Parashat Emor: On Pe'ah and our Sharp Corners

This week’s parsha repeats a mitzvah which was mentioned last week – the mitzvah of peah, of leaving the corners of one’s fields for the poor to harvest.

What happens when we cut our fields and avoid the corners? We turn sharp edges into rounded ones. To do the mitzvah of pe’ah is to cut off one’s corners, one’s sharp edges, in relation to those around us.

We all have this capacity for sharpness toward others; we judge, we criticize, we are self-righteous, we lash out, we think, “that person deliberately caused me trouble,” or “I would never act like that person” or “There he goes again.”

The idea of pe’ah is to soften these sharp edges. Yes, I know that’s not the literal meaning of the mitzvah. Literally, we’re talking about generosity toward the poor, the capacity to give what is ours to others. But what is generosity if not a rounded heart – one without sharp edges that wonder – why can’t he just take care of himself for a change? Why do I always have to help her? Generosity involves suspension of judgment and harshness, an assumption of the opposite emotions– compassion, sympathy, kindness, the feelings that lead to giving of oneself to others.

Pirke Avot, which we are reading during this season, says: Heve dan et kol adam lekaf zekhut. Give others the benefit of the doubt in your judgment. Often, it turns out we are wrong in how we judge others; they have good reasons for doing what they’re doing, or it hasn’t happened in exactly the way we thought. We generally have very little information before we pass judgment on others.

But even if we are not wrong, even if we are very much in the right (and we shouldn’t be too sure we are), it is still worthwhile to get rid of those sharp edges. Why? Because we are not so perfect ourselves. There is a rabbinic tradition that God holds us to the same standards that we hold others to. That is, if we judge others harshly, He judges us harshly, too. If we are soft and compassionate, assuming the best of others, so does He of us. In our judgments, in other words, we create the kind of climate of judgment that we ourselves inhabit. Will it be one of sharp edges or soft ones?

There is a Hasidic story about Rabbi Moshe Leib, who, one night in the middle of the night, heard a knock at the door. It turned out to be a drunken peasant asking to be let in. His first reaction was great anger: What insolence! Who does he think he is, knocking on my door at this hour? What business does he have coming to my house? But then, he said quietly to himself: “And what business has he in God’s world? But if God gets along with him, can I reject him?” I often think of this story when judgment comes up for me, and I say to myself a slightly different version of this rebbe’ self-admonishment: “And what business do I have in God’s world either? If God can accept me with all my flaws, then surely I can accept this other person.”

To approach others with rounded edges is to approach them with a soft, accepting and generous heart. This is the season for the softening of our hearts, as we move away from the harshness of the Passover matzah toward to softness of the shtei halehem, the bread sacrifice of Shavu’ot, away from the harshness of winter toward the softness of the spring air.