Kindness and Judgment in a Broken World

Rav Kook describes here the place where many of us find ourselves. We see wickedness, moral confusion, the cheapening of values, violence, materialism, and falsehood, and it truly harms us, undermining what is important to us. Therefore our natural response is anger, at times hatred, and a grasping of the attribute of judgment. The Rav does not negate this place; this pain stems from a deep closeness to the good and from identification with values. And alongside this, one who remains only in the place of rage and judgment remains in a world in which evil defines his agenda, and misses the level of "the supreme righteous" or "the pure righteous," who are not occupied mainly with fighting evil but with increasing good, adding light, deepening faith, and broadening wisdom, even when the world around them is far from this. The deepest moral stance is not measured by how much we hate the darkness, but by how much we are able to add light without being drawn into the darkness itself.

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