Judgementalness and a call for fresh glasses

“Pirkei Avot: Judges vs. Lawyers” is the title of the second Times of Israel blogpost by Rabbi Elchanan Poupko to feature on Avot Today*. I flagged when it was first posted—all the way back on 22 July—and then lost sight of before I could write about it. Well, now I’ve found it again, so here goes [strange but true: at any given time I have somewhere between 60 and 100 ideas for Avot Today posts, mainly flagged with brightly coloured pieces of sticky paper, which get my attention anything between a day and a couple of years after I first spot them].

R' Poupko references the mishnah at Avot 1:8 in which Yehudah ben Tabbai says:

כְשֶׁיִּהְיוּ בַּעֲלֵי הַדִּין עוֹמְדִים לְפָנֶֽיךָ, יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶֽיךָ כִּרְשָׁעִים, וּכְשֶׁנִּפְטָרִים מִלְּפָנֶֽיךָ יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶֽיךָ כְּזַכָּאִין, כְּשֶׁקִּבְּלוּ עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת הַדִּין

When the litigants stand before you, consider them both as being guilty [literally, ‘wicked’]; and when they leave your courtroom, regard them as being righteous since they have accepted upon themselves the judgement.

On this R’ Poupko comments:

The Mishna … speak[s] about the need to see the parties as guilty until the judgment is over, at which point we must see them as righteous. Humans have an immense need to see people in black and white, good and evil, my side or my enemy’s side, and countless other binary names. The Mishna is teaching us that how we relate to people does not have to be set in stone, as much as it depends on the circumstances. You can be a fierce opponent of someone on the athletic playing field and their best friend once you get off that field. You can see someone in a certain way while you are a judge, but in a completely different way once you get off that judging seat. You can see a person a certain way once they have committed a crime and in a completely different way once they have gone through their process of atonement. We must all have that ability. Yesterday’s foe can be today’s friend. Last year’s enemy can be this year’s ally and friend. Always try and put on fresh glasses, and see people in a positive way.

I remember as a child starting one year with the teacher announcing they have not read any of the reports from previous years on any of the students and feeling this is an opportunity for me to improve and start a fresh bringing. The Mishna obliges the judges to suspect people who come in front of them for judgment, but to also make sure they drop that judgmentalness once the matter has been resolved.

This post raises a couple of questions, of which an obvious one relates to the relationship between this mishnah and Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s teaching at Avot 1:6 that one should judge other people favourably. There is no real contradiction between these two teachings. Yehudah ben Tabbai proposes a process that leads to a judge viewing both parties in a favourable light, even though he not only knows that only one of them is in the right but he is the decisor who determines which of the two it is. Regarding both as being guilty is not the conclusion reached by the judge but an artificial step in the judicial process, the starting point for establishing liability but not its destination. R’ Poupko’s classroom is not a courtroom; the new teacher is wise to start with a clean slate when assessing the children and to seek to rely on fresh evidence: the previous year’s reports are merely hearsay.

A further question relates to the way we view people with whom we compete. Is R’ Poupko justified in equating them with people we judge? It is improbable that this thought would have occurred to Yehudah ben Tabbai, who lived at a time when sports and competition between individuals was a characteristic of Greco-Roman rather than Jewish culture. To be honest, I’m not sure that the sports scenario comfortably fits the mishnah even now. However, if R’ Poupko’s message is that competitive spirit should not be taken personally and allowed to descend into judgmentalism, it is hard to object to it.

As usual, readers’ insights are hugely appreciated.

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* The first Times of Israel blogpost from R’ Poupko that we discussed, ‘Please don’t let me be misunderstood’, can be found on this blog here and on theAvot Today Facebook Group here.

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