Welcome to a SIMHA Emotional Wellness moment. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot tells us of the ruffians that lived in the neighborhood of the great Rebbi Meir Baal HaNess. They caused him much pain and he decided that he could no longer handle it, so he prayed to God that they should die. His wife Bruria overheard his prayers and told him he was making a mistake. She explained that the pasuk says, “Yitamu Chata’im,” which simply means, “let the sinners be abolished.” She said that it doesn't say, “Yitamu Chot’im/let the sinners be abolished,” but rather, “Yitamu Chata’im/let their sins be abolished,” which means we should pray for them to do Teshuva. That's is what they did, and that's why the pasuk says, “When you pray that the sins are abolished, the wicked will be no longer,” because they'll be turned into Sadikim.
The point that we want to bring out, which has to do with black and white thinking, is that we can look at a person as a wicked person, or we can look at somebody as a holy soul that has made some mistakes in his life. This is an important rule in child-rearing, or anytime you criticize someone. When someone tells a lie, you don't say “You’re a liar.” You say, “You told a lie.”
Someone can be a good person and yet tell a lie, and this is true for everything other matter in the world. The rule is, as the Rambam writes, ‘As long as a person believes in the basic 13 principles of our faith, he's part of the Jewish people.
You have to love him. You have to have mercy on him and treat him with all the laws of brotherhood.’
In his words, “Even if he did any sin, whether because of desire, or because his bad nature overtook him, he is still going to have a portion in the world to come. He's a Jew that sinned.”
There’s a famous line from the Gemara that says, “A Jew has sinned, but even though he sinned, he's still a Jew.” We don't separate the two. And that's where the ability to view things in shades of gray, and not as, “all or nothing,” comes in.
Rav Wolbe, in his sefer Alei Shur (vol 1, pg 253) tells a story that he heard from his Rabbi, Rav Yerucham Levovitz, who told it about the Elder of Kelm. Although we’ve previously told this story, it bears repeating. Every Shabbat, the Elder of Kelm’s face would shine. Once, however, his students were surprised to see that although it was Shabbat, his face had the appearance of a typical weekday- the special Shabbat shine was gone. Then, on Motzei Shabbat, after Havdalah, the Elder of Kelm let out a groan and said, “Peretz Smolenskin (a wicked man who had caused a lot of difficulty for the Jewish people) has died. Who can imagine the pain that this soul is going to feel when it goes up to the next world?”
For now, let’s put aside the damage of labeling others and talk about labeling ourselves. It's important to have the ability to look at ourselves, and recognize that we are good people wh make mistakes. There's an important distinction that I once heard, between shame and guilt.
Guilt means I did something wrong. Shame means there's something wrong with me. That's an important difference. When we aren’t able to understand that we can be good people who make mistakes, and that it's not all or nothing, we start getting into what's called toxic shame. We think, “I am not worthy anymore.”
No, you are worthy.
Labeling makes a big difference in how we view things. I once heard, in a course, that one should not refer to somebody as a ‘drug addict,’ but rather, as someone who's suffering with an addiction. He’s a human being that's suffering with an addiction. Similarly, a person is not a schizophrenic; He's someone who's suffering with schizophrenia. There's a person here, who is suffering with something. It doesn't, define who he is. He is a wonderful person and he’s suffering with certain challenges.
All of this has to do with our way of looking at things in our mind. Are we able to view only in black and white, all or nothing, or
are there shades of gray?
Have a wonderful day.