+ people. It’s necessary to hold people whose views prolong suffering accountable, but Cancel Culture is not the way. Instead of strengthening inclusion, Cancel Culture has the effect of silencing people who are scared of making mistakes or even asking questions. It negates a central teaching of Judaism; the acknowledgment that we all make mistakes, and must be allowed to apologise fully and make amends. And then - be forgiven and continue our lives. As a joint British-Israeli citizen, I was able to go to Jerusalem before the lockdown to visit one of our children whose flat overlooks the valley of Ben Hinnom by the Old City. It’s also called Gehenna or, in English, ‘hell’, as it was meant to be the ancient site of human sacrifices. Thousands of years ago, the prophet Jeremiah stood over this valley that I can see out of my window and smashed a clay pot to pieces in revulsion at what he saw as people’s abhorrent behaviour. Jeremiah might have approved of Cancel Culture because he had a total belief in his own truth as the divine voice speaking through him. But, for me, smashing any container brings irrevocable fragmentation and replaces any possibility of healing brokenness. I’m inspired by the prophets, but that doesn’t make any of us modern day ones, and acting solely out of righteous indignation is a dangerous societal model. Instead of recoiling, dismissing or cancelling cancel culture, we could see it as an invitation to ask questions about the concerns that underlie the desire to cancel people. I believe we need a just society in which we are all innocent until proven guilty. One in which we have both accountability and the generous benefit of the doubt. Only then can we vaccinate ourselves against unquestioning dogma and toxicity. Only then can we build a society that is not fragmented but whole and healthy.