Criticism is part of life. It is necessary, and I believe that many times, when you care for somebody, you want to criticize them for their benefit. It is called constructive criticism. In a sense, when you do not like someone, you do not criticize them. We all know that. Our parents taught us that when they criticized us. Friends come and say, “Look, it’s for your benefit,” and so on.
Whether a person takes it or not is totally their choice. It is hard to hear criticism, but we know that it is necessary. It is a normal process that happens in a person’s mind. You see a situation, a certain behavior, something that is happening, and automatically your brain—God made our brain a judge of the situation—decides what to make of it. If you feel that something is wrong and you are close enough to the person, you will share that criticism with them.
Why is it that people do not take criticism easily? Probably because they do not know what is in the mind of the other individual. What goes through their mind is, perhaps, “This person is jealous,” or “This person wants to hurt me,” or “This person is not wishing me well.” That is why they are criticizing what I am doing. It is not easy to take criticism in a good way, and we all know that.
I am telling you this because, in this week’s parasha, the Rambam (Maimonides) learns from the episode of God punishing Moshe with what could be the worst punishment for Moshe Rabbeinu: that he would not go into the land of Israel, based on the way he criticized Bnei Yisrael. We know what Rashi says: it was because Moshe did not talk to the rock; he hit the rock. I am going to go to the Rambam. Maimonides says something different. He says, no: it is because Moshe Rabbeinu went ahead and criticized Bnei Yisrael in a way that they could not receive his criticism. Why? Because he called them “Shim'u na hamorim” (Listen now, you rebels). Hamorim means the rebels. When he calls them rebels, it is over.
The Rambam is teaching us a very big lesson. We will criticize people in life. We will share our opinions with people, and perhaps the more we love them, the more we share. But how we share them, how we package them, could be completely different, which sounds almost ridiculous. You are saying, “If the content is good”—and that is true. If the content is good, you should take it. That is on the side of the person who is receiving the criticism. But for the one giving the criticism, if you love that person and it is really coming from a good place, how you deliver it is going to make the entire difference.
Why? Because if you focus on the downside, you put a label, a title, on the person. You say, “You rebel.” That means automatically that your connection with that person is not a genuinely good connection. The Rambam says that when Moshe Rabbeinu said “rebels,” HaKadosh Baruch Hu realized that this criticism did not come from a good place. It came from a place of anger, from a place of frustration, and there was not going to be any more possibility of reconciliation, of positive connection between the two. Moshe Rabbeinu had had enough because Bnei Yisrael had complained so many times. Therefore, Hashem realized and said, “That’s the end of this relationship here. There’s no way Moshe Rabbeinu is going to continue leading these people,” since he thought so little of them. All this was seen in the way the person criticized.
For all of us, we see things and share our opinions, but how we share them is the key to how they will be received. Sometimes it says more about how we think of the other person and how we think of this criticism than about the criticism itself. I always say to people: between spouses, there are always going to be disagreements, and there will be disagreements with children, too. Just use the right language. Say, “My love” or “My dear son,” say something nice, or even smile. Just doing that changes the whole criticism into a positive experience.
Now I would actually like to advise everyone not to criticize at all. I’m sorry, I’m changing here, because at the end of Nefesh HaChaim, in a book called Etz HaChaim, it says something—I read it: Mitzvah (commandment) to rebuke. It is quoted in the name of Rav Chaim Yehoshua. It is a mitzvah for everyone. However, Rav Chaim Yehoshua, about 250 years ago, said that even in his time, harsh things were not listened to. People cannot take criticism except through sweet and good things. In other words, the way you are going to criticize is by praising the person, saying how great the person is, and so on. Somebody who does not have this nature of sugarcoating and political correctness, which is sometimes necessary, is patur mi-mitzvat hatochacha—completely absolved from his obligation of rebuking others. This is incredible, because if this mitzvah cannot be received, then it does not have to be expressed. Many times, that is the situation. If you assess that your words are not going to be well received, then it is better just to keep silent.