Here we are on the third note of the day, and we may finish it all up. Nice short Saturday, so y’all can go out and enjoy the fresh air before the snow hits. Or, if you are coming to it later, so you can go out and shovel. Or whatever y’all’s weather looks like.
Joshua ben Perahyah and Nittai the Arbelite took over from them. Joshua ben Perahyah says: provide thyself with a teacher, get thee a comrade, and judge everyone with the scale weighted in his favor.
Literally, judge in the pan of merit. See, the scales of Justice have the pan of merit and the pan of, well, presumably demerit, right? And you should judge by the pan of merit, rather than the pan of demerit. Focus on the good stuff.
Maimonides later comments on this verse that when you see somebody who has a reputation for righteousness do something that appears to be wrong, you should assume that there is a reason for it, and that the reason is a righteous one. As long as there is a remote possibility that the action is justifiable, you should assume the best. However, continues the Rambam, when you see someone with a reputation for wickedness do a good deed, do not assume that it really is a good deed, for he may have some wicked intent that you can’t see, as it is written: When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for [there are] seven abominations in his heart (Proverbs 26:25).
Maimonides would like us to focus on our own reputations, and how important it is for us to do good, so that we have a reputation for the good, so that we can withstand scandal and libel. On the other hand, Joshua ben Parahyah very clearly says judge everyone—col ha-adam, all the men—with an eye to the good, not the bad. Sorry, Rambam.
This advice, as I’ve been on about, was originally intended for an audience of judges, for whom the question of balancing merit and demerit in a case was a professional one. However, as with all the advice in the book, it is applicable to us in our lives, whether we are judging in some official capacity or in our personal lives. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you always give everybody the benefit of the doubt, though. I translate this as advice for my daily life that I should remember that the pan of merit is never empty. That doesn’t mean that I’m always going to judge in someone’s favor. In a civil court, and Joshua ben Parahyah would have presided over many cases that would now be called civil cases, a judgment for one side is necessarily a judgment against the other. But both sides have a pan of merit, and I should keep my eye on that pan.
Honestly, that’s rarely a problem for me. I find it all too comforting to look at the pan of merit. In politics, for instance, many of my friends mock me (yes you do) because I prefer to look at the pan of merit even for One of Our Presidents and his secretive cabal of incompetents and crooks. In daily life, I imagine elaborate justifications for the rudeness or thoughtlessness of other people.
When Studs Terkel died (he was one of my heroes, you know), NPR replayed some interviews—I mean, other people interviewing him, although they did replay some of the ones where he interviewed other people as well. Anyway, in one of them, he talks about the famous scene in Five Easy Pieces where Jack Nicholson’s character wants a side of toast, and the waitress won’t let him order it. And Mr. Terkel was talking about how people kept telling them how much they loved that scene, and how funny it was, and how great it was that the guy refused to be beaten down and all that, and he said all he could think about was how much that waitress’s feet must have hurt, and whether it was her only job or her second job, and whether she had been fighting with her parents, or her kids, and whether all that broken glass would be taken out of her salary. I think that’s what Joshua ben Perahyah is talking about, too.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Studs the man, yo.