Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “Self-examination is like seeing with only one eye.”

Human beings have two eyes, not because two eyes necessarily see better than one, but because each sees from a slightly different angle.

Only thus is it possible to perceive distances and sizes:

Self-examination is like seeing with only one eye.

It doesn’t really matter whether one looks at oneself from the ground up, seeing oneself as greater than one actually is, or from a the top downward, seeing oneself as smaller than one actually is.

In either case, the view is distorted.

Only the Supreme Judge, the Judge of the entire universe, is “the God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed” (I Samuel 2:3).

He can see everything from above, from below and from within, so only He can be a “sole judge” (Avot 4:8), while human beings – whoever they may be – cannot.

A human can see things from only one viewpoint: his own.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz