Acharei Mot-Kedoshim
Our parsha instructs us (Vayikra 19:17) that if a fellow Jew has wronged you in any way, for example – insulted you, embarrassed you, betrayed you, harmed you physically, financially, emotionally or in any other way, it is forbidden to hate them.
What constitutes hate, according to the halacha? One or more of three behavioral patterns:
- You do not speak to the person for three days or more
- You seek to cause the person harm
- You are happy at their misfortune
A few examples for clarification are in order:
- This is not speaking to the person for three days or more, not because you are away on vacation and don’t happen to see them, but because when you do see them, you purposely do a U-turn or a detour to avoid having to greet or speak to them.
- You have slaved for the last 15 years establishing a pedicure/manicure business and last week, a new family moved into an apartment building directly opposite yours and had the “chutzpah” to open a competing pedicure/manicure parlor. It is a small neighborhood and, you think, not large enough to support two businesses of that type. The new manicurist has gone round the neighborhood posting flyers on noticeboards and lampposts. When you came home from shopping yesterday, you saw her flyer on your building’s noticeboard. After looking around to see that nobody is watching, you removed her flyer from the board.
- A co-worker in your law firm is always belittling you and making snide remarks to the other people in the office about you behind your back. This morning he accidentally spilt a cup of coffee over his clean suit, 10 minutes before having to appear in court. You think to yourself “Yes! That is karma baby! What goes around comes around.”
If you behave in one or more of the three ways above, you are guilty of the Torah prohibition of hate.
That person chas v’chalilah just got you fired, shamed you in public, informed on you to the IRS, swindled you out of a million dollars, poisoned your dog!!! And you are not allowed to hate them?
Judaism is not like other religions – there is no turning the other cheek. You are allowed to pursue any legitimate recourse stipulated by the Torah for protection/justice/restitution. If someone is trying to hit you, you are allowed to protect yourself. You are allowed to take them to court and seek compensation. But you are not allowed to hate.
If someone has wronged you, the Torah gives the remedy, go to the person and rebuke them “What did I ever do to you that you did this to me?” In the best-case scenario, the person will relent and repent and then you are obliged to forgive them (you may still claim restitution for damages caused to you).
There are also halachic criteria for rebuking:
- The person must be “rebukeable.” If they are mentally unstable or rebuking them just makes them intensify their harm to you, they are considered unrebukable.
- You may only rebuke them if you yourself are not guilty of the same wrongdoing they have done you.
- You may only rebuke if you witnessed the wrongdoing with your own eyes, not by being told about it from a third party.
If you rebuke the person (according to the above criteria) and the person is unrelenting and unrepenting, then and only then are you allowed by the Torah to “hate” them. What does that mean? You are allowed to cut yourself off from them and not speak to them for three days or more (1. above). But you are still not allowed to seek them harm or rejoice in their misfortune (2, 3 above). The Torah allows you to disassociate yourself from them, to “hate” their evil deeds, not hate them as a person, to protect you from getting swallowed up in their evil. If, however, that person ever does teshuvah, you have to forgive them and you are again forbidden to perform 1,2,3 above.
The Torah (Shemot 23:5) takes this one step further. You are walking down the street and you see your best friend walking with his donkey that is straining under the heavy load. On the opposite side of the street, you see your enemy who is loading his donkey, no strain yet on the donkey. The Torah tells us that we must first help our enemy to load his donkey before we help our best friend, even at the expense of causing pain to animals.
The bottom line from all of this is that – the Torah forbids us to hate a fellow Jew – period. In the worst-case scenario, we are allowed to hate – the evil deeds, but not the person and even then, we are commanded to give precedence to our enemy over our best friend – to totally stamp out hatred amongst Am Yisrael.
Am Yisrael is not a nation of hate. Even with our arch enemy, Amalek, the Torah commands us to wipe out their memory, but not to hate them.
What it is about hate that the Torah so despises? What is hate?
Hate is all about anger. When the yetzer hara wants to make a person sin, one of the best weapons in his arsenal is anger. Anger is manifested in two ways – rage and hate. Rage is violent and visible/audible. Hate is violent and surreptitious – it poses under the veneer of civility but is as deadly as rage.
Hate and rage are emotions, perhaps the strongest emotions of all, but they are part of our animalistic nature. We are human, we cannot escape our emotions. When somebody wrongs us, we feel hurt, anger, rage, hate. The Torah does not deny us our emotions, it allows us these emotions, but for no longer than three days. After that we are required to use the Torah to control these emotions. This is what separates Am Yisrael from the other nations – that we try to elevate ourselves above our animalistic nature and conquer our yetzer hara, using the Torah.
Parshat HaShavua Trivia Question: What is “Pigul?” (Vayikra 19:7)
Answer to Last Shiur’s Trivia Question: What is the shortest chapter in the Torah? Vayikra, chapter 12 – only eight verses.