Tochecha - The Mistake

When someone thinks that the purpose of Tochecha is to point out to someone all of his wrongdoings, he is making a huge mistake. This behavior is damaging and is the opposite of Tochecha. Don't allow yourself to be sucked in by someone's public denials to think that he is unaware of what he is doing; he knows exactly where he is falling short. When you insist on pointing out all of his mstakes all you are doing is pouring salt on pre-existing wounds. Even if you have the best intentions, that the person should improve his behavior, your actions are wrong and damaging.
What is needed is to emphasize how good the person is, strengthen his self-image, only then will he find the inner will to pull himself out of the mud. This is not accomplished with words, too many words show that you don't really believe what you are saying.
A person would not go over to a donkey and begin to rebuke it because it isn't allowing another donkey to eat the grass. A donkey is a donkey and there is no hope that it will learn to behave in a more considerate manner towards others. Tochecha comes from the fact that you believe and know that the person has the ability to be different, it comes from your belief in his greatness not your awareness of his deficiencies. It is grasping the good of the person that has not yet been actualized, and is an attempt to open the person to a vision of what he can aspire to. The greatest gift that one can offer is letting another person know how much you believe in them to the extent that you understand that any wrongdoing on his part is not truly who he is. You don't identify the other person with his mistakes.
When a person  identifies himself by his mistakes he begins to give up on ever being good. The primary goal of one's Yetzer Hora is to have the person develop a negative self-image. Once that is accomplished the person stops fighting. When you comes to give Tochecha you aren't meant to be fighting the other person, you are fighting any areas in which he has given up on himself. You have to let him know that the evil does not define him and that you believe in his innate goodness.
דברים תתי"ג

Tochecha - Face to Face with the Truth

There is a common misconception that assumes that most people think that they are good and are in denial of their shortcomings. The truth is the opposite. That which is wrong is very evident both to the person as well as to others. Every person knows the deficiencies of his heart and they cause him great pain. Guilt is rampant within Judaism, more often than not to a much greater degree than is reasonable. It is a destructive emotion which affects a person's self-image, his joi de vivre, his sense of success, and his knowledge of his innate abilities and goodness.
The good parts of a person are generally well hidden. A person may not have awareness and recognition of them and he is unsure if he is good. People who try to tell you how good they are are usually people who need to hear their own self-assurances as a means of trying to get themselves to believe in their own innate goodness. Only people who are truly convinced of their own goodness have the ability to be honest of the places where they are lacking. It is their own sense of security which empowers them not to fear their challenges which they know are only superficial. But when you see a person denying a fault, the denial does not emanate from wickedness, on the contrary, it comes from a deep desire to be good that leaves him frightened of his faults. He is afraid that if he would admit his faults they would define who he is, and he refuses to accept that.
To offer someone Tochecha one must be mature, introspective, and able to see the good in others. He must see the others' good so completely that he is not at all influenced by their shortcomings. He realizes that they are merely superficial and temporary. This is the deep love that is required. Not merely to care about the other, but to see him from a perspective of Chesed that only focuses on the good. Recognizing the good he has a desire to remove the bad from the other, as he knows that it is truly foreign to him and not fit for the person he is.
The primary aim of Tochecha is not to point out where the person is doing wrong, just the opposite, it is pointing out the good in him and emphasizing it. The person receiving the Tochecha must be made aware of the fact that he is good through and through.
This is different than merely praising a person. Praise is generally focused on superficial acts of another person. It celebrates how the inner good of the person manifested itself externally. It is limited in that it does not truly address the entire person, and in that you don't want the recipient of the praise to be filled with hubris when hearing how wonderful he is. Tochecha delves deeply into the potential of the person which is much greater than any good that he has already demonstrated.
דברים תתי"א

Tochecha - Born of Love

טובה תוכחה מגולה מאהבה מסותרת
The deep love which much underlie any Tochecha (rebuke) is not meant to just be hidden in the heart but must be externally visible and define the Tochecha. One might think that Tochecha which is focused on the negative is the opposite of love which only sees good. This Pasuk is telling us the opposite that the point of Tochecha is to find the good in a person, not the bad.
Prior to beginning to offer someone Tochecha one must ensure that he is infused and inspired by love. "What do I really think of this person when I am alone? Do I value him and his capabilities? " These are very critical pre-Tochecha inner discussions. It is vital that a parent prior to offering Tochecha to a child see both the potential of the child as well as the good that is present right now. The parent must see beyond what his child is at the moment and see the purity of his heart, what a beautiful human being he is and the light that will eventually shine from him. If a person cannot see the good within someone else, be it a child or a friend, he has no business starting to offer Tochecha.
Evil, which by its very nature focuses on the superficial, manifests itself in ways that are easy to see. It is easy to recognize and discern evil. The evil within any person is noticed by himself just as easily as others can see it. One must begin with the assumption that most people know their own weaknesses and challenges and they are very pained by them. In contrary to the common misconception that the purpose of Tochecha is to point out to someone shortcomings of which he is unaware, in the vast majority of cases this is completely unnecessary. Not only is the other person aware of his shortcomings, but he is full of despair and pain over their existence.
Furthermore, even is a person denies his shortcomings and responds vigorously with denials to those who point them out, this is only external. Internally he is very aware of his own issues and the pain is so bad that he wants to hide from it. His denials emanate from a desire to avoid this depressing topic. He is so ashamed of the fact that others have become aware of his deficiencies and his self-esteem is taking a huge hit. He is in denial in order to protect his self-respect.
When a person engages in criticism, not only is he mistaken in the assumption that the other person needs to be made aware of his wrongdoing, but he may be causing even more damage. The point of criticism is not to point out weaknesses, it is something much deeper.
דברים תת"ט

Tochecha- The Challenge

My next few posts are based on an essay by HaChalban on Parshas Ha'Azinu about Tochecha, usually translated as "rebuke." However, based on how the Chalban explains the concept I am choosing to eschew the English translation so that we don't lose focus of the full richness of his explanation. CL

Tochecha is rooted in love. It is important to understand this in order to comprehend both the purpose and methodology of successful Tochecha. Superficially Tochecha would appear to be rooted in Din (judgement) and to be focused on the areas in which a person is weak and deficient. However, we see from many Pesukim that this is not the case. כי את אשר יאהב ה' יוכיח, He who God loves he gives Tochecha, is but one such example.

Indeed the fact that Tochecha is aimed at getting someone to change is an expression of Din which is focused on building a person and improving him. Chesed is an act of bestowing and is primarily centered on the one who is giving, in contrast to Din which is focused on the recipient, his needs and his abilities. Any act which is centered on the improvement of the recipient is, by definition, rooted in Din. However, this aspect of Din as it relates to Tochecha is focused only on its superficial manifestation, but, at its root, that which motivates the one giving the Tochecha is a deep love which is expressed in his or her caring for another and a desire to see them at their best.

Tochecha  is Chesed cloaked in Din; Chesed  is the light, Din is the vessel. This is what makes Tochecha so difficult as it requires two opposite traits and it is difficult to balance them in one act. On the one hand the person's heart much be full of love, while at the same time his mouth is focused on critique. By nature, Chesed would say to overlook and forgive, whereas Din demands anger which can overcome the heart and will often drive out any sense of love. Others are so rooted in Chesed that they overlook everything and do not offer Tochecha at all. This is also untenable as there are times when a person is obligated to offer Tochecha for example a parent to a child or a teacher to a student.

The challenge lies in finding the balance between these two traits and uniting them so that love fills the entire person and he only sees good, love and blessing, and then cloak that in Din so that he can offer an effective critique which will inspire an other to improve.

As we continue we will first examine each aspect separately, the Chesed and then the Din.
דברים תת"ז

The True Chossid

אין חסיד אלא המתחסד עם קונו
The Tikkunei Zohar teaches us that the true Chossid is one who is kind to his Creator. Why is this?
One who loves one of God's creations, even if he is full of love towards it, his love is limited as it is is directed to only one part of Creation. To the rest of Creation he has no feelings of love. He is therefore not connected to the light of Chessed (kindness) which permeates all of Creation. One who is connected to the light of Chessed itself feels a love that is deeply essential and is not limited to a particular recipient of that love. One who feels love only towards those he loves, and towards others he feels no love is lacking the essential Chassidus, it is merely something that he experiences now and then towards his children or some other target of his affection.
True Chassidus is intimately connected with the Godly Chessed which permeates all of Creation with no limits. The goodness of Hashem and His mercy extends to all of his creatures. The same is true for all those who have truly connected to Chassidus. Love of Hashem is the root of the love for all.
ה"ו שנ"ו

Extra Credit

Acts of Chassidus (in context Chassidus refers to behaviors that are beyond what one is obligated to do by the Torah and the person is taking them on) depend on the roots of one's own Neshama. Each person is rooted in different aspects of spirituality which are the areas in which he or she is meant to operate. This is why we find that different righteous people emphasized distinctly different areas of Chassidus. Each one sought to add behaviors that were commensurate with his own spiritual inclinations. One whose soul is rooted in Chesed is meant to seek out unique opportunities to perform Chesed. One whose soul is rooted in Malchus should be especially scrupulous in his performance of Mitzvos. In order for Chassidus to be real, a person needs to understand his own spiritual roots so that he does not undertake behaviors of others that are not appropriate for his own spiritual makeup, and will only serve to damage those areas in which he is more connected.
ה"ו שנ"ג

Being Present

The present is what is most important. It is for this reason that the primary name of Hashem is י--ה---ו--ה a name which indicates that He is always in the present.
What does it mean to be in the present? It means to succeed in focusing on the present to the extent that one has no thoughts on anything other than what he is involved with at this moment. The reason we spend so much time thinking about the future and the past is because we are not fully invested in the present. Since we aren't completely immersed in what is occurring now, our energy becomes scattered and we jump to day dreams of the future or reminiscences of the past.
The fact that we are experiencing time, the past and the future, shows how weak is our grasp on the present. If we felt the richness of the present, there would be no room to be feeling anything else. Olam HaBa, the World to Come should not be understood as day after day with no end for all eternity. That isn't eternity, it is past, present and future with no end in sight. Eternity is above any concept of time. It is a state of always being in the present until there is no feeling of any other time, past or future.
We don't mean to say that the past is unimportant. We need to learn from the past, to know where we are coming from and where we are heading. The future is important as we need to use the present to set ourselves on a productive path for the future. But both past and future are tools to direct the present, anything else is memory and fantasy. They are important, but only as a means to the primary, and one cannot allow them to define the present. They need to be used where they are helpful, and pushed away when they limit us.
ח"ת פ"א