During my time off this summer, I went to Mama Dag’s in West Orange one day. If you’re in the area and you haven’t been, you should go, trust me.
There was a couple seated a few tables away. They seemed to be having a quiet conversation. Was it a first date? A married couple? Siblings? I wasn’t really paying attention…until out of nowhere, the man reached across and slapped the woman! What on earth? Was this domestic abuse? Surely someone else saw this, right? We all know what we saw…or did we?
It’s like the film and play, “Rashomon.” Four witnesses to a crime all see and remember it differently. Few of their details match up, and not one of them knows or understands the whole story of what they saw.
Details matter. I didn’t tell you that she was pregnant, so it was probably not a first date. Or that they had matching wedding rings, so probably not siblings. And there was a mosquito on her face. Aha! Did you know that the Asian tiger mosquito is growing in population in New Jersey due to all this rain? Or that it carries the Zika virus, which can be deadly?
Watching from outside, I didn’t have all the information. At a glance, we might assume he should have been arrested. Hearing only one person tell the story, we learn a few details, but nothing of what the couple knew to be true. Taking in the full picture, the truth is very different from our assumptions.
One nice thing over this break has been having time to visit our local pool with my daughter, Elizabeth. It’s a godsend on hot days.
There is usually a Good Humor truck parked there, thank goodness. For the record, I am a King Cone aficionado. Anyone else? How about orange Creamsicles? Ice cream sandwiches? They’re all good.
Now, imagine our surprise when one day, there was a different truck parked there. It was named “Chill-Man.” We looked at each other. What is this?
His thing was soft-serve ice cream with sprinkles, no King Cones or Creamsicles. But it was a very hot day, we both wanted to cool down, so we went to take a look. At a glance, we were struck by the high prices. $8! For a waffle cone! Price gouging! Well, like I said, it was hot, and there was a crowd waiting, so we each got a big waffle cone with lots of ice cream and sprinkles, served with a side of grumbling. This guy has some chutzpah! Who does he think he is?
The next week, another hot day, another visit to the Chill Man. We were early, so there wasn’t much of a crowd yet, and we had more time to look at the menu. Elizabeth noticed that he also had $4 regular cones with sprinkles. We hadn’t seen that before. That was more like it. We ordered our $4 cones, and they were still plenty large, good value for the money.
We had been too harsh with our grumbling the week before. The fault was ours—we didn’t look closely at everything on the menu, we did not look for the full story. At a glance, we only saw the worst and found it. Only when our gaze shifted—when we took in all the details—did we realize he was a fair businessman. And the ice cream was delicious!
The Torah commands us to give others the benefit of the doubt and to judge them favorably, as it is written, “With righteousness shall you judge your fellow.” (Lev 19:15). We are commanded to view people as basically upright, honest, and good hearted. If we see someone doing something that appears wrong, we must search for extenuating circumstances that might mitigate it and would not present the offender as a “bad person.” In short, don’t assume.
Often, our first reaction to something questionable is that there can be no excuse for it. Like the slap in the restaurant. Consider if we had seen the same behavior in a friend, family member, or ourselves—at the very least, we might find a way to overlook it. At best, we should try to understand it.
The Torah commands “Love your fellow as yourself.” (Lev 19:18). Give them the same benefit of the doubt that would give to your friend or family member. We can see ourselves in the wrong-doer. Each and every one of us has made missteps and mistakes. Maybe you’re remembering some now. And maybe they only seemed like mistakes or missteps to you—maybe you don’t know how the others involved perceived them. None of us are perfect, and none of us are omniscient.
Someone who fails to seek ways to excuse the actions of his fellow Jew and judges him unfavorably not only violates these two commandments — With righteousness shall you judge your fellow and You shall love your fellow as yourself — but also lays the groundwork for violating a host of other commandments.
In Judaism, every single person has some merit—even people who seem difficult have some zechut, some merit to them.
There’s a famous story from parsha D’varim. Moses is recalling all that they have been through. They defeated this king and that king, these people and those people. Finally, Moses recounts the words that God told him when he faced the King of Og, “Fear him not; for I have delivered him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand;” (Deut 3:2) With this king and that king, God didn’t need to boost Moses to defeat them. Why this one?
Because it was possible that the King of Og had some zechut—some merit that would come to his aid in a fight. Rashi tells us that it was this Og back in Genesis 14:13 who was the “fugitive” who had left his battle and informed Avram about the capture of his nephew, Lot. Because of this one little zechut, it was possible Hashem would come to his aid and make it impossible for Moshe and the Israelites to overcome him.
Everybody has some good in them, even your enemies. Look at the whole, not a tiny portion.
Rabbi Ryan Levian has a wonderful example. Imagine you have a clean white piece of paper. Suddenly, you draw a small dot in the middle. When you look at it, what are you going to be looking at?
That’s right. The dot.
99% of the paper is pristine white, but you’re looking at that dot, aren’t you? As you focus on the one flaw, so it can be with people. You only see a flaw or mistake in them, but in so doing, you only see a small portion of who they truly are. Even knowing we all have flaws, even knowing our own, it is still easy to forget and focus on another’s to the exclusion of all else about them.
Who’s to say Mr. Chill Man is wrong for charging $8? Maybe he makes those waffle cones himself. Maybe he donates to charity or gives ice cream away to those in need. We don’t know. When we look at the one dot, we miss the space around it.
When we focus instead on that space in anyone—and in a fellow Jew especially—we honor God’s commandment and we merit to be judged favorably in God’s eyes, who is the True Judge.
The water is getting colder now, but we went to the pool late yesterday anyway. On the way there, knowing more detail, we were excited to see if Mr. Chill Man would be there. We gamed out what flavors and which sprinkles we would get.
We saw the truck as we approached the lot. Hooray! Ice cream! And then, as we parked…Mr. Chill Man drove away. It was late in the day, he may have been all sold out, he may have been called away by family, we didn’t know all the details. But we had come a long way from grumbling to appreciation because we took the time to look beyond. And so, we look forward to seeing Mr. Chill Man again. Maybe even tomorrow…