January 2006 Turning Things Inside Out By Rabbi Alvin Kass One of the perversities which plagues modern man is the tendency to turn things inside out, thereby making them appear the opposite of what they really are. Thus, we are told that a kind, generous and charitable man is really engaging in all this public-spirited behavior to satisfy his ego or to compensate for certain psychological inadequacies. On the other hand, we are informed that a lying deceitful criminal is actually a "good guy" if you take the trouble to penetrate his exterior. The result is that the good is made into something bad and the bad is made into something good. I certainly don't intend to deny that there is more to a person than what is to be learned by observing his external behavior. Discovering underlying motives and purposes surely gives us a more complete picture of an individual in the same sense that an X-ray gives us an additional dimension of information about a human being that we would otherwise not possess. However, no one would suggest that the x-ray is the true man while the physical being in front of us is to be discounted as an illusion of no value in helping us to understand the authentic essence of the person. There is something vulgar in the attempt to make all people equal by creating the impression that there is no significant difference between the inner and outer man. The psychologist and the psychoanalyst may be right in showing that at the root of all behavior lies a selfish motive, so that all human beings are essentially egotistical. But it still makes all the difference in the world whether our egotism leads us to rob, steal, and exploit others, or whether it leads us to build hospitals, museums, or synagogues. It reminds me of the man who once said that all of life is a dream. That may be so, but it doesn't remove from us the necessity of making distinctions between what we do when we are sleeping in bed at night and what we do when we are awake. Even if it's all a dream, some of our activities are more dreamlike than others. Likewise, all behavior may be selfish, but some selfish behavior is socially useful and some is socially destructive. The former deserves praise and adulation, the latter deserves blame and condemnation. Judaism always taught: Lo Hamidrash haikar, elah hamaseh - it is not talk which is primary but deeds. God does not account our evil thoughts as if they were deeds. It is what we do that counts. By all means, let's learn and know about the whole man, but let us not forget that it's the actions that are of preeminent significance. We judge a man by what he does, not by the alleged state of his soul.