G-d asks us to journey through life believing that our fellow is golden—to see people through their strengths rather than their faults. Sadly, we rarely rise to that ideal. More often than not, we define others by their shortcomings.

Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum of Lisa was a renowned scholar whose works are studied to this day. Once, a member of his congregation asked him to determine the precise moment the new moon would appear, and the new month would begin. Unable to calculate it on the spot, the man slandered him throughout the town. Ultimately, the great rabbi was dismissed over this trivial lapse.

This is what it looks like to judge a giant by a minor imperfection. And he was far from the only victim. A student of Rabbi Yehudah Tzvi Berlin once asked his venerated teacher for a blessing that his congregants would never speak ill of him. The rabbi replied, “I can grant you any blessing—but not that one.”

He explained: When Moses sent Joshua with the spies, he added a letter yud to his name, praying that he be spared from their slander against the Holy Land.[1] Yet when he later appointed him leader of the nation, Moses reverted to Joshua’s original name, without the added letter. Why? Because a prayer that people never speak ill of their leaders is, ultimately, a prayer in vain.

And yet, this is not how G-d relates to us. G-d chooses to see us through our strengths, not our failings. As the Torah says, “He does not gaze upon Jacob’s faults” (Numbers 23:21).

Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin once encountered a Midrash stating that G-d is “content with His lot.” He struggled to understand how this could apply to G-d, “Who owns the world and all that is in it” (Psalms 24:1). His teacher, Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, explained:........

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