בס''ד
A
man of supreme integrity and beyond moral reproach, Yaakov was surely as far
from suspicion as a person could conceivably be. He had fulfilled every condition that Lovon
had stipulated, even when those provisos were completely unreasonable and
blatantly deceitful. Even when he had
been tricked and taken advantage of.
Even when his virtue resulted in years of his life being stolen from
him. And yet when it came time for him
to leave and when he for once was the one to decide upon the terms of
their agreement, Lovon had the audacity to infer that Yaakov may not be true to
his word! Lovon’s exclamation of “If
only it will be as you say”, is explained by the Gur Aryeh to be an expression
of hope that Yaakov would keep to the agreement. How could he have doubted the rectitude of
one who had proven himself time and again to be a man who exemplified truth and
honesty?
One
of the many imperfections of the human condition is an almost total inability
to see the world through anything but the narrow contours of our own
perspective, a corollary of which is the tendency to see everything and
everyone as a reflection of ourselves, with our faults and our
limitations. Even having seen the
perfection of Yaakov’s ways regardless of the extreme provocation he had been
forced to endure, Lovon could still not see past his own selfishness and
duplicity, and still expected to see it within Yaakov.
This
concept is incredibly important when looking at how we view others and in
trying to perfect our attitude to all around us, irrespective of our natural
feelings towards them. It is widely
known that the negative character traits that we see in others are more often
than not, the ones that we ourselves possess.
But according to what we have said, it may also be the case that when we
see the bad in another person, it is not really a reflection of them at all,
but rather a reflection of ourselves and the negative aspects of our
personality which we presume must also be a part of them. Of course, like all sincere self-analysis,
this requires a certain amount of humility and honesty, but if we achieve this
we will often find so much of our own traits within those we disparage and
perhaps none of them in those we criticise.
The starting point for the way that we see the world will always be
formulated by our own subjectivity, but this does not have to be the only way
we view it. This too is a decision we
make.
*May this Shabbos cleanse our view
from all that is false*
לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם
לרפואה שלימה לשרה יעל בת ברכה אסתר
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