Here’s an
interesting observation from R’ Yaakov Moshe Charlap (Mei Marom 2:52,
cited by R’ Chaim Druckman, Avot leBanim) on the subject of how we judge
other people. Avot Today has often cited the teaching of Yehoshua ben Perachyah
at Avot 1:6, that we should judge people on a scale of favour, giving them the
benefit of the doubt if it is possible to do so. R’ Charlap points out that our
judgement of others can be as much a reflection of ourselves as of the person
we are judging. Thus a person who is very rarely angry and only reaches that condition
when sorely provoked, on seeing someone else displaying anger, is apt to conclude
that this angry person must have been sorely provoked too and would not have
lost his temper under normal circumstances. Presumably this works the other way
too: someone who is quick-tempered, viewing someone else losing their temper,
will empathise with them because his experience and perception is the same.
What does
this mean in wider terms? Do we want to urge a man who is a wife-beater to
judge someone else who abuses his spouse the same way because he appreciates
how gratifying it may be? Surely not. Perhaps the point here is that, when
looking at the conduct of another person and then excusing it or empathising
with it, the onlooker should—without casting aspersions on the other person—use
what he sees as a sort of behavioural barometer to measure the acceptability of
this conduct. That way, before the onset of Rosh Hashanah and the great annual
judgement to which we subject ourselves, we will have done a better and more
honest job of assessing our own performance over the past year. That way too,
we stand a better chance of putting our performance right for the year to come.
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