Happy People Judge Themselves; Unhappy People Judge Others

Image Source: Ze K

Judging Others Doesn’t Define Them—It Defines You!

The irony of the world’s criticism would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

They angrily accuse Israel of being “colonizers” yet 67 countries speak English, 21 countries speak Spanish, 29 countries speak French, 22 countries speak Arabic—and only one single country speaks Hebrew! Somehow, they have found a way to accuse us of what they themselves are undisputedly guilty of.

The Torah addresses this malady in a manner that makes it far more personal and closer to home. Instead of just brushing off anti-Semites as unreasonable and incoherent, it challenges us to reasses our own critical observations of those around us too. It would have been hard for us to grasp this wisdom if not that we are able to witness the irrational hate against Israel today, from all over the world.

The secret to understanding this preposterous prejudice is buried within the list of non-Kosher birds in the Torah, one of which is called the “Raah”—the Kite. It’s Hebrew name means “Seer” because of its extraordinarily keen sense of vision. The Talmud (Chullin 63b) tells us that “We have learnt that this bird stands in Babylon (Iraq), and sees a carcass in the Land of Israel”, a breathtaking distance of some 500 miles!

The saintly Ramban (1194 – c. 1270) explains the reason that many animals are not kosher is because you are what you eat. Eating treif creatures instill within us the evil character traits of the animal.  Why then is this remarkable creature, with its gift of vision, not Kosher?

The answer lies in the nuance of the Tamud’s hyperbole. The Talmud could have simply told us that the kite has great eyesight, superior to other birds. The metaphor of being “in Babylon and seeing carcasses in the Holy Land” teaches us far more than what meets the eye: The problem with the kite is not how far it can see but rather what it chooses to focus on. 

If you’re in Babylon and all you can see in the Promised Land is corpses, you’ve got a serious problem that needs much more than an optometrist to repair.

If you ask a European or an American college student about life in Israel, they will likely shout “genocide,” “war crimes” or other regurgitated dribble. All that they see through the lens of the media bias and their anti-Semitic leaders is dead Palestinian children. They choose to ignore Israel’s desperate fight for her survival in a war that she didn’t start. They conveniently overlook the striking truth that even according to Hamas’ inflated figures, Gaza’s civilian casualties are not even a tenth of the civilian deaths caused by the Allied forces in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and not even a fraction of the civilian deaths caused in Japan in World War II. In their desperate search for accusations against Israel, they will ignore the fact that the IDF is the most humane army in the history of modern warfare, actively providing the needs of the enemy whilst waging war against it.

In their lust for a blood libel, cable news networks and other media outlets will see just the casualties of war, whilst forgetting Israel’s unparalleled social justice laws, remarkable equal rights for Jews and Arabs and the extraordinary opportunities that allow Arabs to serve in the highest offices of the land including Supreme Court Justices, Members of Knesset and even Military Generals! When Israel rescued a Arab-Israeli Muslim hostage this week from ten months of captivity in Gaza, you won’t be hearing the anti-Israel crowd give Israel any credit at all.

Admittedly, Israel is far from perfect. Like any other nation on Earth, Israel has its flaws, challenges and imperfections. Her political leaders have made grave errors that have cost us dearly. Nobody’s perfect. If all that you are capable of seeing is what’s wrong, it’s the beholder who needs fixing, not the one being looked upon!

Thus, the saintly Baal Shem Tov interprets the Talmud about the extraordinary vision of the kite—not only about fowl but primarily about people. The word “Babylon” means “confusion” in Hebrew. When a person is in a state of “Babel—internal confusion,” their own moral compass is broken. Hence, when they look upon another—even upon someone who is truly innocent and righteous—all they see is evil. Such an onlooker—with inner moral decay—can gaze even upon the Promised Land and see just death and destruction! Thus Benjamin Franklin noted that “Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain. And most fools do.”

Toxic people project their own character defects on their victims. They do so by accusing their victims of the exact actions that they themselves do, but deny. If you have the same problem with everyone, perhaps it’s time you took a good look in the mirror.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. No matter how cool, educated, rich or talented you think you are, how you treat people, tells everything about you.

In much the same way, the Torah tells us that just after the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea, the Jews grew thirsty:

When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because they were bitter. That is why it was called Marah”. (Exodus 15:23)

Pointing out the glaring lexical ambiguity, the Ba’al Shem Tov interprets the phrase “because they were bitter” as referring to the people, not the water! The reason that they found the water to be bitter is because the people themselves were bitter people!

If you are willing to look at another person’s behaviour towards you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement of your value as a person, then you will soon find yourself far happier and at peace than ever before.

Whilst you might choose to backhandedly dismiss the anti-Semitic rhetoric of western nations as insane, the majestic kite’s non-kosher status calls upon us to reexamine our own judgements of the people that we encounter too. We’re challenged to reassess whether what we see others as moral decay or perfectly okay. The answer speaks volumes about none other than ourselves.

Rabbi Dovid Vigler
Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens
6100 PGA Blvd, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
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