Rebbe Nachman teaches us how we can win a favorable judgment

If you can find some hidden spark of goodness in the dark places, hold it up for the world to see, and tip the scales

In Jewish homes and offices all over the world, people are taking down their old calendars and hanging up new ones, fresh and ready for the year 5780. As they do so, they look at the clean first page wistfully, hoping that the new cycle of 354 days will be better than the months they’re about to consign to their memories.

But for those who see Rosh Hashanah only as “time to change the calendar,” the days hold no special essence. There’s no cheshbon, no nefesh, no Kingdom of G-d Above, and no Days of Judgment and Mercy. Rosh Hashanah does not stand firmly at the center, like a lighthouse between days past and days to come, casting new light in both directions. It’s merely “days fleeting, days passing, without taking, without giving,” in the words of the famous poem “Shakah Chamah” by the gaon of Torah and mussar, Rav Avraham Eliyahu Kaplan.

We, however, have Rosh Hashanah. We know it’s Yom HaDin and the day when we declare the Creator King over the entire universe and over our own hearts. For us, something huge is happening on this day, as we stand together before Him as one congregation, and at the same time, each of us is experiencing his own personal “Rosh Hashanah.” Every individual is occupied with self-renewal, working to build his own new year according to the plans he drew up during Elul or maybe just the day before.

This personal Rosh Hashanah is a private domain where each of us alone may enter. Fortunate is the one who makes thorough preparations for Yom HaDin, but even he who makes one small change has done something unquantifiable. For a small, yet genuine change has ramifications, changing the whole person, illuminating the sphere in which he lives with a brighter, clearer light. He has pierced his old world, making a tiny hole like a pinprick, and a great hall opens up before him. May we all be zocheh to have our hearts completely conquered by that ultimate, supreme joy on the day we make an open space for the King.

But we also face Yom HaDin as a collective, and the year we’ve experienced as Klal Yisrael, and not only as individuals, is also weighed on the scales of judgment. It’s been a hard year, a year in which we’ve seen many tragedies — people cut down in the bloom of youth, including prized young Torah scholars. During this year, we’ve heard the evil voices openly calling for our destruction, Rachmana litzlan, and yes, this hatred has aroused fear in our hearts. But perhaps that fear will speak in our favor, tipping the scales to the side of Hashem’s mercy.

We learn from Chazal, “This You teach us from Your Torah: a kal v’chomer from a tooth or an eye. If a slave goes free for the loss of a tooth or an eye — just one of a person’s parts — then how much more so should yissurim, suffering that cleanses the entire person, render him blameless!”

In that case, this year we go free. The past year has been one of much suffering for the individual and the klal. And indeed, as the mefarshim explain, “yissurim memarkin, suffering cleanses” — meaning that suffering gives a person a new perspective on his life, and in fact, on all of reality. During this year, we have been disabused of many illusions. We’ve engaged in much introspection, searching for the error within that has caused so much difficulty for us from without. And thus, this year, our preparations for Rosh Hashanah began long before Rosh Chodesh Elul, the traditional day for starting our spiritual renovation project to ready ourselves for the new year.

Indeed, everything that has happened to us, in our private lives and as a people, has changed our perspective. Like the slave who was wounded, our worldview has been liberated from its previous assumptions. All of us, each according to his level, have taken in at least something of the message relayed from Above. This fact alone will undoubtedly be weighed on the side of our merit when our deeds and our lapses are placed on the Divine scales of justice. All the suffering we’ve experienced this year, and all the lessons we’ve learned from our experiences, will be piled onto the plate of merit.

But it goes deeper than this.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov writes, “Know that one must judge every man favorably. Even if someone is a rasha, one must search for, and find, something good in him. For in that small part of him, he is not a rasha, and by virtue of the fact that one has found a bit of good in him and has judged him favorably, one can actually bring him over to the side of merit and induce him to do teshuvah, and this is the meaning of the pasuk, ‘And in a little while there is no rasha, and you will look at his place, and he won’t be there.’ In other words, the pasuk is instructing us to judge every person favorably, even if the person is absolutely wicked, for in that way the rasha part of him will disappear….

“And so,” Rebbe Nachman continues, “must a person look at himself, as well. Even if he starts looking at himself and sees nothing good, he must search and find some little bit of good… and by virtue of the fact that he can still find something good in himself, he actually will shift over from the side of liability to the side of merit” (Likutei Morharan, 141, siman 282).

This, Rebbe Nachman teaches us, is how we can win a favorable judgment: Take a deeper look at the evil and the evildoers in the world and find some hidden spark of good there, and by holding it up for the world to see, we can find merits even on the “debit” side of the scales and bring them over to the other side, thus tipping the scales to the side of Middas Harachamim.

May it be His Will that the Attribute of Mercy should indeed prevail in judgment, and may we all, as one person, be written and sealed immediately for life.

“Your fellow is your mirror. If your own face is clean, so will be the image you perceive. But should you look upon your fellow and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering — you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself.”

(Baal Shem Tov)

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 779)