אלה הדברים אשר דבר משה אל כל ישראל בעבר הירדן במדבר בערבה מול סוף בין פארן ובין תפל ולבן וחצרת ודי זהב.” (דברים א’,א’)
רש”י: “אלה הדברים – לפי שהן דברי תוכחות ומנה כאן כל המקומות שהכעיסו לפני המקום בהן, לפיכך סתם את הדברים והזכירם ברמז מפני כבודן של ישראל
אל כל ישראל – אילו הוכיח מקצתן, היו אלו שבשוק אומרים, אתם הייתם שומעים מבן עמרם ולא השיבותם דבר מכך וכך, אילו היינו שם היינו משיבים אותו, לכך כנסם כולם ואמר להם הרי כולכם כאן כל מי שיש לו תשובה ישיב
Rashi: “These are the words – Because these are words of rebuke, and he (Moshe) enumerated here all the places where they caused anger before the Omnipresent, he therefore spoke in vague terms and mentioned them (only) in allusion for the honor of Yisroel.”
“To all of Yisroel – If he would have rebuked only some of them, those who had been in the marketplace would have said, ‘You heard from the son of Amram, and did not answer him such and such; if we were there, we would have answered him.’ Therefore, (Moshe) gathered all of them, and said to them ‘You are all here, anyone who has a defense should say it.”
Many of us shy away from giving tochecha—rebuke—because it makes us feel awkward and uncomfortable, perhaps hypocritical. All the more so because tochecha seems to be a rather “risky” endeavor. Rashi writes that Yaakov Avinu waited tens of years, until immediately prior to his death, to rebuke Reuven. Why? He explains, “(Yaakov said) Reuven my son, I will tell you why I did not rebuke you all these years, so that you would not leave me and go and attach yourself to my brother Eisav.” (Pasuk ג’) Even though it was none other than Yaakov Avinu himself who would be giving the tochecha, and even though Reuven certainly knew how to accept rebuke, still Yaakov was wary that Reuven would leave him for Eisav! Not only that, but Reuven had already acknowledged his mistake. (Rashi Bereishis, 37:29) The implication is that tochecha is inherently dangerous, whether it is delivered properly or not, and regardless of who is involved.
Still, there is no escaping that tochecha is a mitzvah, and at times necessary. How can we give tochecha to others in a way that minimizes the “risk” of pushing them away?
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The Ramban (Sefer Hamitzvos) writes that when an army lays siege to a city, there is a mitzvah to leave a route open for the enemy to flee. One of the reasons, he writes, is to obtain a practical benefit: “in order that they should flee, and not strengthen themselves against us.” (See also Meshech Chochma Matos 31:7) When surrounded on all sides, an army will often summon all its remaining strength and fight valiantly. It is therefore wiser to leave a route open for the enemy to flee.
Likewise with tochecha, if a person feels threatened, “trapped”, he will resist rebuke in any way possible. But when he feels that there is a “way out”, he is more likely to consider what is being said. Thus Moshe here rebuked Klal Yisroel in “vague terms” and “allusion”; he did not attempt to overwhelm them.
That being said, if we are overly accommodating in our rebuke, very likely it will have no effect at all. We do not want to make it too easy for our words to be ignored. The word tochecha actually means to prove or establish, as in “הוכחה”. So Moshe continued, “You are all present here, anyone who has a defense should say it.” Even though his rebuke was vague and not overly threatening, he also did not allow them to simply shrug him off: anyone who has a defense should say it. The art of rebuke is to make the person confront the truth without his feeling trapped.
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There is an additional dimension here. Rashi writes that by not mentioning Klal Yisroel’s sins explicitly, Moshe Rabbeinu was maintaining “the honor of Yisroel”. This was not simply a matter of keeping things “hush hush” – everyone knew what he was referring to. But when tochecha is given in a way that does not make the person feel cornered and forced, then the person understands that he has more of a role to play than simply to submit to his rebuker. He has space to think and evaluate for himself, and he can choose to change. He can take pride in the fact that he is also searching out the truth and trying to improve. With such an approach, the listener will feel better about himself and be more open to listening, and we can feel more comfortable because we are not attacking or belittling him.