Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Rebbe Nachman didn’t come to make us “more religious.” He came to make us more real.
Rav Shlomo Katz opens the “treasure chest” of Rebbe Nachman’s Torah — teachings that heal the inner storm, settle the mind (yishuv hadaas), and draw down peace and truth into our homes, our relationships, and our own hearts.
We have a very, very special shiur today. I'm very, very, I'm very happy and excited about this one. About all of them, but this one I'm very, very excited.
ברוך אתה ה' אלוקינו מלך העולם שהכל נהיה בדברו.
Amen. This, this, this concept that we are learning in our shiurim, in our series of shiurim, of Rebbe Nachman's way of achieving inner tranquility and peace and yishuv hadaat, and settling of the mind and all the above, has led us to some very, very, really deep places. Today what we're going to be seeing is a very, very interesting nekuda. It's a different angle.
It's a different angle. If what we're trying to achieve in these shiurim is a path towards getting shalom in our hearts, peace in our hearts, real quiet in our hearts. So a lot of the methodology that's been used has been how do I interpret thoughts that I have, how do I bring them into tfilos? It's an internal process, it's something that's going on inside of me because that's where the milchama is. Today what we're going to see, we touched upon this two or three shiurim ago and that is the whole world of azamra, which we're going to be dedicating a lot of time to next year.
Azamra is the famous teaching of Rebbe Nachman talking about how a person has to find the nekudos tovos, the good points in himself. Just think about it for a second. How many of you have self-persecuted yourselves just this morning? At a certain point from the time you woke up. I'm sure it's everyone in this room, just not everyone wants to raise their hands.
But not to the point of shechting ourselves, but like a nice judgment dagger on ourselves. Like for a moment it's probably subconscious but it's there already because it's on automatic. But Rebbe Nachman begins the teaching of azamra speaking about doing it to other people, not about ourselves. He begins the teaching by speaking about it towards outwards, meaning you have to find nekudos tovos, you have to judge people, people favorably.
You got to go outside and judge people favorably. I can give you the whole shiur in a nutshell with the following statement: We always feel better when we like people. We always feel better when we actually like people. What's such a deep chochma with that? Right? So let's, with that in mind, let's begin the learning today.
This is a very, very famous statement from the Gemara in Shavuos that says like this, when the Torah says bezedek tishpot amitecha. Bezedek tishpot amitecha, what do you think? What's the word zedek mean? Justice. Tishpot amitecha: you shall judge your friend. Bezedek tishpot amitecha.
So that seems to mean like with justice you shall judge your friend, and then the Gemara has to run and say הוי דן את חברך לכף זכות. You better judge your friend favorably. What could be the inherent stira, the inherent contradiction between the beginning of the sentence and the end of the sentence? And I'll say it again. The Gemara begins off by quoting the pasuk that says bezedek tishpot amitecha, which with justice you shall judge your friend, and then it says you shall judge all your friends favorably.
So the obvious question is: is judging your friends favorably zedek? Is that actually justice? Right? You understand the question? Which is that, is that, are we being like cute or cop outs? What's real about that? If to, you understand the, I want to make sure before because we can't continue the shiur unless that that point is mamesh drilled home. We're good, yeah? Now this next paragraph, this next, this piece, I found a wonderful, there's one of these famous Breslov web pages, I forget which one it is, where the editors there are amazing, they take these concepts of Rebbe Nachman that we learn and they really bring it down to a language that makes a lot of sense for us. And Hashem made it that he's, today because this Torah is this important, that of course you're going to have such a distraction from outside. But that when that happens you should, you should be nervous when it's totally peace and quiet in the room, like because then it's like I guess it's not that important.
When there's these distractions that means okay Hashem's saying you really need to zone in. Minios. You really need to zone in. Okay.
So this is from this, this Breslov web page, I forgot the name of it, I think it's from Rav Shmuel Stern but I'm not sure, I could look inside.
קושיא גדולה צריכה להיות לנו על דיון לכף זכות. This thing of judging favorably has to raise some kind of a problem.
מה בעצם רוצה התורה? What does the Torah want?
אם הנטייה הפשוטה היא שפלוני עשה חטא, ואינני חושב כך רק מתוך רוע לב אלא מתוך ראייה אמיתית, כיצד אדון אותו? If I see someone sinning, and I don't think that they sinned because I have evil in my heart, but just because that's what I saw, how should I judge them? Ha'im eshaker le'atzmi? Should I lie to myself? So נתחיל בכך שהתורה מצווה על הדבר בפסוק.
So the Torah tells us about this with the word betzedek, tishpot amitecha.
כלומר קיים פה משפט. Make sure there's a mishpat here. There's a sentence.
יש כאן דיון מהותי על האדם ולא סתם אמירה סתמית. What the mechaber is saying over here, we are talking here now about how do you really look at people. And what do you really say about people when you see, when you think based on what your eyes see, how does that dictate to you what you think about people? Yes. So it, well I learned, this is my field, yeah.
The mishpat here is not just the sentence. It's: is there a mishpat? Is there anything going on more structurally to clarify what just happened? Right. Very, very good. Okay.
So I may have seen it, that makes me a witness, it doesn't make me a judge. Very, very, very good. Which makes the job of judging that much more demanding of introspection and of actually getting out of natural tendencies of basing our feelings and opinions just on what we saw. Yeah.
That's a big one. Nicht pashut zach like they say in English, right? Especially after whatever happened whenever it happened. Now, let's try to unpack this and for this we have to look at a line from Sefer Chasidim. Have any of you ever heard of Sefer Chasidim? Sefer Chasidim was written by the, according to most people it's written by Rabbi Yehuda HeChasid.
He was the famous poet. He was around in the I think it was the 13th century or 14th, I think 13th century. And he says like this: אל תדין את חברך לכף חובה. So he says the other, he says: don't judge your friends lekaf chova, which means on the the opposite of favorably.
Well, how would you say that in English? Guilty. Yeah. To the on the guilty side. What? Judgy.
Well, that's a complication. Unfavorably, yeah, that's good. Don't judge your friends unfavorably. Why? What's the reason? So Rabbi Yehuda HeChasid says: כי האדם יראה לעיניים והשם יראה ללבב because man sees with his eyes what's in front of him, but Hashem sees the heart.
ולא ידעת מה בליבו ומה במחשבתו. When you see someone doing something, you see the action but you have no idea what was in their heart and what was in their thoughts, what their intentions were. This is how Rabbi Yehuda HeChasid unpacks it for us. By the way, these are things that we've heard a million times, yet implemented is a whole other zach, a whole other story.
דבר זה נראה לנו מוזר. This seems strange. We're going to get very basic, very basic Hebrew today but it's to drive home a very important point.
נחשוב לרגע על כמה חברים שלנו.
Let's think of a few of our friends right now.
האם אנחנו לא יודעים באיזו מדרגה רוחנית הם נמצאים לפחות בכלליות? Do we actually not know what spiritual level most of them are generally holding by? So like think about this for a second. You have friends, they've been in your life, people you're closer to, not close to, and then if we said, someone asked us: do you know where they're holding more or less? Now holding is a obviously yeshivish term, but what it means is do you know basically, there's no other way of saying than holding, but do you know basically where they're at spiritually? What would we probably say? I mean our minds do this instantly. Of course.
No, what's the, what's the real answer before I learned Rabbi Nachman? Yes. Of course. They're like that. They're like that.
They do that. They do that. We, we say yes, that we know. The emes of all emes is that we don't know, but we think, we live with the toda'ah, we live with the...
with the consciousness, yeah, the consciousness of I know where people are basically holding, right?
בהמשך נראה שבאמת אנחנו לא יודעים. The truth is that's not true either. Because based on what do we say that we know where people are holding? What we see. What we see.
What we see. Rabbis can't say that by the way. Because they hear inside, right? So they hopefully. Right, hopefully.
But most people that don't really speak to people individually or know where I know based on what I see outside. Yafeh.
בהמשך נראה שבאמת אנחנו לא יודעים ננסה להבין למה אנחנו חושבים שאנחנו יודעים ואיך נשתחרר מהבנות השגויות הללו. We'll try to understand why do we think that we know and how are we going to redeem ourselves, release ourselves from these false conceptions of da'at.
By the way, this shiur has a part two and it's going to be next week so when he says behemshech that means next week we're actually going to answer these questions. But we start today and today we start with learning a very, very important teaching from one of our favorites Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, Rashar Hirsch. But rarely have people learned it in the context of a shiur on Rebbe Nachman. That's what makes me very excited.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, was he chasidish? Not so much, right? Was he in Poland? Was he in Russia? No, where was he? Here, no? Germany. But his Torahs are so he's like the world was waiting for him to just say certain things to bring yeshuah to the world. So we go back to the pasuk betzedek tishpot amitecha because we still have this problem with this with justice you shall judge your friends. Sho'el Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch ztzal לכאורה נראה כי חז"ל עקרו את המשמעות של הפסוק.
It seems that chazal have uprooted the real meaning of the pasuk.
איזה מן צדק הוא זה שדן את כולם לכף זכות. What kind of justice is that by just walking around judging people favorably? I see you mechalel Shabbos, I see you speaking lashon hara, oh it must be because you're a gevalt and I'm sure it's all good. Is that justice? We try to do that for our kids.
You just brought up that exact point. Every time we see a car driving here my kid is like, "Oh they're not Jewish." I'm like, "Well maybe they're going to the hospital." Right. However, what's the problem with that? It's not a problem. What does it seem like? What may be what may seem like the problem with that? You're not getting to the truth.
Betzedek tishpot amitecha. The weird thing about the whole thing is that why is the Torah even telling me to judge anyway? You know why? You know why? Because you do it anyway. It's not that the Torah's saying listen if you're a really peaceful person that never, ever judges anybody you should judge favorably. No, it's talking to a humanity.
Survival mode judges. This is the way we are structured. So we'll see how he takes this. He's asking what kind of justice is this that you judge everyone favorably בלי לדעת באמת במדרגה של כל אדם without really seeing without knowing the truth of where people are holding.
Oneh Rav Hirsch הכל מתורץ במילה צדק. So what word is being used that we're focusing on here? Tzedek. Justice. I don't and I'm not sure if by the end of the shiur we'll still want to use that word in English for the translation.
Okay? But that's generally how that word is translated. Tzedek is generally translated as justice. By the end of the, not now, by the end of the shiur I'm be interested to hear if we still think that's the right word to say. But for now it's fine.
Interesting the word tzedek is also tzedakah. So which we're going to get to. Yeah. Yeah.
So Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch says it's all in the word tzedek. Second to bottom paragraph, second to bottom line.
צדק בשונה מאמת הוא למעשה האמת לאמיתה. This is very deep.
Very, very beautiful. Justice as opposed to truth is actually the truth of the truth. Okay, what does that mean? If I see someone mechallel, let's just give that example because it's an easy one, with my eyes. I see someone that's desecrating the Shabbos, right? On the level of emet, are they a rasha based on the Torah? I don't know, the Torah says mechaleleha mot yumut.
Based on the emet, yes. Based on tzedek, based on justice. Justice is not about the moment. Justice is about all circumstances of life that lead the person to act in the way that you are now meeting in real time.
But there's a whole story going on here. And with justice, you must look at the whole story, which will generally lead you to be able and want to judge people favorably. But emet, that's why the Torah doesn't say be'emet tishpot amitecha, because with just truth alone, the truth is, this is wrong and in this moment you are a rasha. But the Torah doesn't tell me be'emet tishpot amitecha, it says betzedek tishpot amitecha.
And that's what Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch is focusing on here, davka the usage of this word and how this tzedek really is the truth of truths. And emet is just truth, right? It's funny, when we ask people that, you know, what do you, what kind of middah do you want to carry, like when you grow up and become a certain person, what kind of middah would you like to have embedded within you? Most people that want to sound frum or holy would say ani ish emet. You would think it's the opposite, that if you want to know the real truth and essence of a person, it's emet. A-zehu, a-zehu, so the real truth is, nachon, in the court, so be'emet they're not.
That's why the real answer would be ani ish tzedek. I want to be an ish tzedek. 'Cause what's an ish tzedek? What you just said. Do I really want to be that person that's just an ish emet and live in the moment being able to say kosher, not kosher, right, wrong, bad, good, rasha, tzadik? Or do I want to live in a world that the Torah believes in me that I could look at people with eyes of tzedek, of compassionate process, that every person's in a process, every person's a sippur, every person's a story and every person's in the middle of their story.
That's what I want to do. That's ideally the highest place that I could reach. Tzedek, now he continues here, this is from Rav Hirsch: צדק בשונה לאמת ולמעשה אמת לאמיתה צדק מבטא התייחסות אובייקטיבית לחלוטין אל הדבר מצד עצמו בלי שום קשר שלי אליו. What does this sentence he just said? Tzedek or and again we're still calling it justice, what does it express? What did he say here about being objective? Is that my approach to what I see is completely objective and it's nothing to do with how I generally judge an action? I'm looking at something and I'm like I see that's what's happening and my heart is telling me while I say I see what's happening, there's a much bigger story that's happening right now.
Who do I want to be? A judge of the moment or a judge of the full picture? And the Torah's kind of promising us that when we decide we want to be judges of the full picture, we will come to the maskanah that it's not so hard to judge people favorably when you have compassion and realize that everyone is going through something that none of us know about. That's the deepest thing in the world. To me, that, now when a person lives with that, you know what happens to you as an individual? You become an ish shalom. Like you actually feel peace inside of you.
What is one of the greatest things that boggle down our peaceful states of being? Other people. Like we said in the beginning, we always feel better when we like people. Why is that? 'Cause it's so tiring to not like people. It's tiring to, emet, it's listen, it's also tiring to be, I don't know, it is tiring to like a lot of people if that is demanding of you, but in the pnimiyut of it, it's not.
'Cause when you really love people, you have new kochos, you have extra kochos to want to be with them or not. It's so tiring to not like people, mamash. So our inner system, our nervous system, our inner koach system is chalasishing, is longing to figure out how to mekayem the pasuk betzedek tishpot amitecha, like the Gemara in Shavuos says: this means הוי דן את חברך לכף זכות. Interesting, in the Gemara over here it says: הוי דן את חברך לכף זכות.
What's the other Chazal that we know with this?
הוי דן את כל האדם לכף זכות. What's the difference between judging your friend... friends and versus judging every person we'll get to just to throw a bone for you for now because just start first with your friend like everyone's word Tikkun Olam that word that terminology that was hijacked by a bunch of people Tikkun Olam Tikkun Olam start right start first with those that you have to deal with every single day. It's like tzedakah um'anim עניי עירך קודמין בדיוק.
Navir et now he's going to bring a mashal a very simple mashal but it's very it may seem so simple but it's very very deep and very special.
נביר את הדברים במשל let's bring a parable.
יעקב מאוד מקפיד לברך בכוונה ואצלו ההכרה של הודאה להשם על האוכל מאוד חזקה. Jacob is a person what does he take very seriously benching grace after meals why because thanking Hashem for food is a very big thing by him that's his inyan.
אחרי שהוא הורגל תקופה ארוכה לברך בכוונה הברכה אצלו הופכת לדבר שכלי ופשוט. After he's accustomed himself for a very long time to levarach to bless with a lot of kavana the blessings by him become a very simple intellectual thing. He doesn't struggle with it he does it all the time it makes sense to him that's his default.
יום אחד הוא רואה את חברו יצחק מברך ברכת המזון Yaakov sees Yitzchak benching והוא מזועזע למראה עיניו and he's shocked by what he sees.
השפתים נעות במהירות האור the guy that's benching isn't saying ברוך אתה השם אלקינו מלך העולם like the way all of us do with benching. He sees something else that we'd have no idea we've also never seen it but it's a description of like this thing that people do.
ברוך אתה השם אלקינו מלך העולם הזן את העולם כולו בטובו בחן בחסד וברחמים הוא נותן לחם לכל בשר. Yaakov's looking at Yitzchak like how could a person spew things he's talking to Hashem he's blessing over thing thanking for food how could you how could you talk so fast how could you have kavana in between those words?
בתוך כדי הברכה הוא מסדר את השולחן עליו and even a crazier thing that again none of us have ever seen but this is a wild thing that you're actually starting to clean the table while you're benching.
Right.
בתוך כדי הברכה הוא מסדר את השולחן עליו אכל ומנסה לומר דבר מה לאדם שהיה שם and while you're benching you're also trying to say something to someone else you can't believe this. be-chol hatnuot ha-efshariyot all different hand movements.
יעקב המזועזע לא יכול להבין Yaakov standing and looking at Yitzchak he's like I don't understand איזה חוצפה דרושה להיות כל כך כפוי טובה.
You gotta have a lot of chutzpah to be so ungrateful ve-chutz mi-ma she-sfatav beside other than lip service הוא לא נותן אפילו מחשבה של תודה. He's not thinking thank you. He knows he has to bench but he's not thinking be-emes in his mind or heart thank you Hashem.
שלא נדבר על כוונה מעשית בכל המילים for sure he doesn't have any kavana with any of the words.
rasha!
אין לו מילה אחרת להגדיר את יצחק he has no other he has no other way of defining Yitzchak based on what he sees and especially in contrast to the way that he lives and he acts. That's an important thing. It's in contrast to the way that the person acts. melamed ha-rav hirsch what does Rav Hirsch teaching us?
הסתכלות זאת נכונה מצד האמת it's true what you're seeing is not kovedik.
אך נסתכל על הדבר מצד הצדק now let's look at this example from the place of what we've been calling justice. be-histaklut objektivit objectively seeing.
יכול להיות שגם הוא היה מכוון בברכות כמוך it could be he used to have kavana like you.
אך במהלך ירידה רוחנית שהייתה לו but during a spiritual decline that he had נושא הברכות קצת נחלש the inyan of brachos got a little weak.
ולאט לאט הוא נחלש יותר ויותר כשעלה לו אחיזת עצמו and slowly slowly his life started to fall apart and things got weaker and weaker.
היחס הזה נוצר מעצמו this relationship he has now with brachos or whatever it is it happened from itself.
לא נבע מתוך מחשבה תחילה אומרת לא אכפת לי בכלל מה הברכה. It didn't come from a place of a person consciously thinking I don't care about brachos anymore.
Where did it come from? Life. Life's life. A good example is remember how you were with your first child versus your third child? What changed? What changed? Everything changed. Life.
Remember how we were when we had one child or we didn't have children yet, we would look at other parents scream at their five-year-olds, six-year-olds and we're thinking: they're, how in the world do these people, they're crazy! How could they, how could they do such a thing to the precious sweet sweet piece of God that God trusts to give them? And you really think that. And you're sitting there either pregnant or not even pregnant or with your first and you're like in utter astonishment, right? And then... how could it be? It's not that you decided: I don't think anymore that you're a precious piece of God and therefore I will start talking to you like this. Where did it come from? Life.
That's where it came from. But it didn't come from a conscious decision to lessen the value of who you are in my eyes. That's what's called histaklut objectiveet. Histaklut subjectiveet, subjectively looking at people, leads to the opposite.
It's almost like saying that truth is only subjective and tzedek can only come from being objective. That's what it seems like he's saying over here. Right? Do you hear that? That's what it seems like what's going on. The point over here is what he's saying over here is that Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch is trying to tell us: what you see in front of you is not a rasha.
It's not a mezalzel, it's not a person that belittles, it's a person that is still bentching. If he really didn't care, he wouldn't be bentching. You have to keep that in mind. And guess what? I would even go further.
And you know what? And if he actually doesn't even bentch anymore, we're not saying that that's holy and that that's emes because it's not emes. But I still have to judge that person favorably because I have no idea what led this person in their life to not bentch anymore. I just don't know. I know this could sound like: oh, you never know, therefore love everybody.
But we're trying to take it and bring it into like a terminology that we could really do something with, lema'aseh, you know, lema'aseh.
לפיכך לא תוכל להוכיח. Or that you can't really do it. You never know a person's...
Rabbi Akiva says he doesn't think anybody can do it. So we're in the middle of the fifth line.
אין כאן התגלות של רשעות. There's no revelation of wickedness here.
Ela matzav mitzaer, it's just a sad state of being, she'omnam eino mutzdak, maybe it's not justified to act like this, אבל בלא כוונה של חטא חס ושלום, but there's no kavana to be a sinner. We're talking about Yaakov and Yitzchak over here, yeah?
טבע האדם להסתכל על המציאות דרך המשקפיים שלו. Right, nature is to look at the world through your own lens. Rabbi David Aaron has such a beautiful line at the beginning of one of his books that I think it's the book called Seeing God, I think he has a book like that, Seeing God, it's a wonderful book, the first book I read of his, and he says there in the beginning that all...
I think... I'm not remembering it exactly, but if I remember the kavana of it was that there are moments in life where we're willing to take off our glasses and get just simply corrective lens, and we see that what was in front of us wasn't really the truth, it was just what was blurring our lens. Mamash. That's all it is.
The truth, the truth of all truths was always right in front of us. It was us that weren't looking at it properly. It's not what was there that wasn't proper. It was us that weren't looking at things properly.
And I'll just tell you that I think that for me personally, one of the reasons that I was so drawn to Rav Shlomo Carlebach is because he lived this more than any other human being that I've met in my life. Say whatever you want to say, believe all the garbage you've heard about him, find me someone that lived like this like him. No one. And anyone that was with him would attest to it.
To be able to live like that, I feel is contagious, in a good way, in the best way. It's a ma'ala, it's such a high ma'ala, so to learn Torah from someone that looks like this at people, has changed my life. Oh boy, do we have to live like this. Oh boy, do we have to live like this.
Just a little bit. Tippah. Give me an give me ten minutes of this a day. Because the media will make sure to show you something ten million times a second to drive you the exact opposite way.
And we have to go completely keneged, you know, completely keneged. Okay, טבע אדם להסתכל על המציאות דרך המשקפיים שלו. Kavanah ba-berakhah, having kavanah in a blessing, meshakefet davar mesuyam, it reflects something, something. Ve-zilzul bah, having no kavanah or like not taking it seriously, meshakef davar sheni, that reflects something else.
אם לא יוריד את משקפיו הצרות הוא לא יוכל לראות את האפשרויות הנוספות. If you don't take off your narrow lens, you basically won't be able to see anything else other than what you could swear is the truth based on your vision. But your vision is so narrow. Our vision is so narrow.
Omerim lo Chazal, Chazal tell you, betzedek tishpot amitekha. This is all based on Rav Hirsch.
בצדק תשפוט עמיתך, אל תסתכל על המציאות כפי שאתה תופס אותה. Don't look at reality based on how you grasp it, meaning based on your emet.
אלא הסר את המשקפיים שלך. Take off your glasses. What did we say in Kriat Shema?
ולא תתורו אחרי לבבכם ואחרי עיניכם. Why does the Torah - it's the - you ever think about that pasuk? It's very strange.
We always speak of be real with yourself and go with your heart, and the Torah says, ולא תתורו אחרי לבבכם ואחרי עיניכם. Don't let your heart and your eyes lead the way to now we can understand why. What is it saying basically about the heart or the eyes? In a minute. Because the eyes are just your own perception of reality.
There's such a bigger, bigger picture that's going on right now. We feel it sometimes when we fly, when we're in the plane and we actually start to ascend and then we look out the window and we see all these tiny little things and we're like, wow. Like for a second, I don't know if it happens to you, you're pulled out of like just that narrow way of living, narrow way of thinking, the narrow way of seeing. You're pulled out of it and you just feel free.
Like for me, some of the highest, literally I guess, the highest moments of my life have been up there because you're just pulled out of the whole thing. And especially back in the day where there was no Wi-Fi on planes. Because then you were really like, you know, this is the beginning of the Wi-Fi revolution. Like I remember I would test myself to see how long could I go on a flight without getting the voucher or whatever.
And then I'd always have all these justifications of no, no, I'll do a better job when I land if now with peace and quiet I could have, you know, not be bothered, let me get a lot done now. We're living in a different world, it doesn't work like that. Recently, a few weeks ago I flew with Esty Fleischman was on my flight. She sat like a row behind me.
It was like a month ago, whenever I went. And they're running, they do - her and Yaakov do the avodat kodesh of running Camp Stone. And it was a day flight, which meant like we flew, I think it was was it a day flight? Yeah, we flew like 10:00 a.m. flight to Newark or to Kennedy, to Newark. And I couldn't believe it.
She actually worked for like eight and a half hours on the plane. But it's because she could and she needed to because it's crunch time and it's camp ve-khulei. But we have all these different things in our minds that will always come and try to prevent us from feeling that the way that we normally look maybe isn't right. I want to - I need to justify it.
I need to justify my conclusions, so I'll run away from things that tell me otherwise. When really it's the most freeing thing in the world to basically, like let's say just as an example, I'm saying okay, it's the most freeing thing in the world to come to a conclusion that if the way that I use these have led me to feel further from people forget about myself for a second, now we're going הוי דן את כל האדם לכף זכות. chaveirecha lekaf zechut. It's the most freeing thing in the world if Hashem is saying to me listen I know that this works you think this works for you because it helps you see emet but it doesn't help you see tzedek.
So are you willing to trust me and go like this right? It's so freeing once we allow ourselves to do it. We could try to we could spend time trying to understand why we don't do it but it's very very freeing to do this thing.
אלא הסר את המשקפיים שלך we're about six lines from the bottom.
רצון השם שנעשה כך בדיוק בכל מצב שנסתכל כעת נבין את דברי ספר חסידים.
Now we could understand what Sefer Chassidim says.
באמת אי אפשר לדעת מה בליבו של השני. Unless you're a rebbe okay unless you're a mammash a rebbe or one of these most polished refined big neshamas that can feel souls and read minds right? You do not know what the other person is feeling in their heart. How many times did you come home from shul and you felt so unseen and lonely because everyone you saw Good Shabbos Good Shabbos Good Shabbos and you don't feel that inside but then you saw yourself going Good Shabbos Good Shabbos and you feel so lonely? Did you ever stop and think how many people behind that Good Shabbos Good Shabbos are mammash going through such a nisayon such turmoil? What do we know? We have no idea.
We have no idea. That's what he's saying the Sefer Chassidim is saying you could never know what's happening in the heart of someone else.
כל ההערכה שלנו על החברים שלנו נובעת מהסתכלות הפרטית שלנו all of our assessments regarding where our friends are and what they're like is based on our personal way of looking at them and that only comes from what we're experiencing שנובעת רק ממה שאנחנו בעצמנו חווינו. If I asked you how many people looked happy to you in shul today what would you say? Everyone.
Could that really be is that is that the norm? Is that actually what happens? People are always happy on the seventh day of the week? Doesn't make any sense. Maybe they're happy in that moment but is there so much more going on? Oh boy.
ואין בכך לשקף מדד על כל בני האדם but you can't really use this to really get to gauge what's really going on with people.
מי שילך בדרך לימוד הזכות באמת לתקופה מסוימת יגלה יום אחד שבעצם כל ההערכות שלו עד היום כל הסטיגמות כל התאוריות וההסברים הכל באוויר.
He's saying over here whoever walks in the place of הוי דן את חברך לכף זכות what the Gemara in Shavuot is saying and you really say you know what for a week I'm letting down my defense mechanisms and I'm judging each person I come in contact with favorably for real what will you see? He's saying that one day be'etzem you'll see that all those all those castles that I built of who people are they're all castles in sand and a wave comes and just washes your castles of emotions and of opinions and usually of negative judgments and it comes and it washes the whole thing away. All the stigmas all the theories all the explanations הכל היה באוויר. Why are we speaking about this? How does this connect to Rebbe Nachman and to and to our path of what we're trying to say? Well the truth is is that we're really going to see this next week next week maybe the last shiur of the zman I have to check the calendar for the summer break begins but it's very important we do this before we end maybe the following I'm not sure but next week we have to really buckle up. Rebbe Nachman tells us in Torah Reish-Pei-Beit the second the 282nd teaching called Azamra.
He basically says there statements that for most people it feels like for most people that are looking at in a way with eyes of emet they're very very cautious or they're very nervous to hear because the words basically the Rebbe can you pass me the Likutey Moharan I want to make sure I say it word for word because the Rebbe says like this in Torah Reish-Pei-Beit.
רב ארז משה דורון our famous our beloved Rav Erez just put out he just sent it to me a beautiful he said it took him ten years a new book called Azamra just on Azamra Torah. Maybe we'll learn it next year, see it's gorgeous.
דע כי צריך לדון את כל אדם לכף זכות like the mishna in Avos says.
You have to judge every person favorably.
ואפילו מי שהוא רשע גמור even someone that is a total rasha.
צריך לחפש ולמצוא בו איזה מעט טוב you must search and seek to find a little bit of good because in that little bit of good eino rasha. He's not a rasha in that little bit of good that you find in him.
ועל ידי זה שמוצא בו מעט טוב and by finding a little bit of good in him vedano lechaf zechus and you judge him favorably, what do you end up doing? It's not just a nice thought process you're going through, you're actually lifting up a person.
על ידי זה מעלה אותו באמת לכף זכות. Through this you actually lift the person up to Kaf Zechus. Veyuchal lehashivo bitshuvah.
You could make... it's amazing what the Rebbe is saying. We're so big on seeing people that are sinners and making sure that they know that the derech that they're on is wrong and show them how to live right. And Nachman says is your point in life to make sure that you know what's right and that they know what's right, or is your point in life to really lift them up? If your point in life is really to lift them up, you know what works much better than telling someone that they're off? Looking at them with that eyes of me'at tov, of a little bit of good, and then you lift them up.
But it takes an objective approach in order to do such a thing. And it's not pashut at all. It's one of the most, as much as we think okay we know this one, this is one of the hardest, most difficult things to do, most difficult things to do and yet we're living in an era that we have no right to not put all our kochos in it. Yes, Mindy.
So I'm being a little technical here. So suppose there's somebody who is accused of doing something bad, it's all over the newspapers or whatever. Now obviously that person has zechuyos, okay? Obviously that person did kibbud av va'em or obviously that person gives tzedakah or can one hold on to that and still be critical of the part that they know that they did wrong? Why, but what does the critique serve you? Yeah, because I'm playing God, I don't want them to get away with something. Good luck.
Someone has to judge. So I just have to like, just ask yourself what does the holding on to the other ninety-nine percent of what you see of them being off, what does it serve you? It's kind of like a warning beacon. Sababa, but good luck, I'm saying good luck with living like that. Right.
You have a two minute solution? No. I'm working, I have a gilgul solution? No. I'm planning on spending my life figuring out a solution. No.
Of course not. Because I mean I can easily say about person X or Y, well he seems to be a rasha, but I'm sure he has some zechuyos some place. That's not good enough, is it? Right. Okay.
Okay. Okay. We're just beginning. Yeah, we're just beginning.
Yeah, sir. It says haberecha, right? Yeah, and it tells us that it's easier to do it with people who are closer to us? Right. So in the beginning of shiur I just mentioned, right, in the beginning that we're going to next week spend time in the diyuk between what the Gemara in Shavuos says, which is haberecha, to what the mishna in Avos says which is kol adam. Yeah, I find it harder to do it with somebody who's closer to you because you care about them more, so you want them to do what you think is right more.
Like you're more critical of people that are closer to you, right? Whether it's family members or I guess maybe not a really good friend because I guess it's family members more. Like, right, the closer a person is the less it's... Yeah, but you said something very interesting. You remember what you just said? The first thing you said.
You're more critical of people that you really care about, right? Right, because like you care about them so you expect more from them? Right, but if you really, really cared about them you would never damage your relationship with them with a narrow, with a narrow outlook and approach. It also affects how it makes you feel. Right, right. It's how you feel.
Lo meshane. It's their, it's their bag. You know. It's like...
That's your issue. I'm not saying you, I'm saying that's how we usually say these things and mah la'asot? If we understand this Torah what we said today, we'll realize how much more it must be implied with those that we're closest to before thinking about outer circles vechulu. I agree though that it is harder. What if it's not about the easy but about what's going to improve your life? If the people you're closer to, if you can judge them more favorably, that's going to infinitely affect you more than judging somebody in the newspaper.
Betach. So it's not about the easy, it's about... it'll have a bigger impact on you. If you could do it for the people you love for sure you could do it for the people later.
Amen. Amen. Nachon. But is this expected of us also as a society? Meaning tomorrow morning someone is going to rob a store and then they come in front of the judge and they say, no, I see the nekudot tovot in you and whatever and go home and I don't know.
You could... the judge could still throw the person into jail and has to with eyes of Azamra. 100 percent. Because the sentence that the person receives is simple...
Huh? It seems impossible? I said I wouldn't want to be a judge. Right. Shloima. But the penalizing that must take place halachically in a society does not mean though that you've labeled the person as a thief.
It's like people don't... like Toby once explained this to me. People that have chalila cancer should never say "I am cancer". I have cancer, right? So it's like that with a lot of different areas in life but when we see people that are like cancer we don't say about them they have cancer, we say they're cancer.
Zeh lo nachon. Now it's hard in our society to not label like that. It's a very hard thing. I'm very happy you didn't ask me something else which about murderers things like that because but it's u-v'chol adam, if you're going to u-v'chol adam and shifla, nachon, nachon.
Yeah. I feel like it's also important to include that you're also allowed to maintain healthy boundaries if there is somebody that you find that you have to think about judge but also Azamra them at the same time. It doesn't mean you welcome everyone and everything. No no we're not talking about how close or far you keep a person from you, it's what you think about them.
And in order sometimes to think better about someone, 100 percent. Okay, I had this whole conversation with Bina last night over dinner mamash about a certain person that he gets to my heart so much when I'm very far from him and then when I'm close to him it's always bad. But I want to love them so much. So she said, "Yeah, you have to love them from far." But I have this fear of them dying and then feeling horrifically guilty for the rest of my life.
So I started writing down all these thoughts and reminders that for the sake of your own health and preservation of your stability and all other things you need to do, don't forget that for some reason being close to this certain person has never produced a healthy way of being. But love them from where you are and judge them favorably. Halevai. Give me a bracha it should last bezrat Hashem.
Amen. Okay, we'll continue bezrat Hashem next week.