Some Post Rosh HaShanah Thoughts on Judgment

Ever since Rosh HaShanah I have been thinking about judgment. Not God’s judgment, but our own human judgment.

On Rosh HaShanah we read the story of Hannah’s prayer for a child. I have always thought this story is related to Rosh HaShanah because it is an example of someone who cries and whose prayer is answered by God. This year, though, what struck me was the theme of judgment – the High Priest Eli falsely judges Hannah. He sees her praying silently, her lips moving but without a sound, and he judges her – wrongly – to be drunk. One can almost hear the self-righteous thoughts going through his mind – Imagine the nerve of that woman, to come into this holy place so drunk! Who does she think she is!

But the truth was otherwise, of course. The truth was, and often is, that this person we see acting strangely and often irritatingly before us, this person is suffering. We judge them harshly; our blood pressure goes up as we feel the anger mount – the nerve! How could they! But the truth is – they’re simply in pain. Like Hannah, what makes them act in this unusual way is an inner suffering that only God has access to.

Which is why, this time of year we remind ourselves that there is really only one Judge, and it isn’t us. We are all humans, limited and wrong-headed in our judgment of one another. We are faulty judges.

We are faulty judges because we don’t really know what is going on for another person. Our first response is often not to be curious or open to hearing the truth – we are quick to assume the worst.

We are faulty judges because we judge from our own self-centered vantage point. Perhaps Eli was particularly sensitive to slights to his honor as a priest and considered drunkenness in the sanctuary to be a personal affront to his own honor. We know this scenario. We are engrossed in our own tallying of personal honor and shame and see everyone else’s actions through this prism – we feel hurt and therefore we judge, without being able to get out of the blindness of this self-centered perspective to see the reality of the person in front of us.

But the Hannah and Eli story has a happy ending. Eli is humble and open enough to hear Hannah when she explains herself, to allow his first impression to be corrected. And once he hears her, he blesses her – go in peace and may God grant your request. And, after she leaves this encounter, the verse says that Hannah was no longer downcast. Where there was judgment, there is now understanding, compassion, and the ultimate antidote to judgment – blessing.

In a way, the story can be conceived then as story of Eli’s teshuva, his repentance from the sin of judging another harshly. This is the task then --- to turn our feelings of judgment into compassion and blessing, to learn to see the suffering inside those whom we would naturally judge, and find it in ourselves to bless them with peace and good wishes. To feel their need for blessing in place of our need to judge them. We will feel better about ourselves as well as others in the process and all be blessed with peace.