A man was riding the subway, trying to mind his own business and read his newspaper, when a father with several children boarded the train, relates Steven Covey in his best seller, “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.” The kids were rowdy and the father was doing nothing to stop their misbehavior. After a few minutes, the fellow reading the paper let his displeasure be known and yelled at the father: “Can’t you control your children?”

The father looked up at the man and asked for forgiveness, saying, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.”

Needless to say, the man slunk back quietly to his seat, realizing that there was a whole lot more to the story than met the eye.


There’s a well worn acronym out there these days: MGI—Most Generous Interpretation. It is essentially a modern term to describe the ancient wisdom of our sages, “Judge everyone to the side of merit.”1

There is a famous story in the Talmud2 that highlights this challenge.

The year the High Priest Shimon Hatzadik, Simeon the Righteous, passed away, he told those in attendance on Yom Kippur that that year would be his last. When they asked him to explain himself, he answered, “Every year when I enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, the image of an older man dressed in white with white headgear accompanies me in and out. This year, I was accompanied by the image of an old man in dark clothing and headgear when I entered, but when I left the Holy of Holies he did not exit with me.”

He understood this to mean that he was not going to survive the year. The classic commentary interprets this to mean that the “old man” is a euphemism for the Divine Presence, and since white represents life and black represents death, this was an indication of his impending death.

Indeed, later that month, just after Sukkot, he fell ill and passed away seven days later.

But how did he know that man in black indicated his imminent death? It could have symbolized that it would be a dark year for the Jewish People, or some other explanation.

Rabbi J.B. Soleveitchik offers a novel interpretation: What Shimon Hatzadik saw was less about something that was happening to him and more about something he was doing.

When he said, “I normally see white,” he was saying, “As the representative of the Jewish People, usually when I look at the people I see their ‘whiteness.’ I’m able to judge them favorably. And when the ‘presence dressed in white’ exited with me, I knew I had been granted another year of life and leadership.

“This year, I only saw black. I lost my ability to judge favorably. I was no longer able to see the MGI—Most Generous Interpretation. It is clear to me that I am no longer worthy of my post.”

We all have elements of Shimon Hatzadik inside us, and we all have the ability to look at every situation favorably or not. The very awareness that we can choose how to look at a situation, or determine what a conversation means, makes us intentional beings. We get to choose how we perceive and judge a situation. Sure, we may default to something negative, but we can instantly change that using our MGI tools and find a more generous interpretation.