No More Mr. Nice Guy

Parshat Kdoshim makes us think twice about how we treat people who are mean to us.

"You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow man as yourself: I am Hashem."

The sages teach that taking a revenge takes the following pattern. One man asks his fellow man to lend him a sickle because his has broken and he needs to harvest his wheat and trim the weeds that threaten his wheat. His friend says no.

A month later the same scenario plays out, just this time, the one who refused needs one himself. His friend says no. Why, he asks himself, would he lend his friend a sickle if his friend didn't lend him one?

The rationale even makes sense. In the business world, there's a new term, "coopetition," companies usually do compete but sometimes cooperate for their mutual benefit.

The thinking makes sense when it comes to the nitty gritty of human relations; Nobel Prize winner, Professor Israel Aumann talks about what he dubs act v. rule rationality, and says that often in life when we see people making what seems on the surface to be irrational decisions, it's really because of a higher evolutionary end they achieve, which he calls rule rationality.  

One example he brings is the ultimatum game (https://ratio.huji.ac.il/publications/rule-rationality-versus-act-rationality), a game where two people who never met and never will sit anonymously in two separate rooms; one's told that he's going to get $100 to decide how to divvy it up with the person in the other room. He'll be able to decide how much money to offer him, BUT the one caveat is that the person in the other room can decide whether or not to refuse the offer. In the example Aumann gives, the one tasked with dividing the money opts to give his counterpart $20. That would leave him with $80, and the potential recipient, $20. The findings: across cultures, currencies, and nationalities, it was found that offers of $20 (or Euro 20 – and previously DM 20) were often rejected, i.e. people opted to go home empty-handed rather than take home a pie of pizza. Why?! They didn't want others to get the better of them. (Ernst Fehr, an Austrian behavioral economist, posits that the behavior is really "altruistic punishment;" I asked Aumann (who corrected my pronunciation of the name, "Fehr") what he thought about that. His answer: "I don't buy it."))

When push comes to shove I think the answer to the dilemma so many of us have is in the previous verse (Vayikra 19:17).

"You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kindred so that you incur no guilt on their account."

The Rambam writes that if someone wrongs you, you absolutely cannot let it slide. You NEED to confront that person so that he doesn't wrong you again. He most certainly will if you don't and so you bear the culpability if you don't apprise him of the slight or insult.

According to the Rambam, the onus is on the offended party. Given that we're not perfect, we need to speak up if someone hurts us, and if we don't we only have ourselves ("so that you incur no guilt on their account") to blame.

At that point, given the Rambam's explanation, were we to confront someone and explain to him or her about the grievance they caused, in my humble opinion, were the person to continue to be hurtful and recalcitrant, then halachically we'd have no obligation whatsoever to perpetuate the egregious behavior. Often, we use the expression, "Strike when the iron is hot," but when it comes to interpersonal relations, it's often best to strike when it's cold, when nerves have calmed, and when ego is least likely to get in the way. When we talk to people when they're least galvanized by righteous fervor, zealousness, or indignation, we can often sway their hearts and thinking to understand us better, not in the heat of the moment.