Majority Wins

My sister Leila and I got our degrees in subjects that very few women had majored in at Lander College: I studied Judaic Studies and she studied Math. Before we graduated, we both took a thesis course, researching a topic of interest. Leila, being as smart and creative as she is, wanted to embark on a mathematical discussion of batel b’shishim, “nullified by sixty,” and batel b’rov, “nullified by the majority,”—two rules in Halacha that are relevant to kashrus.

Sometimes, when we make a mistake in our kitchen—for instance, we are making a cup of coffee and somehow we get a drop of milk into our pot of chicken soup—Halacha dictates that as long as that drop constitutes one sixtieth of the whole pot of soup, it is nullified and the soup is still kosher.

It’s the same thing with the reverse: If you pour chicken soup into containers and some of it splashes into your cup of coffee (no nekamah here!), the coffee still remains kosher and is not considered a בשר בחלב, a meat with milk, mixture.

An example of the second Halacha of batel b’rov is the following: When we bake a cake, we usually crack open the eggs to check whether or not they have blood. When we hard-boil eggs, we don’t have that opportunity. Therefore the custom is to boil a minimum of three eggs in a pot, so if there is indeed a blood spot in one of them, the majority are kosher eggs; that is, the kosher majority cancels out the treif minority. This rule comes up as well in bishul akum and probably many other topics of Halacha.

Chazal gave us these heiterim or allowances of bittul and cancellation in order that we can enjoy our food without too much waste or heartache. Torah, and in particular Halacha, don’t encourage perfectionism and instead provide us with much leeway for our own mess-ups and mistakes.

These particular Halachos seem poignant to me as we approach the Yomim Noraim, because very often our rules reflect our tightly held Jewish values: Just as HaShem gives us the heter of batel b’shishim and batel b’rov with food and He has rachmanus on our wallets and blood pressure, we should also consider being lenient with others: We should be matir them with all of their flaws and deficiencies because the rov—or majority of their person—is good.

Like the all-encompassing Mikvah, we want to take a person who does not seem kosher and immerse him in our feelings of good will, with the hope that HaShem will do the same for us. In other words, the Mikvah is matir people. It allows women to be with their husbands and Gentiles to keep Torah in its entirety. It nullifies a woman’s niddah status and the convert’s non-Jewish status. To allow (and be matir) is to nullify (and be mevatel) the very thing that’s holding us back. To allow someone back into our lives and to view them in good favor is to nullify the bad and “hold space” for this person.

Let us take the lesson of Rov and Shishim and distill the beautiful parts of our friends and family, in accepting them for who they are, in all their ups and downs. And consequently, may HaShem accept us for the good people that we are and may He accept our well-meant Tefillos for an amazing year.   

With Rosh Hashanah quickly approaching, we must deem each other kosher and nullify the bad that we see or the bad that we exaggerate, as we gain more perspective. Challenge yourself once and say, In big picture, this person’s pretty alright. Or: In big picture, her pettiness or inflexibility is nothing compared to her big heart. It’s kdai (or worthwhile) to zoom out a little and stop inspecting people כחוט השערה, like a strand of hair, and collect all the positive attributes to outweigh the minority of all the negative. Halevai, if only HaShem will value our mitzvos over our aveiros. מה הוא רחום? אף אתה רחום, HaShem acts in mercy and so should we.

Back to our discussion of halachic leniencies in kashrus: Hashem is matir what seems like a clear cut violation of a deoraisa or Biblical mitzvah: לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו, Do not cook the meat of a goat in its mother’s milk. HaShem is easy on us with the leniencies of bittul so that we don’t have to lose out. Perhaps this pasuk obligating us to keep kosher can resonate within us the importance of having compassionate for our Jewish sisters and brothers. “Do not cook a goat’s meat in its mother’s milk” is not only a stricture for our kitchens but also a directive for our hearts to be kind and grateful to those who have given to us.

Regarding majorities: Back in Babylon, the Jewish people had something called the Sanhedrin, an institution comprised of seventy wise men—rabbis? maybe—whose law was אחרי רבים להטות, “we go after the majority.” In other words, we lean towards’ the majority opinion or ruling. So let’s say, on a particular case or issue, fifty-one percent of the Sanhedrin—or thirty-six people— voted on one conclusion, then אחרי רבים להטות, the majority would win and we’d go by its particular ruling.

In our own personal lives, we can utilize this principle, of leaning towards the majority and cancelling out the rest, when approaching others. We can always learn from the machshavah (thought) behind a Jewish law or practice. Just as we take our coffee-infused chicken broth, shrug our shoulders, and slurp it up in all its kosher yum, we take a good Yid who is struggling yet has great, redeeming qualities, and we shrug our shoulders and give him an all-encompassing hug.

Many of us, including myself, are nearsighted with a certain tzarus ayin, a narrowness of vision. But we must replace this and the rest of our hakpados (stringencies) with a more expanded view of our human experience. Let the weaknesses we’ve observed and the traits that have bothered us become one sixtieth of that good person. If HaShem is so lenient in the most fundamental part of Jewish life, how are we so makpid on minor stupidities?

If Gd Himself is meikel, why are we so machmir?

Life is not black and white. People are not black and white. Recognizing this can aid our relationships and make them more meaningful and peaceful. When we embrace the in-between grays of our existence, we begin to understand that human beings, including our own selves, are complex, nuanced, and always evolving. My recent trip to Israel certainly taught me that life and people in general can be summed up by the frequently expressed words, זה לא פשוט (it’s not simple). And surely we are not so simple!

A holiday of good judgement and of celebrating our clean slates and new opportunities, Yom Kippur begins with Hataras Nedarim, with annulling our vows. Sometimes we create nedarim through our words—“I will help you with this,” “I will never go there again”—and sometimes we create nedarim through our actions, with the principle of chazakah or an established pattern of three. When we do things three times in a row without saying Bli Neder (“I’m not vowing to this”), we’ve established a commitment to continue whatever it is that we are doing. So for example, if I daven Mincha three days in a row, I’ve created a neder that obligates me to continue davening Mincha each day.

However, have no fear. When Yom Kippur arrives, we have the chance to nullify all our vows and accidental commitments and cancel them out—or in the language of the night, we can be matir them (matir coming from the word hatarah).

We accomplish this by going in front of a Beis Din of three men, utilizing the same principle of chazakah, the power of three. Sitting on this rabbinic dais and listening, the three men then void our vows by repeating a phrase three times over: מותר לך, מותר לך, מותר לך. We are being matir this vow. It is permitted to you. It is permitted for you to break free from this pattern. It is permitted to you. All your restrictions are null and no longer there. 

The pattern, though, of “an established three” or majority doesn’t end there. We come to shul on Yom Kippur night and say the prayer of Kol Nidrei three times over to confirm this nullification in order that we shouldn’t continuously and unintentionally violate our commitments.  

As the Gemara writes, מה הוא רחום? אף אתה רחום. We should be compassionate to others like HaShem is compassionate to us as a Father. In other words, we must let go of our long-time biases against communities and individuals and what wrongs we’ve held them to for all these years. On Yom Kippur, we take the shofar, whose shape is narrow then wide, to symbolize how we are expanding our limited views, as we transform our own views to go מן המיצר אל המרחב, from narrow to wide. The shofar underscores our need, especially on this prayer-filled day, to free our minds and spirits from the constricted ways we think and from the judgmental prisms through which we view ourselves and others. As King Dovid writes in Tehillim 130, a psalm we recite line by line on this yuntif: מן המיצר קראתי י-ה, ענני במרחב י-ה! From the narrowness, I call to you. Gd has answered me by expanding my life!

As the ninety-six year old psychologist Dr. Edith Eger explains in one of her books, we need to get out of our disabling mental prisons and set our ourselves free by setting our family and friends free from the roles to which we’ve assigned them. I will add, and we must also set them free from the figurative nedarim and obligations we’ve associated them with (“Well, why can she never do what she’s supposed to?” or “Why has she always acted like that?”). How beautiful it would be to hold each other, including one’s self, in compassion and love.

In the zechus of letting go of our tzarus ayin and eliminating all of our mental and emotional binds, may we be zoche to refuos, yeshuos, and nechamos (recovery, salvation, and comfort)—k’heref ayin, as quickly as it takes to blink an eye. One, two, three!