At Avot 1:6 Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches:
עֲשֵׂה לְךָ
רַב, וּקְנֵה לְךָ חָבֵר, וֶהֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת
Make for yourself a teacher (or master),
acquire for yourself a friend, and judge every person meritoriously.
The third and final part of this mishnah is the source for
the injunction to give other people the benefit of the doubt if you don’t know
whether they intended to act in a dubious manner. After all, we don’t have a
window into other people’s minds. When they do something wrong, can we be sure
that they were doing so deliberately? Or did they have an explanation, an
excuse that was at least plausible if not deserving of our approval?
This may not have been quite what Yehoshua ben Perachyah meant.
The word safek (“doubt”) does not
actually appear in this mishnah. The commentaries of the Bartenura, Rambam,
Rashi and Rabbenu Yonah make no mention of doubt either.
According to the commentary ascribed to Rashi, one should not
assume that what one hears someone else has done is bad unless there is clear evidence
to that effect. This idea that we are talking here about the burden of proof when
judging a legal dispute—a subject matter that fits well into the first perek of
Avot, where much, if not most, of the teachings are relevant to judicial
proceedings. The Bartenura uses “scales of justice” imagery too: when the case
is equipoised, one should not treat the person being judged as a rasha,
someone who is wicked.
Rambam, whose explanation is endorsed by Rabbenu Yonah and
the Me’iri, takes this mishnah beyond the realm of judicial proceedings. In
their view it only really applies to someone you don’t know: if you know a
person to be bad, even his apparently good actions are probably bad, while a
good person’s seemingly bad actions should be viewed as good.
Some commentators seek to link the third part of the mishnah
to the teachings that precede it. Thus the Sforno and Rabbi Chaim Volozhin (Ruach
HaChaim) both see judging others favourably as the means of preserving the
friendship that one has just acquired.
Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith) offers a very
different explanation of this mishnah, citing a teaching of Rabbi Tzvi
Elimelech Spira of Dinov, Chasidic author of the Bnei Yissaschar. Here the focus is shifted from subjective
doubt to and objective evidence of truth, towards the higher value of emulating
God. He writes:
“[I]f your friend does something
and you have two ways of judging him, either realistically, attributing his
actions to malice and bad motives, or charitably, seeking out the best interpretation
of his deeds, you must do the latter and give him the benefit of the doubt. But
how can one do this when one knows that a fellowman did indeed perform a
transgression out of malevolence or at least indifferent motives? Knowing the
psychology of human beings, and the nastiness that lies so close to the soul,
are we indeed being truthful in judging another lekaf zechut—charitably?”
This is not a rhetorical question. It is indeed demanded by Pirkei
Avot itself, where truth is highlighted as one of the three things that enable
the world to function (Avot 1:18) and we are told that conceding the truth is
one of the seven signs of the chacham, one who is wise (Avot 5:9). The
Bnei Yissaschar however effectively bypasses this issue. As Rabbi Lamm
explains, this answer hinges on another mishnah in Avot, an enigmatic statement
by Rabbi Akiva at Avot 3:19 that appears to have no obvious connection to our
discussion:
הַכֹּל צָפוּי,
וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה
Everything is foreseen, and
freedom of choice is granted.
Rabbi Lamm explains:
These words are so noble and inspiring that we could almost
swallow them whole. But in the world of middot and mussar nothing
is simple. In the same perek as this mishnah, we are told to distance ourselves
from a bad neighbour and to avoid joining up with a rasha, someone who is evil.
These assessments are of people rather than of actions (the subject of our
mishnah) but there is a fine line to be drawn—for how do we judge a person
other than through his or her actions?
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