“… You shall judge your fellow with righteousness” (Vayikra 19:15)
Our Sages tell us (Shabbos 127b) that this mandate is very reasonable and, in fact, the way one judges another person is how he himself will be judged in Heaven.
HaGaon R’ Chaim Shmulevitz cites the Mishna in Avos (1:6) that also states, like our pasuk, “… judge everyone favorably.” This, notes R’ Shmulevitz, is an awesome suggestion to ensure that one will be found meritorious on the Day of Judgment.
We find similarly in Maseches Rosh Hashanah (17a), “One who foregoes his calculations with others for injustices done to him, the Heavenly Court, in turn, foregoes punishment for all his sins.” Rashi expounds that the Divine attribute of strict justice is not exacting with such a person because he refrains from being tough on others.
However, this is still difficult to understand because there is always room for doubt for a human being, and therefore there is reason to judge another person favorably. But there are no doubts by Hashem; He has perfect understanding and perception of the situation.
The explanation is (Koheles 7:20), “For there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin.” This is understood to mean that even though the tzaddik may not have sinned or erred, the possibility still exists that the good he did was lacking in some way. Perhaps the deed was not totally l’shem Shamayim, for the sake of Heaven. Perhaps some part of the deed was not pleasing to Hashem. The obligation of judging another person favorably means to judge the entirety of his actions in a positive way. Even if the deed was flawed in some way, he must evaluate the main element of the deed that was done with good intentions to serve Hashem.
When an individual judges another person favorably in such a way – with no ifs, ands, or buts – then he himself is likewise judged by Heaven in a totally favorable way.
We learn that when Dovid HaMelech took the wife of Uriah HaChiti (who was in the army and had, technically, divorced his wife as all soldiers going out to battle did), Nosson HaNavi rebuked Dovid HaMelech by way of a parable (Shmuel II, 12). He spoke of two men in a city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many sheep and cattle, but the poor man had but one small ewe. Once when the rich man had a guest whom he wished to serve a lavish meal, he was reluctant to kill one of his own animals, so the rich man slaughtered the sheep of the poor man. Dovid immediately exclaimed, “Any man who does this deserves to die!” Nosson responded, “You are that man!” and Dovid HaMelech promptly confessed his sin.
In the time when R’ Shmuel Salant was the chief rabbi in Yerushalayim, a storeowner presented before the rabbis because, every morning when he arrived at his place of business, he found that a number of eggs were missing from his delivery. He suspected one of his neighbors.
Rav Salant advised him to cook up a large number of hard-boiled eggs and leave them in place of the raw eggs. Although the storeowner was puzzled by these instructions, he knew that the rav was a holy person and whatever he said must be Divinely inspired.
The storeowner cooked up the hard-boiled eggs and put them out. The next morning, when he came to open for business, the storeowner saw that all the eggs were there. Only one egg was broken and a dead snake was lying nearby. The storeowner then understood the sagacity of the rav; it had not been the neighbor who was stealing the eggs, but the snake.
Everyone was in awe of the rav, who quickly dismissed their praise. “It was really quite simple,” he insisted. “The Torah commands us to judge our fellow with righteousness. As a result, I had to consider every possibility that could absolve the Jewish neighbor and prove his innocence.”
There was much opposition to the Rambam’s famous work Moreh Nevuchim, and representatives were sent to find out more about the author. The Rambam offered his guests food that looked like human fingers and, needless to say, they were shocked and refused to partake of the food. Their suspicions about the Rambam’s legitimacy only grew stronger.
The Rambam then called out to his servant Pasros (a non-Jewish name) to bring some wine for the guests and to slaughter a calf. The representatives wanted to run away because they could not imagine what was coming next.
At that point, the Rambam notified his guests that they were, in fact, wrongfully suspecting an innocent person and not giving him the benefit of the doubt. He assured them that the food was kosher l’mehadrin, Pasros was a Jew, and the calf he was slaughtering (instead of shechting) was a ben pakuah – a viable calf found within the mother that had been shechted (and does not itself require shechitah). The Rambam further alluded to the fact that their doubts about his sefer were similarly misplaced.