Emotion is a wonderful gift that the Creator gave to man. Imagine what we would be like without it. Everything would be cold, rational, technical, and dry. Thanks to emotion, we can experience the joy or sorrow of others, and thus identify with them. Emotion also motivates us, and gives meaning to our actions.
But as wonderful as emotion is, it also has its drawbacks. It can be misleading and lead us to make wrong decisions. That's why people are advised not to make decisions under the influence of strong emotions.
One must wait and examine the matter with cold, measured logic, seeing all sides of the picture, and then decide.
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Coercion of love
This issue is also reflected in the halacha, which states that "a witness cannot be made a judge." In other words, someone who was a witness to an act cannot be a judge and judge the person who committed the act. This halacha seems puzzling at first glance - and why wouldn't someone who was a witness to an act and saw exactly what happened be able to judge? But it is precisely his emotional involvement that will prevent him from overturning the rights of the person on trial, and a judge must also be able to see the other side.
Even at Mount Sinai, which we read about in our parsha, we made a decision out of intense emotion. Chazal say that at the time of the giving of the Torah, "the mountain forced itself upon them like a basin." Chassidism explains that this does not mean coercion by force, but rather the opposite – it is a coercion created out of intense love. God showered the Children of Israel with such immense love that it caused them to be drawn to Him with intense love.
Therefore, the declaration "we did and we heard" came from an emotional storm, to the point that it is defined as "coercion" (and this is the virtue of the days of Purim, when the Jews "observed and received" the Torah anew, of their own free will).
These days we are seeing the power of emotional upheaval. When we saw the horrific images of the kidnapped people who were released last Saturday, who look like actual ghetto survivors, we all felt a shock to the depths of our souls. But there were those whose emotional shock led them to say that these cruel enemies must be destroyed to the last of them, and there were those for whom these very sights caused them to cry out that it is necessary to surrender and comply with the enemy's demands, provided that the kidnapped people are released as soon as possible.
Correct disconnection
We all remember how we all felt after the terrible massacre, when we saw the atrocities committed by the Hamas monsters. The emotional storm caused even moderate people to make statements about wiping out all of Gaza to the ground. And now, when we have moved away from that emotional storm, some are talking about ending the war and leaving the Nazi monster on its feet, because their hearts are torn by the terrible pain of the families of the kidnapped.
It is precisely for this reason that the committee headed by Judge Shamgar determined that "a disconnect must be brought about between the families of the captive and the decision-makers at the political level, in order to prevent undue pressure.".
What's wrong with decision-makers meeting with the families and feeling the hell they go through every day? Because the leaders need to consider the good of the entire people, and they can't get carried away by an emotional storm, and it should be the most honest and real.
