Achrei-Mos/Kedoshim

The Posuk says בצדק תשפוט עמיתך , with righteousness you shall judge your friend. Rashi says this means that one should judge his friend favorably. Rashi on the gemara in שבועות says that it means if you see someone doing something that you could interpret for good or for bad, you should interpret it for good & not suspect them of bad. Oftentimes when we see people doing things, we don't judge them favorably on the grounds that we see exactly what they're doing & feel there is no way they could be doing the right thing. However let's say that the person who was doing this was one's father or sister. Wouldn't we try to find some way to justify what they were doing? ר' דב יפה says it's similar to one who loses something very valuable. First he searches in all the places where it would normally be, then he'll even check in places where there's no reason for it to be. If he still doesn't find it he'll go back & check again even though he already checked, in the hopes that maybe he didn't check well the first time. So too over here we have to search for a way to judge the person favorably. It's said over about ר' אריה לוין that he always judged people favorably, even when it seemed far fetched, because of the following incident that happened to him. He was at the funeral of ר' אלעזר ריבלין who had a very close friend ר' שמואל קוק with whom he had worked with & been close friends for over thirty years. Suddenly at the start of the levaya ר' שמואל קוק left & went to a nearby store to buy a flowerpot. ר' אריה לוין thought to himself, how does a good friend do that? He couldn't find a better time to buy a flowerpot? After the lavaya ר' אריה לוין went over to him and said, I don't understand. You guys were like brothers. How do you leave the funeral to buy a flowerpot? ר' שמואל answered that the doctors had said that for contamination reasons, all of ר' אלעזר 's possessions had to be burned. Included in his possessions were his teffilin. I pleaded with the doctors with all my heart to let me have the teffilin so that they wouldn't be burnt. Finally, the doctor said that if I bring him a flowerpot by twelve o'clock he will put them in there & then I could bury them & they wouldn't be burnt. So you see, I had no choice. After that said ר אריה לוין, I took upon myself that no matter what a situation looks like, to judge favorably. The בעש"ט writes that when נתן הנביא reprimanded דוד המלך on the incident with בת שבע, he began with a story of two men - one rich & one poor. The only thing the poor man owned was one small sheep. One day the rich man stole the poor man's sheep. When דוד המלך heard that he was infuriated & said, "Let the man who did this die!" Then the prophet told him that this was just a mashal & he, דוד, was the rich man. דוד המלך had passed judgment on himself. This is how we are judged too. When we are to be judged on a sin that we did, we are shown someone else doing that same sin albeit in a different fashion. When we're all up in arms, saying how a person who does that deserves to be punished, we're really passing judgment on ourselves. We need to learn from here to always give the benefit of the doubt & judge people how you yourself would want to be judged, for you never know you might just be judging yourself!