As we gather around the table every year to say Kiddush and start the Seder I first shake open my Hagaddah until a wristband falls out. The wristband is the one I wore in hospital several years ago in the run up to Pesach. As a family we spend a few moments recounting that eventful year when I was discharged from hospital – my personal freedom – to arrive home very unexpectedly only minutes before Yom Tov arrived, and was able to make a sort-of-normal Seder at home.
How had I ended up in hospital? A week before Pesach while away in the countryside I experienced – over a three day period – some mild but definitely noticeable chest pains coupled with a dulling pain running down my left arm. These classic signs of a heart attack led me to be admitted to hospital to discover that on the back of being ill with tonsillitis-like-flu the week beforehand it had actually now developed into viral myocarditis.
Myocarditis is quite simply a condition where the heart muscle is inflamed and sore much like any muscle in the body, only this muscle is your heart not your leg! In short I was experiencing heart attack pains without having an actual heart attack, thank G-d. In order to rest the muscle the treatment included medication that slowed down my heartbeat and I was put on two weeks of severe bedrest – not doing anything that would cause my heartbeat to rise followed by another four weeks of taking things very very easy.
It was at the end of this four week period that I found myself in London having an extended restful weekend at my in laws. I was davening Friday night in shul and due to doctors orders I was sitting for much of davening – only standing for the actual Amidah. As the shul finished singing ‘Le.cha Dodi’ and began to say ‘Mizzmor Shir Le’yom Ha’Shabbos’ the teenage boy sitting next to me motioned to me that I really should be standing as per the custom of this shul. When he saw that I wasn’t really getting his point he told me exactly what he meant and how I should really stand up.
I was a little flabbergasted by his behaviour and decided that I would gently teach him a lesson. I put my arm on his shoulder and said, “I’m recovering from a heart condition and must do minimal standing”. The look on his face was astounding, he was totally shocked. How was he to imagine that a healthy looking thirty year old man, whom he had seen from time to time was actually in recovery from a heart problem? After davening I explained to him exactly what had gone on.
On the way home from shul I thought about the lesson I had taught the boy in judging a person favourably, and how unlikely it was that that boy would jump to conclusions again without considering a favourable way to judge the situation.
It then dawned on me that I had just properly understood a piece of Gemora for the first time.
The Gemora relates a story of an agricultural worker who spent three years working for a landowner. When he finally went to collect his wages in order to return home to his family, his employer claimed to have no money. Perhaps you have some fruit of the land” he inquired. Again he was informed that there was none. He asked for some land, in the hope that he could sell it to get some cash but the landlord again claimed to have no land. Every request for payment – animals, pillows, blankets – was met with the same answer, “I have none”.
Sometime later the employer return to the worker not just with the monies owed but also with several mules carrying food and presents for the worker’s family. “Tell me” he inquired, “when I said I had no money what did you think?” “I assumed you had just invested all your money to buy some cheap merchandise” answered the worker. “When I said I had no animals what did you think?” “Oh, I assumed you had hired them all out”. “What about my claim of no fruit?” continued the landowner. “I just assumed that you had not yet taken the relevant tithes to make the fruit permitted to eat”. “That I had not pillows and blankets you also believed me?” “Sure I believed you I thought you must have just sanctified them to the Temple” came the reply.
Shocked at the workers amazing level of judging favourably – he had always assumed that the owner spoke the entire truth, it was now the landowner who revealed the truth. “I swear to you that everything was exactly as you thought” and he went on to enumerate why each and everything was true. He concluded with blessing his worker, “just as you judged me favourably so too may you be judged in heaven in a favourable manner”.
As I walked home from shul, for the first time I really understood the Gemora. The Mitzvah of judging every person and every situation favourably means just that. Any scenario that you can conjure up in order to ensure what you are witnessing is not the bad behaviour of another person is what we are required to do.
The Chofetz Chaim [1839-1933] writes that if one studies almost all of the episodes of Loshon Horah (Gossip) in the Torah; the saga of Yosef and his brothers; the story of Miriam criticising the behaviour of Moshe or the episode of the Spies – one will see that they all revolve from a breakdown of the positive Mitzvah commandment from this week’s Parshah of judging favourably.
In fact it’s almost explicit in the Torah that judging favourably is inextricably linked to Loshon Horah. Immediately following the injunction of “With righteousness you shall judge your fellow” the next verse reads, “you shall not go about gossiping among your people”.
Good Shabbos,
Yaakov