Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ZL has a wonderful essay on this subject - it can be found here
by Rabbi Avi Billet
At the beginning of the second Aliyah on Shabbos, we will hear one verse read to the tune of Eichah. The verse itself actually begins with that word as Moshe recounts how in the early days of wilderness travel he had difficulty spending the entire day judging the people – איכה אשא לבדי טרחכם ומשאכם וריבכם. How am I to carry your troubles, your burdens, and your strifes by myself? Of course what he references is when the tier-system of judges was created at the beginning of Parshat Yisro (Shemot 18).
R Shimshon Rafael Hirsch quotes the Sifrei who explains that these words indicate “the special difficulties of the office of judge and leader, difficulties resulting from the people’s character: טרחכם describes the quarrelsomeness of the litigants, whereas משאכם describes the people’s tendency to ridicule the leader’s personal doings and omissions. This ridicule could have undermined his authority, if not for the fact that Moshe, in his ענוה, ignored the ridicule entirely.”
Rashi is far more explicit and bleak in his depiction of what Moshe references in this mini-lament. “טרחכם - This teaches us that Israel were troublesome. If one of them would see his adversary winning the case, he’d say ‘I have witnesses to bring… I have proofs to bring… I am adding judges.’” [These are both stall/delay tactics, as well as a form of cheating to turn a ruling through bringing unsubstantiated evidence or stacking the court in your favor – AB] “משאכם teaches us that they were heretics [presumably because they don’t respect the judges – AB]. If Moshe left his tent early they’d say ‘What did the son of Amram see that made him leave? Perhaps he is not calm in his home [ie is having trouble with his family].’ If he left later they’d say, ‘What did the son of Amram see that delayed him? What do you think? Perhaps he was sitting and thinking plans and thoughts against you.’”
Reading through this one wonders if the Israelites in the wilderness could really be so petty, so banal, so seemingly childish (not to insult children!).
One of the more difficult challenges people in a civil society may face is “how to get along with others.” Of course many people get along with others swimmingly – all is good. These are generally happy people who are not prone to fight, and when difficulties come their way they take the high road.
But there are people who are, quite simply, baalei machlokes. They look to ruffle feathers, they look to stoke coals, they look to control things, they look to entrap people in order to destroy reputations.
There is a story told of the Kozhnitzer Maggid, who was known to be a pursuer of peace.
It happened that a terrible fight broke out amongst the Jews living in a city close to Kozhnitz, which caused some kind of “breakaway” in the community. [Note: There are different kinds of so-called breakaways. Some come from a place of need/necessity. Some come from anger and a spirit of meanness. It is obvious that the case near Kozhnitz was of the latter variety.]
The Maggid gathered the leaders of the rabble-rousers, the hotheads of one of the fighting groups, and told them the following:
“There are three cardinal sins in the Torah – such as idolatry, murder, etc… The Torah spells out the devastating punishments for these sins. But there is never a warning in the Torah to separate ourselves from those who commit these terrible sins. Only one time do we find a warning in the Torah to, ‘Separate from this group of people,’ and that is specifically when it comes to the story of Korach and his congregation. All they wanted to do, as Onkelos translates, is to make a fight, to stoke the coals of machlokes. People who want to foment machlokes (fights) in the community – from them we are warned and obligated to separate.”
With Tisha B’Av beginning Saturday night, we are left to ask ourselves what would it take for this day of mourning, as our Sages tell us, to be turned into a day of happiness, a holiday?
We don’t live in a perfect world. People will not agree on everything. But would it be possible to try to work things out? Can civil conversations have a middle-ground meeting point? If not, can the two sides find their way to arbitration? Perhaps they can aim to resolve the dispute in a Bet Din, where the dictum of Pirkei Avos (1:8) will prevail – Yehuda ben Tabai said ‘when there are litigants in front of you, they should both be viewed as רשעים (hard to translate in this context). And when they depart from you, they should both be viewed as correct when they have accepted the judgment.’
While there are people who will readily go to a Bet Din to resolve certain disputes, there are others who are not comfortable with a Bet Din – ANY Bet Din – and will ignore invitations to Bet Din simply claiming that they don’t trust the Bet Din or the Dayanim on the Bet Din. This is one of the reasons Rashi referred to the Bnei Yisrael as אפיקורסין. If the Judges are not respected, then our system for resolving disputes is meaningless. [Judges MUST recuse themselves if they personally know a litigant]
Who is the baal machlokes that the Kozhnitzer Maggid spoke of? Those who pick fights? Or those who refuse to have a neutral party help resolve it? It is anyone’s guess as to who “started it.” But when it comes time to end it, either a mutual agreement needs to be reached, or arbitration through a Bet Din.
The cynicism Rashi depicts in the mouths of the Israelites who were so judgmental of Moshe Rabbenu is as old as time itself. All peoples have cynics, and all peoples have those who feel they are above the law, better than the law, smarter than the judges, or know very well that the dispute is not one for a Bet Din to handle. One hopes that the Bet Din as a collective group is smart enough to be able to tell the disputants whether a case is Bet-Din worthy.
But the real goal here – and here is the Tisha B’Av lament – is that often enough even disputes can’t be resolved civilly. Some people would rather ignore (if both sides prefer to ignore it I suppose that’s better than having it fester), or have them drag on indefinitely with one side feeling unresolved and the other side being either indifferent or not caring at all. Sometimes an aggrieved side feels the other side can never do enough to make things better. Sometimes a person who feels aggrieved is actually the baal machlokes. There isn’t a real playbook – as in every dispute, each side feels they are right, while the closest thing to the truth can only be brought out by a third party, assuming the two sides both want resolution (some people are it in for the fight and don’t want resolution). Sometimes through pursuing a fight when in the wrong (again why an objective third party might determine who is “more wrong”), a person brings all kinds of difficulty on oneself which is also not easily reconciled. It’s anyone’s call as to who is the baal machlokes (friends of both parties will be supportive to tell each side “you’re right!”), but when one side says “Let’s end this” in a manner that is far from compromise and does not address what is at the heart of a dispute, that person is not pursuing Shalom in the right kind of way. The Kozhnitzer Maggid might similarly call that person a Korach as well, for pushing in a way that doesn’t actually resolve the conflict.
If we are objectively the cause of the torment a person is going through (which sometimes takes a long look in the mirror to see which role we are playing), we are doing the same thing that contributed to the destruction of the Bet HaMikdash, which led to our 2 millennia-long exile. If one party feels tormented but hasn’t been dealt with in an evil way, one must wonder if the person in question is paranoid – which would also be for an objective third party to determine.
May we be blessed to seek out, create, and find Shalom in our ranks – even and especially when we’ve done properly in seeking conflict-resolution.
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