A way to attain peace is to judge your fellow man favorably and give him the benefit of the doubt.
Once, in a yeshiva, the gabai called up a wealthy person for maftir. People started whispering, “Why did the gabai give maftir to the wealthy person? There's a chasan in the beis medresh, and maftir belongs to the chasan! Furthermore, this chasan is an orphan! The gabai shouldn’t have slighted him by giving him a regular aliyah.”
The chasan heard their hushed conversation and clarified the matter. “I asked the gabai not to give me maftir because the haftarah is long, and I'm shy to recite it.”
Had the chasan remained silent, people would have judged the gabai wrongly. They would have said that his desire to flatter the wealthy man caused him to slight the chasan.
We must train ourselves to judge our fellow man favorably, especially since our first assumptions are often wrong.
Two neighbors didn’t get along well. They didn't fight, but their conversations were always tense when they met. But then something happened that could have turned this cold relationship into an outright fight. One of the neighbors told his Rav, “My neighbor's son is getting married, and they placed an empty envelope in my mailbox! It is obvious that they are hinting that they don’t want me to come to the chasunah. And it isn't right. I'm a neighbor, after all. If that's how he wants it, I will stop pretending to like him. I will create a real machlokes...”
The Rav replied, “You must judge your neighbor favorably. Perhaps he forgot to put the invitation into the envelope.”
The man replied, “Did you ever receive an invitation envelope with nothing inside?”
The Rav admitted that it never happened to him. “Nevertheless, you are obligated to judge him favorably.”
Later that day, this man received an invitation in the mail to some other chasunah. He opened the envelope, and lo and behold, there was no invitation inside! Hashem showed him that sometimes people forget to place the invitation inside, and he should judge his neighbor favorably. He saved the envelope as a remembrance to judge people favorably.
There was a kollel yungerman who was marrying off a child and asked his friends in the kollel to help him with the large expenses. They all gave him what they could because they knew he was poor. But when he handed out the wedding invitations, they discovered that the chasunah would be in the large Wagshall Hall, one of the luxurious halls in Bnei Brak. Now, his fellow kollel members were upset with him. "Is that why he took our money to make the chasunah in an expensive hall? Why can't he make his chasunah in a regular hall, like we do?" But they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Shortly after this incident, a generous donor sent money to the kollel, and those in need had a right to come forward to receive a bonus. The man said, “Now that I’m making a chasunah, I certainly need this bonus.” But the person in charge of the distribution refused to give him money.
“Why am I less eligible than anyone else? Now that I am making a chasunah, I probably need the money more than others!”
The person in charge replied, "You have plenty of money. You don't need this bonus. How else can you make a chasunah in Wagshall’s large hall?”
The yungerman replied, “If I could tell you why, you would understand. But I can’t tell you.” And he left.
Some yungerleit heard this exchange, and they judged this man wrongly. They didn’t believe he had a valid explanation for spending so much money on the hall.
The following day, this kollel yungerman came to kollel and said to the person in charge of the distribution and to the other yungerleit, “I wasn’t able to tell you yesterday, but I can tell you now. I don't have money, so I wanted to make the chasunah in Wagshall’s small hall. I spoke with the manager of the hall to book the small hall. The manager asked me who my father was, and I told him. He exclaimed, 'Your father saved my life in the Holocaust! I searched for him for years so I could repay him.' The manager requested that I make the chasunah in the large hall, and he said he would give it to me for free, on condition that I don’t tell anyone. Yesterday, I told him I'm losing money and my respect in the kollel due to this secret, so he allowed me to tell the story.”
The entire kollel was ashamed that they suspected him. They learned to judge their fellow man favorably.
The following story is an example of people's tendency to judge people negatively, when often it is just an imagination. A man needing money was walking to the home of a wealthy person he knew to ask for help. As he walked, he told himself, "I know he won't give me the money. He'll send me out emptyhanded." He then rebuked himself for thinking so negatively about his fellow man. He told himself, "Why do you think so negatively? I did him a lot of favors in the past, and he owes me hakoras hatov. He probably will do a favor and lend me the money." Then he told himself, "No, he certainly won't lend me the money. He will come up with some excuse and get out of it. And it is such a chutzpah! What type of friend is he? After all I did for him, he throws me out without giving a penny." He carried these thoughts in his mind as he walked to his friend's home, but they were just imaginations. He didn't know whether his friend would help him or not.
When the friend opened the door, he blurted out, "I don't want your favors or your loan. Don't lend me the money. I don't want to know you ever again. Goodbye!" and slammed the door shut, leaving his wealthy friend quite bewildered.
Similarly, many machlokos are based on misunderstandings and assumptions that aren't real. When you judge your fellow man favorably, many arguments will fall away.
