In this week's parsha we are commanded "With justice you should judge your friend", Our Sages teach us that this means you should not judge your friend until you are in his place.

In truth though, we can never really be in our friend's place. How can we ever duplicate all of the circumstances of someone else's life (even if we are aware of them, which we aren't)?

This is relevant in our personal interactions with people as we never know what they are going through so we shouldn't judge them until "we are in their place". We never know what struggles and difficulties they may be dealing with and how that is impacting their actions.

I think on a worldwide level as well, in this time we see tremendous divisiveness and confusion. Forgetting the media bias that we are all exposed to, even assuming we are seeing and hearing the truth, do we really understand the conditions and lifestyle of some community on the other side of the world? Can we honestly judge them or their community or country? This doesn't mean that we can't judge the action and there is of course absolute right and wrong but when it comes to judging the person we can't judge how wrong "he/she" was.

If someone robbed you at gunpoint and stole your money everyone would agree that person is wrong. Is that person extremely wicked? Are they a criminal? At first glance we would say, yes. What if it was winter and the person got sick lost their job and their landlord was planning to evict them and two little kids and throw them out on the street if they can't pay rent? It still wouldn't make the action right, but we probably wouldn't look at the "robber" as a wicked person and possibly not even a criminal.

Shabbat Shalom,

Heath