Parshas Kedoshim, 5763  A Tree in the Forest
By Rabbi Joshua (woodenly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

 In this week's parsha we are commanded, "With righteousness shall you judge your friend " (Vayikra 19:15). Rashi explains that this verse is to be understood, first of all, in a literal sense, but also as a directive to judge our friend toward the scale of merit, as the Talmud tells us. This directive  is more commonly known as giving the benefit of the doubt.  Exactly what it entails is the subject of a dispute among medieval halachic authorities, but most follow the opinion that, when dealing with a person who is known to be righteous in his behavior, we must judge even acts that he does which appear to be of a questionable nature as being done in accordance with halacha.

  Rabbi Dovid Kronglass, who was the masghiach ruchani, or spiritual adviser, of Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, asked, how can we be required to think in a way that is counter - logical. If all appearances lead us to the conclusion that the person we are observing is, in fact, transgressing the Torah, why should we be required to assume against our own reason that, in actuality, he is acting properly? Rabbi Kronglass himself answers that the Torah wishes to inculcate within us a sympathetic intellect, one that looks upon others with kindness rather than with strictness. I would like to offer a different explanation, in light of a prohibition contained in the immediately following verse of the Torah. 

 The words immediately following the command to judge our friend with righteousness, in the next verse, are "You shall not go about gossiping among your people" (Vayikra 19:16). One may ask, why should it be forbidden to speak disparagingly about other people, if what one is saying happens to be true. On the contrary, it should be considered a mitzvoh to inform someone of what his friend is really like, to correct any wrong impression that he has. Withholding information about the person, it would seem, can only be misleading. Why, then, is there a prohibition to gossip, to spread reports abut other people? 

  Rabbi Yochonon Zweig, Rosh Yeshiva in Miami Beach, explained that the perception we have of a person actually defines the reality of that person for us. If someone tells us bad things about that person, he is destroying that reality. It is in this sense that the Talmud says that leshon hora, evil talk, kills three - the one who speaks it, the one who accepts it, and the one of whom it is spoken. Since the person's reality is shaped by the way people perceive him to be, spreading evil talk about him changes that perception and thus changes his reality both in regard to himself and in regard to all those involved in spreading the gossip.  

 Rabbeinu Yonah, in his Sha'arei Teshuvoh, or Gates of Repentance, writes that as part of the teshuvoh process, we need to examine all of our deeds, including the mitzvos that we did, to see if there was anything lacking in our performance of them. While doing so can be very helpful in correcting one's behavior and personality, it can also be taken to an extreme and lead one to overly negative feelings about himself. As a kind of corrective to negative feelings that may arise as a result of introspection, Rav Nachman of Bratslav taught that one should also examine his failings, his transgressions, for any traces of good hidden within them. The rabbis tell us that if we see a Torah scholar performing a transgression at night, we can assume that by the next day, he repented for it. When one repents out of love for God, the rabbis further tell us, his transgressions are counted as merits. Perhaps the idea behind this is that if the transgression that he performed led to repentance and a closer relationship with God, then there must have been some element of good in the original act.

  Based on our analysis, we can understand the predominant opinion among halachic authorities that when we see an otherwise righteous person perform an act that appears to be forbidden, we need to examine the act and try to interpret in a positive way. The reason for this, perhaps, is that  in all likelihood there is some positive element in that act. Our interpretation of the act in this way thus actually defines the nature of the act as far as our perception of the one performing it is concerned. Following Rabbi Zweig's explanation of the dynamics of leshon hora, our perception of this person  actually defines his reality for us. Judging a person on the scale of merit, therefore, does not constitute a distortion of reality, but, rather, a view of reality that focuses on the positive aspects of the person we are observing.