Advice on How to Judge Favorably - R. Yaakov Moskowitz - TorahAnytime.com

There's a Oh. If we look back at the Mishna, the Mishna that we said in 1A, "Behave a done as call ha Adam the cops of us." If you stop and think about it for a minute, there's another question that really should be so striking. The the language of the Mishna makes absolutely no sense. If the Mishna is trying to say you should judge all people favorably, so the Mishna should say in Hebrew "Behave a done as call Adam the cops of us." All people favorably. What's with the extra hey? "Behave a done as call ha Adam the cops of us." That literally translates into you should judge all of the person favorably. What? All of the person favorably? That's not English. Yeah, okay, cuz it's Hebrew. Okay, fine. I get it. But, this is not that's not a normal way of speaking. It's not proper. And the Sfas Emes picks up on this and he says the following thing. This is an incredible incredible Yisroel from the Sfas Emes number three. Listen to this. He says, "That the Mishna not only requires us to judge everyone's behavior behavior favorably, but it also assists us in doing so. Judge the entire person." The Mishna is saying "Behave a done as call ha Adam." When you're judging people, judge [clears throat] call ha Adam, the entire individual. Meaning what? Although specific character traits of an individual may be flawed, his overall character can certainly be distinguished. Instead of focusing on relatively minor flaws, concentrate on the more favorable and positive character traits. The Sfas Emes are telling us that the Mishna is teaching us that when somebody does something hurtful and negative to us, or when we see somebody doing something that it looks like an aveira, it looks like they're doing something bad, in a certain way, it may be it's true. Maybe it's true what they're doing is bad. And they especially if they they're insulting us. I did get insulted. They did insult me. But he's saying that in etsa, the mission is telling us in etsa, a trick, advice, to help us get through that circumstance and judge them properly is to judge the entire person. Yes, this person right now acted negatively. But don't they have any positive qualities that come with them in this world? Is this person all bad? Or does this person have a lot of good that they contribute to the world and that they contribute with to you within your relationship? That's what it means as call ha adam, the entire person. And this is so amazing. I mean, this doesn't, you know, it doesn't need my help, but >> [laughter] >> but when I when I saw it the first time, I was so taken aback because our natural um our natural gut reaction when somebody hurts us, when somebody does something negative, our natural intuition, our natural gut reaction is that we zero in on the negative because that's what we do. That's what the heart gets us to do. It's totally normal and typical. That is the human reaction. When somebody hurts me, insults me, I zero in on that and then I think that this person is all about that negative that they did to me. Again, human, normal, typical. But if we can try to train ourselves to in that moment when somebody's hurting me, doing something negative, to try to think bigger, think about the broad picture, think about the entire person that is over here, okay? This person can't be all bad. I don't know anyone that's all bad, right? This person has a lot of good qualities and contributes a lot to this friendship, to this relationship.