In this week's Parasha, Re’eh , which we always read right before Elul, there’s a a Pasuk that says, “
ונתן לך רחמים ורחמך
God will give you the attribute of mercy, (which you'll means you'll have, you'll be merciful people), and then He'll have have mercy on you.
That means if a person himself doesn't have mercy, God doesn't have mercy on him. As the Gemara in Shabbat (151A) says, “Whoever has mercy on other creatures, they will have mercy on him from heaven, and the opposite- for those who don’t have mercy on other creatures, they don't have mercy on him from heaven.”
And the source of this, the Pesichta Rabbati says it goes back to Abraham Avinu, who, when he prayed for Avimelech and had mercy on him, God had mercy and Avraham, and Avraham had children. Reshit Raba, 33,3 tells the story of when, in the days of Rabi Tanhuma, there was a drought and the Jewish people fasted for three days, and there was no rain.
It’s possible that they broke their fast at night, but regardless, they fasted for three days. And then the Rabi Tanhuma said that fasting would not do the job. “My children,” he said, “Have mercy on each other and Hashem will have mercy on you.”
So they started giving charity to each other. But then they saw a man coming out of the house of his ex-wife, and they said, “Aha… the reason that the rain is not coming is because these people are sinning together.What is this man doing in his ex-wife's house?”
When they asked him about it, he explained that he had given her money. When they asked why, he explained, “I see that she's in pain, and I filled myself with mercy on her.
Rabi Tanhuma then pointed his face to heaven and said, “Master of the universe, if this man, who no longer has a responsibility to feed his wife, sees that she's in pain and has mercy on her, and it says on You, God, Hanun V’Rachum/You are merciful and benevolent, and we are the sons of Abraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov, then surely You should be overflowing with mercy on us.”
And immediately the rain came down.
The principle here that is explained by the Chafetz Chaim, in his Sefer Ahavat Hesed (volume 2 chapter 3), is that Hashem has two traits that He uses to rule the world.
One is the trait of justice, and one is the trait of mercy. Even if a person is righteous, he still needs to have mercy because if God were to start looking into our deeds and really analyze whether we did we do our Mitzvot with the proper fear, the proper love, with the right Kavana…. if God really analyzed our Mitzvot carefully, then we wouldn't pass the test.
But, you can look at a person's deeds in a more merciful way. You can see that yes, he got up and he went to pray Netz . It’s true that he wasn't concentrating the whole time, but come on, he came to shul.
So there are two ways to look at everything. And we want Hashem to look at us with the trait of mercy.
The Chafetz Chaim tells us that the way to get Hashem to look at us in the more merciful way, and not with the approach of justice, all depends on how we treat people.
If you treat people with kindness and mercy, you arouse God's kindness and mercy above, and they have mercy on you. That's what the Gemara quoted above tells us..
This is to the extent that he quotes a Zohar that says that after 120 years, if a person used to be Mevater/forbearing to other people, then God will Mevater and make things easier for him. But if person was never easy going and never had mercy, he causes justice to be aroused against him.
This is especially important as we enter the month of Elul.
In the Syrian and other Sephardic communities, when they announced the month of Elul, it's called Elul Rachamim, Elul the month of mercy.
My great-grandfather, Avraham David Sithon, had a diary that we found after he passed away.
It was eventually translated from the old, Arabic into regular Hebrew, and in it, when he dated the entries for the month of Elul, we noticed that he referred to the month as Elul Rachamim- It's an ancient custom that goes back over 100 years.
Elul is Elul Rachamim. But who makes Elul into Elul Rachamim? We do, by the way, we treat other people.
Have a wonderful month.