You should consider every person a robber and honor him the way you honor Rabban Gamliel. (Derech Eretz Rabbah, chapter 5)

The wording is slightly different in Kallah Rabati chapter 9:

You should suspect every person of being a robber.

Kallah Rabati continues: Is this true?  Doesn’t the Mishna (Avos 2:4) say,”Don’t judge your friend until you have arrived at his place,” i.e. until you understand him well?  This is not a contradiction.  Here [in Kallah Rabati] it refers to someone whom you don’t know.  Here [in Avos] it refers to someone whom you do know.  Rava said, “Here [in Kallah Rabati] it says ‘every person,’ [there, in Avos] it says, ‘your friend,’ so you see that if he is your friend you shouldn’t suspect him.”

[The Mishna disputes Rava and says] “but it says ‘every person.’”  Doesn’t this include your friend [counter to what it says in Avos]!  Apparently this one [the Mishna in Avos] holds one way and [our Mishna] holds another way.

According to the second pshat in the Meiri on Avos, there is no contradiction.  We assume that the expression al tadin es cha’veircha ad she’tagea limkomo means not to judge him unfavorably.  The Meiri writes that a few of his teachers explained this Mishna as follows: if you see a stranger in your city and he appears well-groomed, sophisticated, and with honorable character traits, don’t judge him as being the kind of a person he appears to be until you have gone to the place where he lives and see how he conducts himself...  Many lowly, coarse people show their cloven hoofs when in a different environment to make themselves look like they are someone that they are not.  This means we should not judge him favorably!

However we resolve the apparent contradiction between the Kallah Rabati and the Mishna in Avos, it is clear that in certain circumstances the concept of kabdayhu v’chashdayhu¹ should be applied.

Parents, though often loathe to admit it, are sometimes choshaid their children.  Young children sometimes make up stories.  Teenagers sometimes lie.

So kabdayhu v’chashdayhu makes sense but we are uncomfortable with it.

What can we do? 

Find out when we should trust each person in our lives and when not.

How do we do that?  Get to know them better, better than you think you do.

The conviction that we know others better than they know us - and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa) - leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. The same convictions can make us reluctant to take advice from others who cannot know our private thoughts, feelings, interpretations of events, or motives, but all too willing to give advice to others based on our views of their past behavior, without adequate attention to their thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives. Indeed, the biases documented here may create a barrier to the type of exchanges of information, and especially to the type of careful and respectful listening, that can go a long way to attenuating the feelings of frustration and resentment that accompany interpersonal and intergroup conflict.

(“You Don’t Know Me, But I Know You: The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 4 (2001): 639-56, APA PsychNET)

Even when you think you really know someone, perhaps your spouse or your child, you are still left with the need to trust because your knowledge can never be complete.  And trust can be hard.

Trust involves the juxtaposition of people’s loftiest hopes and aspirations with their deepest worries and fears.

(Simpson JA. Psychological foundations of trust. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2007;16:264–268.)

“Deepest fears and worries” about what?  Betrayal.  Only someone you trust can betray you.

How do you decide between kabdayhu v’chashdayhu and b’tzedek tishpote amisecha (Vayikra 19:15)?  Here’s a thought on that subject:

To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society.  Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic.  But the alternative – to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.  (Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell, 2019, pages 342-343)

So we are dan l’kaf zchus, we default to truth.

What does default to truth mean? It is the theory that we presume others to be honest until there is sufficient evidence that leads us to believe they are being deceitful, until there is a high enough level of doubt.  Ignoring that evidence can be dangerous.

Most of us, however often or rarely, struggle with doubt.  We doubt strangers, we doubt colleagues, we doubt people close to us, and we doubt ourselves.  Don’t ignore doubt, and don’t make decisions based on it.  When you’re not sure of someone, ask them for clarity.

There is no joy in the world like the gaining clarity (lit. loosening) of doubts. (Metzudas David on Mishlei 15:30)

Be honest when you doubt your children.  Accept the reality that they are not perfect and remind them that you love them as they are and want to help them to do better.

¹The well known expression, kabdayhu v’chashdayhu, is not found in shas or medrash.  According to Otzar Divrei Chachamim u’Pisgamay-hem, it is: An expression common among scholars, based on Kallah Rabati chapter 9. (Dvir Company, Ltd., 1972, entry: Kabdayhu v’chashdayhu, page 289)

Rabbi Ackerman is the author of Confident Parents, Competent Children, in Four Seconds at a Time

Available at bookstores and on Amazon.

He can be reached at 718-344-6575