Yom Kippur is a time to work on our middos, and there’s no bigger middah to work on, for the purposes of this article, than that of not judging others.
“Wait, but isn’t Yom Kippur the DAY of Judgment?”
OK, judging others favorably.
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Judging people is a tough middah to work on in the first place, because to a certain extent we need to judge people. When a stranger pulls up and offers you a ride in his van, you should NOT judge him favorably and get in. And if you get an email from a Nigerian prince, you don’t think, “Why would he lie? He’s a Nigerian prince!”
We all judge people in many facets of life. Shidduch questions spring immediately to mind: Does the family use china or disposables? What color tablecloth? If he were an animal, what animal would he be? Does the mother push the shopping cart in the grocery or pull it from the back?
None of those are important. If you don’t like the color of your mechutanim’s tablecloth, buy the new couple a tablecloth that is a color you approve of. They’re not going to say no to a free tablecloth. So really what these questions are is a way of figuring out other things. And the questions are designed so that no one but you will figure out the connection to those things, which means that, by definition, you’re drawing conclusions that might have no basis in reality.
For example, I heard that the question about whether the boy has tie shoes or slip-ons is really about whether he cares about bitul Torah. A ben Torah wears slip-ons, right? All the Gemaras and halacha seforim that talk about tying shoes notwithstanding. Except that I have a son with weirdly shaped feet, and there are no slip-ons that fit him.
“Well, I don’t want my daughter to marry him. He has weirdly shaped feet.”
We all have weirdly shaped feet in one way or another. There are no normal feet.
Or let’s say you’re in shul and you see somebody staring at his phone. There’s a very good chance that he’s using his phone to daven, or to say Tehillim, or look up the z’man, or to look up the weather for Kiddush Levana, or any of a thousand other timely mitzvos one can do on their phone these days. It’s not his fault that everybody using a phone, for good or ill, looks exactly the same. And makes exactly the same face.
Though I guess there’s something to be said for them to maybe not do something in shul that can be misunderstood as being something bad. But then even if they were looking into their siddur, you don’t know if they are davening, or thinking about their phones, or doing math, or what. You get the math done quicker if you use your phone. Then you can get back to davening.
And there’s no way to not ever do anything that can be misunderstood. Basically, every awkward situation that someone walks into is an opportunity for them to be dan l’kaf chov. Ever walked in on someone taking change from the pushka? I have never once thought, “Oh, he’s stealing from the pushka! Right in the middle of the beis midrash.” But he definitely thought that I thought that he was stealing from the pushka. Which means that he’s dan l’kaf chov. I assume. He launched into an explanation, so…
In fact, the amount of judging that goes on in shul is probably more than anywhere else, and it’s probably wrong of me to say that. I don’t know. But the fact that you can’t really say anything to each other in shul to clarify situations without people judging you for talking in shul means that there’s probably a lot of judging going on:
“Let’s see… That guy came late, that guy came early, that guy davens too fast, that guy davens too slow, how come that guy is holding his lulav in the wrong hand? He also wore his tefillin on the wrong hand… Why is that guy wearing the same tie for the 12th week in a row?” Maybe I should stop focusing on people and instead open a sefer during the downtime. So the guy next to me can think, “How come that guy is learning in shul?”
I think the only eitzah here is to try to stop judging people. You’re not Sherlock Holmes, that you can say, “I can tell this person is a lefty because his belt is facing the other way!” I’m a lefty, and I wear my belt the righty way, because 1) Both of my parents are righties, and they taught me how to put on a belt, and 2) Some belts have letters that, when you put the belt on left-handed, are upside down. Also, it’s easier to close everything when the belt closes in the same direction as the pants, and it turns out there are no left-handed pants.
Judging people is not a good way to live. It’s like they say, “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Or, if it’s Yom Kippur, “until you’ve stood in shul all day in his plastic slippers.” Why do Crocs have those pins sticking up? Who is that helping?
Apparently, when they coined this saying, the main reason people were jerks was because their shoes were uncomfortable.
I think the idea is that once you walk a mile in his shoes, you’re not going to be so concerned about his actions. You’re going to be more concerned about where you might have left your shoes. And also toenail fungus. And then you have to find the shoes a ride with whoever’s going back that way, because you don’t want to have to walk a whole other mile. Though no one said that mile couldn’t be a circle. The straight line was your decision.
Of course, the problem with this whole situation is that if you do walk a mile in someone’s shoes, that person is going to start judging you. They’re going to be like, “That guy stole my shoes!” And they’re not going to think, “No, he had a good reason; he was probably trying not to judge me.” Or maybe someone will tell them, “Don’t judge someone until you walk a mile in his shoes,” and the person will say, “Well, luckily, he left them right here!”
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].
