Don't judge people. Don't ever judge anybody. The minute you judge, you become naive because you think you know. The whole point of our Torah, the reason why we pray every day and learn every day and have a mezuzah (doorpost scroll) on our door and a fence on our porch, the reason why we eat kosher (permitted under Jewish dietary law), the reason why we keep Shabbat, the reason why we wear tefillin (phylacteries), the reason why we have Kibbud Av Va'em (honoring father and mother) and can't steal and can't rob and can't hurt, the reason why we have all these rules, is for one reason: to put us in a humble state, to put us out of being obsessed with ourselves and instead be obsessed and focused on our soul.
This concept, the battle between the ashes and the dirt, with the Tumah of the body, this battle of the Parah Adumah (red heifer) against the impurity it's battling, is the battle of the entire Torah. Every single mitzvah (commandment) in the Torah, every single one of the 613, is all about you waging this war, winning this battle, and waging and fighting this fight. It's why every morning we make a Beracha (blessing), not just Shelo Asani Goy, that you didn't make us a gentile, but Shelo Asani Eved: you didn't make me a slave. Shelo Asani Eved doesn't mean a slave to some slave owner in the 1850s. Shelo Asani Eved means, Hashem, you didn't make me a slave to my body. You gave me the Torah, with the opportunity not to be a slave, with the opportunity not to be a slave to myself. You give me mitzvot. You give me life experiences that humble me, that force me to see properly. And that's the world we're in.
So when you look at your son-in-law next time, or you look at your brother-in-law, or you look at a friend, or you look at a neighbor, and you're like, “Oh, they're horrible people.” You ever had a meeting and said, “They're horrible”? I hope you don't say it about your son-in-law, but others do. They're horrible people. If you say that phrase, “They're horrible people,” you don't understand people. They are the best. If you say that phrase about someone, you don't understand them. No one's horrible. Most people you interact with are not horrible. And most people you interact with are not the best. They're winning more than they're losing. But they lose sometimes. And the other ones might be losing more than they're winning. But they win sometimes. And the only way you could understand people is if you look at people and see a struggle, and see a battle. A battle that started on the first day of creation. And Hashem gave us an opportunity to win. He said, “Just don't eat from the tree.” But we ate from the tree, and so because of that we lost for years more than we won. And then Hashem said, “I'm giving you the Torah. I'm giving you again an opportunity to win.” But we committed the sin of the Egel (Golden Calf), and again we started to lose and morph in, and we struggle as Jews between winning and losing and losing and winning. And that's why every mitzvah is a chance to win, and every Aveirah (transgression) is a chance to lose, and every mitzvah opportunity, every test you're given, is a chance to win, a chance for the body to overcome, a chance for you to achieve that greatness.
But if you don't understand the struggle in yourself, you don't understand yourself. If you don't understand the struggle in others, you don't understand others. See, the problem is when you see people, you see their faces. And on most people's faces, you can't see the battle. You might see a smile, you might see a frown. You don't see what's really the battle that's happening inside of their soul. On most people, you can't see it. So you think it's not there. And you think they just did something bad or they just did something good. No, they're struggling. They're trying. They're doing their best. They're waging the war. The war that, at the end of the day, is never finished until a person leaves this earth and their soul leaves their body.
Zot Chukat HaTorah (This is the statute of the Torah), this concept of Parah Adumah, where the ashes have to overcome the power and the Tumah and the impurity of the body, is the concept that the entire Torah is built on. The Parah Adumah—the humility of its ashes—has to overcome the temptation that was the Egel. The mother has to clean the mess of the child. And this concept is not an ancient one. It's not one that was only relevant a hundred years, a thousand years, two thousand years ago, when there were Batei Mikdash (Holy Temples) and Mishkan (Tabernacle). This concept is relevant the minute you leave this building.