Judge kindly on Rosh Hashanah
For Rosh Hashanah, a beautiful Orthodox call to generosity and humility:
God reminds us that the benchmarks of our being judged is made by ourselves.
The way we judge others determines the bar by which we shall be judged. By right, only God judges alone. Ruth 1:1 reminds us that the Messiah’s line continued “during the judging of the judges.” When human judges ignore the rules when judging those who are deemed to be not important, those judges become a nullity, and become impotent. My teacher, Rabbi Faur, teaches that Jewish courts that ignore Torah law are to be ignored. It is the din of the Torah and the policy of the judge that must be applied…
How are to judge others? Gently, generously, and with humanity. By judging others with kindness, we build the bar by which we are judged. By acting kindly toward others, we walk humbly before God.
This is particularly interesting:
Professor Menachem Kellner, an Orthodox scholar of the Medieval Jewish mind at Haifa University, has argued that a non-observant Jew who believes correctly regarding God and who is meticulous regarding ethics, is for Maimonides, the master of masora, tradition, a living example of the Israelite ideal. In other words, the more we judge others, the more we condemn ourselves.
