The Art of Finding the Good
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The Art of Finding the Good
Parashat Shoftim opens with something that sounds purely technical. Appoint judges and officers in all your gates, and let them judge the people — v’shafetu et ha’am mishpat tzedek, with a judgment of righteousness. But a judge is already supposed to be honest; that’s the entire job. So why does the Torah have to tell him to judge with tzedek?
Chazal answer in a way that turns the pasuk into an instruction for living. On the parallel words in Vayikra (19:15), b’tzedek tishpot amitecha, the Gemara in Shevuot (30a) lists rules for the courtroom — one litigant shouldn’t sit while the other stands, one shouldn’t talk freely while the other is rushed — then adds davar acher: hevei dan et chavercha l’chaf zechut. Judge your fellow on the side of merit. The Rambam counts this as part of the mitzvah itself (Sefer HaMitzvot, Asei 177), and the Mishnah in Avot (1:6) leaves nobody out — judge every person favorably.
So the Torah is speaking to judges, but just as much to anyone with people looking up to them. A rabbi. A parent. A boss. A coach. Your judgment can’t only be accurate. It has to be generous.
The Pele Yoetz writes about this with a kind of trembling. When a rabbi stands in front of a community, his job is to find the good in them, and when he gives mussar he has to be careful in a way that’s hard to describe — because the way he judges his people down here is how they’re judged upstairs.
This is why giving mussar is one of the most dangerous things a person can do. There’s a hint in the name of the sefer itself: Devarim is devorim, bees. And Rashi, at the start of the sefer (1:44), on “they chased you like the bees do,” brings from Chazal that when a bee stings a person, the bee itself dies. That’s the nature of a sting — it costs the one who delivers it.
Look at how Moshe Rabbeinu handled it. Rashi at the opening of Devarim (1:3) tells us he waited until he was close to death to give this mussar, and that he learned it from Yaakov Avinu, who also waited until the end of his life before saying anything to his sons. The two greatest educators we’ve ever had, and both held the sting until the last possible moment.
In the days of the Shoftim the people had fallen badly. Midian and the neighboring nations were sitting on top of them, causing real suffering. Hashem sends a navi to Gideon, and Gideon answers with something that almost sounds like chutzpah. If our fathers in Mitzrayim were righteous and Hashem redeemed them for it, we’re their children and carry that same righteousness. And if they weren’t righteous and He redeemed them anyway, for free — let Him do the same for us. Either way, Hashem, You should be saving us.
Hashem’s answer is one of the most important lines in Tanach for anyone in leadership: lech b’kochacha zeh — go with this strength of yours (Shoftim 6:14). Rashi explains which strength: the merit of having defended My children. The Zohar in Balak is blunter — Gideon was not a tzaddik and not the son of a tzaddik. His entire qualification was saying something good about the Jewish people, and that alone made him a leader and a savior.
That’s the strength. Not brilliance, not charisma. The ability to find the good and say it out loud.
A big donor in the Syrian community once asked my father what he thought the biggest problem in the community was. His answer has stayed with me my whole life: I don’t look for the problems. I look for the good — and whatever the good is, I encourage that more of it should be done.
There are really only two ways to lead people. You can hunt for what’s broken and try to fix it, or hunt for what’s working and feed it. Both feel like caring. But whatever you focus on expands.
When you see a teenager struggling, the instinct is to ask what’s wrong with this kid. That question already carries its own answer — you’ll find something wrong, because that’s what you went looking for. The question we have to train ourselves to ask is completely different: what has this kid been through? One question puts the child on trial. The other puts you on his side. And believe me, he feels which question you’re asking long before you open your mouth.
And this isn’t only psychology — it’s how the Ribono Shel Olam runs His world.
We’re standing in Elul walking toward the Yamim Noraim, and the Gemara in Shabbat (127b) says it straight out: one who judges his fellow favorably is judged favorably from Above. That Gemara tells of a worker whose employer couldn’t pay him and who kept giving him the benefit of the doubt, until the employer blessed him: just as you judged me favorably, may Hashem judge you favorably.
There’s a new song out by Thank You Hashem and the TYH Boys called “Little Bardichevers,” and I can’t stop thinking about the idea behind it. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was called the defense attorney of the Jewish people because he could look at a Jew doing something wrong and still find the sweetness in it. The song’s point is that it’s the little Berditchevers — ordinary people who make a habit of judging favorably — who will bring Moshiach. I believe that completely.
We see the same principle in reverse in the laws of lashon hara. The Chofetz Chaim, in his introduction to Shmirat HaLashon, brings the Zohar in Parashat Pekudei: when a person speaks lashon hara down here, he awakens a matching accuser up there. And the Gemara in Arachin (15b) puts it in a phrase that should keep us all awake — one who speaks lashon hara sets his mouth in the heavens while his tongue is still walking around down here.
So when you gossip, you’re not letting off steam. You’ve appointed yourself the prosecutor in that person’s case. And the reverse has to be true: when you notice someone’s good, name it, and say it where others can hear, you’ve appointed yourself his defense attorney in the highest court there is.
The halachot of dreams teach the same thing. The Gemara in Berachot (55b) says all dreams follow the mouth — they unfold according to how they’re interpreted, which is why you hand a shaken friend a good interpretation. It isn’t that the dream is nothing. It’s that the interpretation turns it into something. And people tend to become the interpretation we give them.
There’s a story told about the Maharsha, the rav of Ostroh. Two Jewish merchants traveled to a nearby town to buy goods off a nobleman’s estate — in those days Jews couldn’t own land, so you made money buying cheap from the nobility in one town and selling high in another. The landowner had died. The widow took one look at them and said she doesn’t deal with Jews, but the estate manager told her these were serious buyers, and she agreed to hear them out.
She sold them everything — more than their wagons could carry. One partner headed home for more while the other, who spoke the local language, stayed behind to watch the goods. That night he couldn’t find anywhere to sleep, and the widow told him not to worry — she was sitting down to supper, he should join her.
That’s how it started. He was alone with her, which he had no business being. He drank her wine. He ate at her table. And by the end of that night he had fallen into the worst of it.
His partner came back and found him completely broken. He pulled the story out of him, and seeing how crushed he was, made him an offer: give me your half of the merchandise, and I’ll take your sins onto myself. They shook on it and wrote it up. The buyer became fabulously wealthy; the seller went back to ordinary business and got by. Then the wealthy partner died.
In the middle of the shivah, the seller started getting visits in his sleep. His late partner was screaming at him: do you know what you did that night? I can’t carry this. You’re coming with me to the Heavenly Court. He reminded him about the deal, and the dead man said he’d never understood what he was buying — he’d only felt bad for his friend. He woke in a sweat, went back to sleep, and had the same dream again.
So he went to the Maharsha, who told him: he cannot drag you up there. You both knew exactly what those sins were when you made the deal. If he has a claim, let him bring it down here — tell him to come to my beit din tomorrow at three o’clock.
The next day the whole town packed into the synagogue, and they set up a partition for the soul. At three o’clock the Maharsha knocked on the table and asked if he was there. The town heard the dead man’s voice answer, and he stated his claim. The Maharsha turned to the living partner, who said simply: we made a deal, we both knew what it was, and I’m not going back on it. The Maharsha ruled that the sale stands. A deal is a deal. The only thing we can still do for you, he told the soul, is learn mishnayot. They say the crying that filled that synagogue shook the whole city. Then it stopped, and the soul was gone.
The Maharsha didn’t have better information than the Heavenly Court. What he had was the authority to define the case — and the way he defined it down here is how it stood up there. That’s the frightening power in a rabbi’s hands, and in the hands of anybody people look to.
Which is why the Gemara in Pesachim (87b) says oy lah larabbanut shemekaberet et be’aleha — woe to the rabbinate, for it buries the one who holds it. And the Pele Yoetz writes that a person is better off hauling garbage or fixing pipes for a living than standing in front of a community — he would pray that his own children shouldn’t become rabbis. Not because the work is hard. Because it’s so hard to be a person who always, always finds the good.
We’re walking into the days when our whole file gets opened, and everything here says the same thing: the file gets read the way we’ve been reading everybody else’s.
So here’s the avodah for the next few weeks. Pick one person you’ve already made up your mind about — the one whose behavior you’ve explained to yourself the same way a hundred times — and try one different explanation. Just one. Say something good about somebody out loud, to a third person, today. And when you feel the sting rising in you, ask whether this is really the moment and whether you’re willing to pay for it, because Moshe Rabbeinu and Yaakov Avinu both waited until the last day of their lives.
Be a little Berditchever. Judge them well down here, and let them judge you well up there.
