How to lose wait

No -- the title's not a mis-spelling. Please read on!

One of Hillel’s more frequently encountered teachings is אַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרָךְ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּֽיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ (“Don’t judge your friend until you are standing in his place”). The obvious meaning is the literal one: unless you are able to look through another person’s eyes and experience what they are feeling when they do something, you cannot understand their thoughts and motives. This being so, you are not in a position to criticize their actions.

Taken at their face value, Hillel’s words fit well with other content in Pirkei Avot. Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose (Avot 4:10) tells us not to judge at all unless we do so in the company of other judges. Hillel teaches that we can’t judge properly from our personal standpoint. Yehoshua ben Perachya (Avot 1:6) adds that, even if we do judge someone, we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

There is another way we can look at Hillel’s teaching. Maybe he is encouraging us to try to look at things through other people’s eyes in order to avoid judging them at all. Here’s a practical instance of what I mean.

This morning when I left my synagogue, I noticed a man who was standing by the front door, at the top of a flight of steps. He was sheltering under the porch while he waited for his taxi to pick him up. From where he stood, he had a good view of any taxi that might draw up in front of the main door.

A little way down the road, I noticed a taxi waiting to pick up a passenger. The taxi had pulled in to the side of the road at a convenient point, by the edge of the synagogue, where the vehicle could stand without causing any inconvenience to pedestrians or road users.

I realized that there was a problem. The passenger was standing at a really good place for people to stand while waiting for a cab, while the taxi driver had parked in a really good place for motor vehicles to pull in—but neither could see the other.

If it had occurred to the taxi’s customer that the taxi might pull in at a place convenient for taxis, or if the taxi driver had thought where, if he was awaiting a cab, he might be standing, the two would have found each other instantly. As it was, the man awaiting the taxi was looking somewhat impatient, and the taxi driver’s face had ‘disgruntled’ written all over it.

The moral of the story is plain. If either of the actors in this early morning drama had visualized the problem of “man + taxi” through the eyes of the other, there would have been no problem.