Weekly Davar - When we judge others, we're judging ourselves

 

Metzorah
(Leviticus 12-13)

07th April 2011
3rd Nissan 5771

Good Afternoon!! We still have some places left on our Thailand trip. It’s a 10 day trip in July looking at the slave trade, volunteering with its victims and discussing how to help in a meaningful way. It’s not a ‘social action’ volunteering trip. Its goal is to consider our responsibility for global issues and how we can give with a solution based focus that genuinely helps others rather than just making us feel better. It is for all ages and all religious levels.

Torah Portion

This week's portion continues with the mystical affliction of tzaraas, in particular the purification process for someone thus afflicted. It also talks about tzaraas in houses and its purification. They are long and complex procedures and the Rabbis draw an analogy. Since tzaraas generally afflicts someone who has spoken badly about others, the process of purification is very complex and this is akin to the mistake itself. Undoing hurt that we cause others when we speak badly about them is likened to trying to gather together all the feathers from a down pillow – after they have been cast to the wind!
 

Davar Torah

When talking about a person afflicted with tzaraas (see above), he is told to live outside of the city, to wear a cover on his face and to call out, ‘impure, impure’. The Rabbis point out that these words can be read differently. Being that there is no punctuation in the Hebrew Bible, the sentence could also read, ‘and the impure one will call out impure’. They tell us the Torah is pointing to a psychological insight. A person who puts down another will usually do so with a fault that he sees in himself.
 
They are saying that when we judge and belittle others, we usually do so with something that we don’t like about ourselves. If we put someone down for being arrogant, it’s usually because we are arrogant ourselves. If we judge someone for being selfish, it’s often because we are really the selfish ones.
 
How does this work? We human beings are usually bothered, at least subconsciously, by our own faults. We don’t like ourselves for them and wish we didn’t have them – but we don’t necessarily feel able (or willing) to change. So now when we see that same fault in someone else, it’s reflects back our own failings; it touches a raw nerve and annoys us. So we judge the person and feel frustrated at them for being this way. But in truth, the frustration is at ourselves.
 
A humble person will not be overly concerned with arrogance. He might think it is wrong and harmful, but he won’t take it personally. An arrogant man, however, will be annoyed by arrogance in another; he will be frustrated at it and judge harshly – because it reminds him of his own shortcomings.
 
So it’s a great litmus test. When we find ourselves looking at others and judging their faults, let’s ask ourselves first if those are perhaps our own faults. I personally see it so clearly in my marriage – if there are things that frustrate me in my wife, it’s only because they frustrate me in myself. If I get upset that my wife is late (which she almost never is), it’s because I am the one who is always late and it upsets me about myself. It’s not that she wasn’t late this time around, perhaps she was; but I’ve been late a thousand times and now I’m taking it out on her.
 
More often than not, when we judge others, we’re really judging only ourselves. When we have solved our own faults, those faults in others won’t bother us half as much. So perhaps instead of judging others and trying to change those around us – we would do much better considering how to change ourselves instead.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt

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