Share the blame

When a person sins, does that decision come from within, or could external circumstances have caused the person to sin? Blaming the decision on one’s surroundings seems like a copout. Shouldn’t a person take responsibility for their actions? No matter where they are, the Talmud tells us that “a person is always responsible” for their own behavior, even while asleep. If that is the case, how can we even entertain the idea of blaming a sin on something else, and not taking responsibility?

We see in this week’s Torah portion, Devarim, when Moses recounted the stops that the Jews made on their way to the Promised Land, instead of calling the locations by their names, he gave them nicknames. For example, he called the place where the Jews sinned by building the Golden Calf, “Too-much gold.”

Moses, in his lifelong pursuit of finding merit in the Jewish people, looked to blame their wrongful behavior on an external reality: They simply had way too much gold on their hands. If they would not have had the gold, then the temptation to make an idol would simply not have been there.

This is not enough justification for the Jews’ sin; they must know that what they did was wrong. What was their motivation, what caused them to make such a dramatic collective mistake? They could not blame it on the abundance of gold. But Moses could, and did.

The lesson for us is clear. When looking at our own faults, we should not try to justify and gloss over them, but rather regret them and repair our ways. However, when we look at others’ behaviors, we should look at every possible scenario to see if perhaps there is some legitimate reason why they have erred. Even if the reason is a bit far-fetched, it’s better to find a way for us to look at them favorably, than to look negatively at them.?See someone who errs from a positive perspective; perhaps there is “something” that caused them to make this mistake.

Shabbat Shalom??