Hi good morning I hope you're well. So I think we were in looking at Michtav Lamed Chet yesterday. So continuing there in Michtav Lamed Chet. Yesterday we saw Rav Hutner's teitch of the word zeid and how just the way the word is built or constructed from the zayin and the daled that it reflects its meaning of that provocation chas veshalom tohei al harishonot. ועוד יסוד אחד עלינו לבאר כאן. הנה נתחייבנו במצוה בצדק תשפוט את עמיתך. פירושה של מצוה זו הוא לדון לכף זכות.
Right that's a din d'Oraisa. The Rambam in Sefer Hamitzvos on the מצוה בצדק תשפוט את עמיתך writes that on a d'Oraisa'dik level the mitzvah includes being dan lechaf zchus as well. והשיעור בזה של דיון לכף זכות מבואר בראשונים. Ha-Rambam ve-Rabbeinu Yonah in Pirkei Avos both explain שזה תלוי בטיבו של האדם הנידון. What the parameters of being dan lechaf zchus depend upon the person. Lemoshal מי שהמדרגה שלו הוא מדרגה שמחצה זכויות ומחצה עוונות. If you have someone who's a beinoni. מי שהמדרגה שלו הוא מדרגה שמחצה זכויות ומחצה עוונות אז חובת הדיון לכף זכות נוהגת בו במעשה שיש בו חמישים אחוז לצד זכות וחמישים אחוז לצד חוב וכדומה הכל לפי ערך כמבואר ברבינו יונה.
So if you have a person either he's totally unknown to you or he's a person that he does good things but unfortunately that's not the only thing he does. So when you have that type of ambiguity so then the chiyuv of being dan lechaf zchus means when you have an action which is similarly ambiguous. So the mitzvah of being dan lechaf zchus is very much contextual depending upon the person. I think we once discussed in a different context that this din in halacha is also a pillar of parshanus. If you have again the other thing Rishonim say if you have I think Rav Hutner is about to go on to say this. No he doesn't spell out all these details. If you have someone who's a very big tzaddik so then even when the action outwardly appears like ninety-nine point nine percent that it's something wrong but if the person is muchzak as a big tzaddik he does mitzvos he doesn't do aveiros so then the mitzvah to be dan lechaf zchus is to to interpret it l'zchus. If on the other hand he's a rasha and outwardly it seems like he just did something good so then the mitzvah is again you interpret everything contextually. When you think about it it's very compelling right that that should provide the context of of how to understand and it's intuitive also. We do it all the time. Let's say when someone says something and and you could interpret it as having been said sarcastically or having been said seriously. Not not not not sarcastically. Let's say you come to a meeting and you arrive ten minutes late. And someone greets you and says nice to see you. So are they being sarcastic or no they're really happy to see you. So you're going to interpret it contextually based if if this is a sarcastic person a person who is a big kapdan and maybe this is the fiftieth time in the past ten days that you've come late to a meeting. So then contextually you're gonna say he's being sarcastic. But no he's he's not a kapdan he's a vatran and he's a very friendly warm person. So then when he says nice to see you you're going to take it at face value. So it's something which is intuitive that we interpret things contextually. And that's what the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zchut affirms that intuition. That's correct. So if there is no context, why? There's no context because I don't know this person. Or there's no context because this person himself is a mixed bag of מחצה מחצה זכויות מחצה מחצה עוונות. So then there's no context, so then the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zchut is only when the action is completely ambiguous. But if the action is notah l'tzad chov, there's no chiyuv to be dan l'kaf zchut. When you have the context of the person being a tzadik gamur, so then that provides you with again it contextualizes, it frames what what the person did and that's why the mitzvah plays out differently. Just another example of how intuitive this this is. Imagine you have the following. Imagine you're you're working on a shverer Yerushalmi, a shverer Yerushalmi and and you go over to a go over to a four-year-old and you ask him what's pshat in Yerushalmi. So the four-year-old says, I don't know. Then let's say you take that same shverer Yerushalmi and you go to Rav Shechter and you ask him what's pshat in Yerushalmi. And Rav Shechter says, I don't know. To the same same three words, right? But we're not going to say that a person is twisting and and overinterpreting if he says that what the four-year-old meant was I'm only up to gimmel in the alef-beis and there's a lot of squiggles here that I don't yet recognize. That's pshat in his I don't know. And and what's Rav Shechter telling you? No, this Yerushalmi seems to be against so many other Gemaras and and things that the Rishonim take for granted in all of Shas and that's why it's such a shverer Yerushalmi and and that's the way again not not only is that not overinterpreted, that's correctly interpreting. That's correctly interpreting. So that's that's the same thing as in in this context and the din of dan l'kaf zchut. And b'emes you see this in Chazal, the same yesod which defines the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zchut is also a yesod of parshanus and and once we realize it, so then the parshanus we see it for the compelling approach that it is. For instance, ויבוא עשו מן השדה והוא עיף. So we learn the pshuto shel mikra and we say, yeah, he was out in the field, he was in the Middle Eastern sun all day, so it's a blazing hot sun and he was out in the field, so so probably there was no tree cover there either, so he's exhausted, he's tired. And Chazal say no, ויבוא עשו מן השדה והוא עיף is ayeif bishfichas damim, ayeif bishfichas damim. Once we recognize the opposite is כל האומר דוד חטא אינו אלא טועה, the Gemara in Shabbos says. A person who who thinks that David Rachmana litzlan was guilty of eishesh ish is to'eh. כל האומר ראובן חטא אינו אלא טועה. And again, we look at the pshuto shel mikra and and we think וישכב את בלהה פילגש אביו and and in both cases, so we mistakenly think that how is this how is this pshat? The answer is again because it's intuitive that context frames and defines what how something should be said. Nice to see you. Was it sarcastic or was it serious? Context. The person the context of the person is crucial in in determining whether nice to see you is a cynical reaction to your coming late or is a very warm shalom aleichem to to seeing you. I don't know, I don't know is a chesron yediyah of I'm barely literate or I don't know is I don't know, it's just it's just so hard to integrate this with kol haTorah kulah. So which does I don't know mean? So contextually it depends upon the person. ויבוא עשו מן השדה והוא עיף. So so the stam fatigue of of an Eisav, so context tells you that that it's not stam and an innocent type of of fatigue. He didn't he didn't get exhausted from making deliveries for Tomchei Shabbos. That isn't what made Eisav Eisav tired. The Navi says that Hakadosh Baruch Hu says את יעקב אהבתי ואת עשו שנאתי. So Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't gratuitously hate Eisav. Hakadosh Baruch Hu hates Eisav. Israel so obviously he's on such a madregah that again that his I don't know means something different than someone else's I don't know. A description ein hachi nami if we would have that same description with Bas-sheva and it wouldn't be a Dovid so then we would have taken it, again, what would seem to be more literally. And if it wasn't Reuven who was the subject of וישכב את בלהה פילגש אביו so we would have taken that more literally also but the same way that what the pshat in the I don't know is depends upon who's saying that the I don't know so too what the pshat is in the v'hu ayef and what the pshat is in וישכב את בלהה פילגש אביו that depends upon the depends upon the context of the person, the personal context and that's a very big again it's the same yesod both in terms of the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zechus as well as the parshanus. אומנם כל זה הוא רק בנוגע למעשה שנעשה על ידי אדם שיש בו צדדים לחובה וצדדים לזכות אז המצווה של בצדק תשפוט עמיתך מחייבת אותנו להכריע לצדדי הזכות לפי ערכו של אותו אדם. אבל לאחר שמבואר לנו שמעשה הרע נעשה כבר
what about is does the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zechus require what we should imagine happens in the aftermath? Meaning let's say let's say something happened and we know for a fact that it was wrong, that we see someone do something wrong. אבל לאחר שמבואר לנו שמעשה הרע נעשה כבר אז אין עלינו שום חוב לדון לכף זכות ולתפוס שהקלקול הנעשה נתקן.
The chiyuv of being dan l'kaf zechus is again a chiyuv how to interpret again let's talk about בין אדם בינו לבינו מעשה סתום. But there is no chiyuv l'kaf zechus if I know for a fact unequivocally that someone did something wrong there's no it's not part of being dan l'kaf zechus to assume that he did teshuvah. לכלל זה יש יוצא מן הכלל. There is an exception to this והוא אם האדם הנידון הוא בגדר תלמיד חכם שאז קיימא לן שאם ראית תלמיד חכם שעבר עבירה בלילה אל תהרהר אחריו ביום שודאי עשה תשובה.
So it's interesting, it's interesting, I mean the Gemara doesn't, if I'm recalling correctly, I'm not sure I am so double check this, the Gemara doesn't explicitly associate this with the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zechus. Hutner is juxtaposing it. מבואר אצלנו שזהו חידוש גדול במצות בצדק תשפוט עמיתך דהיינו אפילו לאחר שנעשה מעשה הרע יש חיוב של דן לכף זכות שעשה כאן תשובה אבל חובת הכרעה לכף זכות באופן זה מיוחדת היא אך ורק לתלמיד חכם.
Only by a talmid chacham is there such a chiyuv where the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zechus entails our assuming what his reaction was after the fact. And what's more again even though not even though but but notice here again so again the mitzvah of being dan l'kaf zechus is contextual in the sense that it depends upon the person but notice here that we only make this exception of the assumption of teshuvah by a talmid chacham says the Hutner. כל סוגי הצדקות שבעולם לא יועילו לחייב הדין לכף זכות הזה כלומר אף על פי שבדרך כלל החיוב לדון לכף זכות תלוי הוא במדרגת הצדקות של האדם הנידון כמבואר.
Until now the distinctions we drew in terms of what being dan l'kaf zechus entails depends upon is the person a beinoni is he a tzaddik is he a rasha. We weren't defining it in terms of talmid chacham however מכל מקום כל זה רק קודם שנעשה מעשה הרע וההכרעה היא רק אם נעשה מעשה הרע.
When the meduber is whether something wrong happened then the category of individual which provides the context is צדיק בינוני או רשע. Then the din l'kaf zechus... שתחייב אותנו לדון לכף זכות ולתלות שנעשה תשובה. If the person is a tzaddik yesod olam but for whatever reason he's not a talmid chacham. Whatever reason he's not not not a talmid chacham. He never had the opportunity to learn from he grew up in a very he was orphaned and in a very poor home and he's been working in the fields since a very tender age. He's a tzaddik yesod olam, he's not a talmid chacham, that doesn't create the chiyuv of thinking that vadai asah teshuvah. רק תורה היא המחייבת לדון לכף זכות כבעלה אפילו לאחר שנעשה מעשה רע בבירור.
Only, the only exception, the only time when even when we know that something wrong was done, that we're supposed to have an assumption that teshuvah was done is the case of a talmid chacham. ומבואר אצלנו שזו היא אחת ממעלותיה של תורה על גבי שאר מצוות.
Ki chazakas, this chazakah, this presumption of עשיית התשובה אינה נובעת משום צדקות שבעולם ורק מן התורה. דוק בלשונו של רבינו יונה שכתב בתחילת שערי תשובה לא תמצא איחור תשובה.
You'll only find a person procrastinating to do teshuvah mulvad b'amei ha'aretz. So here too, very nice dikduk, right? The category, the differentiation is not based on resha'im or beinonim versus tzaddikim, but it's based on am ha'aretz versus a talmid chacham. ולא כתב איחור התשובה ברשעים ובקלים ופוחזים. בודאי שדלתי תשובה פתוחות לכל אדם.
Obviously the doors of teshuvah are open to all of us. אבל חזקת התשובה אינה אלא בתלמיד חכם. תלמיד חכם דוקא ולא בצדיק.
Question is what's the pshat in this? So Rav Hutner just says it's maalosah shel Torah. He doesn't spell out beyond that. So I don't know if this is what he has in mind. I don't know. Yitachen d'lav davka that he has this in mind. But one way perhaps to understand this difference, the definition of a genuine talmid chacham is not someone who knows a lot. It's not even someone who has encyclopedic knowledge. It's someone who again has that impressive body and range of knowledge but it it merges and fuses with the person. The toraso dilei of the Gemara in Kiddushin is true on an existential level that he internalizes Torah. It's not just that cognitively, intellectually he knows Torah but but he internalizes Torah. Given that, so then maybe the pshat in in in Rav Hutner's ha'arah is as follows. What pushes a person to do teshuvah immediately? So the משל למה הדבר דומה, it's a little bit of a crude mashal, I ask your mechilah. Let's say a person eats spoiled food, very spoiled food. So by the way he's going to vomit it. His system can't tolerate it. If a person eats food or let's say you have a person whose system isn't so sensitive to spoiled food. So it may not agree with him, he may not especially like it but he's not going to vomit it. But if you have something if if the contrast between the food that that enters the system and the system is is great enough, so then it's just intolerable. So what is what is the how does the body react? It reacts by vomiting. ולא תקיא אתכם הארץ בטמאכם אתה כאשר קאה את הגוי אשר לפניכם
because Eretz Yisrael has kedusha, so the same ba'alei aveiros that can be tolerated, not excused or exonerated in any way, but but can be tolerated in the sense of not being evicted, in that sense of not being evicted, so those same ba'alei aveiros that come with their same lifestyle to Eretz Yisrael, so Eretz Yisrael can't, can't tolerate the same way our system can't tolerate a food which is spoiled enough, Eretz Yisrael can't tolerate ba'alei aveira. Some I'm I'm I'm not saying this for the halacha l'maiseh sheba, halacha l'maiseh you have to have to ask a posek, but but for the for the for the ideya sheba. There were some b'meshech hadoros there were some chassidei elyon, some ba'alei avoda who wouldn't go to Eretz Yisrael until they were older because they wanted that the yetzer hara should be weaker before they went to before they went to Eretz Yisrael. They didn't, they didn't trust themselves to be able to live on a madrega that was consistent with with kedushas ha'aretz in in until that point. Obviously the reason why that per se is not halacha l'maiseh is that you know kol Yisrael certainly in in in this tekufa needs Eretz Yisrael just for its physical survival and and obviously it needs people of all ages. So that's why the idea as beautiful as it is and as l'maiseh as it may have been in in previous doros, so it remains that, but but lav davka what its l'maiseh implications are bizman hazeh. Maybe that's the pshat over here. Maybe the pshat over here is as follows. A person, a person has a yetzer hatov and yetzer hara within within the context of a person, even if he's a tzaddik, but the nature of a person is, right, almost I mean everyone other than Binyamin, Yishai, the handful of individuals whom Chazal tell us never chotei, we're all inconsistent. We're all inconsistent. The question is how inconsistent we are, but we're all inconsistent. And and inconsistency notwithstanding, we don't all suffer from insomnia. I mean I had a very good night's a very good night's sleep last night. I didn't stay up all night worrying about all my inconsistencies. I probably should have, but I didn't. So a person can can be sovel inconsistency. If a person can be, that's the nature of a person. If a person if a person can be sovel inconsistency, he can have a cheit and not immediately react by doing teshuva. Torah is Toras Hashem temima. Torah can't, Torah doesn't, doesn't live side by side with with cheit. Torah is not sovel that. Torah is pure and perfect. The talmid chacham, again obviously he remains a ba'al bechira and and can be nichshal, is nichshal at times, rachmana litzlan, but the point is the more Torah there is inside a person, then the more intolerable cheit is, and therefore when cheit does happen, so then vada'i aso teshuva. But if the person agav that he's a tzaddik, but but a tzaddik again b'maiseh, b'dibbur, u'v'hanhagaso, but but there's not Torah, so that means he's a very, very special person. But in a person, so people, people can become comfortable with inconsistency, right? We all know that. People can be, can be comfortable with inconsistency. There's no chazaka that vada'i aso teshuva. Maybe we'll just try to finish the letter. מכל האמור תבין כי כשם שהתורה מולידה חזקת התיקון על הקלקול בעבר ממש זה לעומת זה הוא הזד המוליד חזקת הקלקול על התיקון בעבר.
Right? So now we see that the antithesis, the... The complete contrast and extreme, is between a talmid chacham and a zeid, because again the bechina of a zeid is to be tohe al harishonot. The bechina of a talmid chacham is the exact opposite of vadai asa teshuva. Vahinu madbe'ach chachamim Al HaNissim, זדים ביד עוסקי תורתך שזה בדיוק ההפך כמו גיבורים ביד חלשים רבים ביד מעטים. בדיוק נקטו כאן המילה זד מפני שבחינה זו היא זה לעומת זה.
Beautiful, beautiful touch. Okay, rabbosai, so we'll stop here.