What You Pray For
‘… Acts As Befitting Your People’
(Sanhedrin 85a)
Our sugya derives that a person who curses a fellow Jew is in violation of a Biblical prohibition (Vayikra 19:14 – “Do not curse…”), and he is thereupon punished with 39 lashes. However, someone who curses a sinner is exempt, as the Torah states (Shemos 22:27), “Do not curse a leader in your people.” This excludes a sinner who is not acting like one of your people.
Is one allowed to curse a sinner, or is it that one who does so is merely exempt from lashes? The Minchas Chinuch (mitzvah 231, #4) derives from our sugya that, as a rabbinical injunction, one must not curse a sinner. If so, why does the Gemara classify such cursing as “exempt” instead of “allowed?” Regardless, many poskim permitted cursing a sinner. One of the supports for this opinion is in the well-known liturgical song, which we chant at the conclusion of the reading of Megillas Esther on Purim, Shoshanas Yaakov, in which we pronounce “cursed are all the wicked.”
Also of interest is the sefer L’rei’acha Kamocha, Hilchos Lo Tekallel, in Nir LeDavid, #47, as well as the footnotes on Minchas Chinuch (ibid. #2), citing the Chazon Ish, Rav Shach, and others who prove that there is no prohibition in cursing a sinner.
Calling The Kettle Black
The Chossen Yosef (Kiddushin #296) offers the following novel interpretation – a chiddush that only a virtuous person may curse a sinner whereas a sinner may never curse another sinner. After all, our Sages remarked that one who curses a sinner is exempt because he does not “act befitting your people.” In other words, a sinner is not defined as being on the same level as “your people” who are not sinners and therefore the latter may curse him. On the other hand, one who is a sinner himself is on the same level as his sinning friend and surely may not curse him.
Pray For The Evil To Repent
Though according to most poskim there is no prohibition to curse a sinner, the Midrash Hane’elam (Zohar, Vayeira, p. 105) states: “Rabbi said, ‘A person is forbidden to pray that the evil should die, for if Hashem had removed Terach from the world when he worshiped idols, Avram [Avraham] would not have been born, the tribes of Israel, and King David would not have been born, the Torah would not have been given, and all those tzaddikim and chassidim and prophets would never have existed.’”
The Chafetz Chaim: Remove Sin
The Chafetz Chaim, zt”l, explained at length (Al HaTorah, Vayeitzei) citing the Gemara (Berachos 10a), that King David prayed (Tehillim 104:35) that sin shall be removed from the face of the earth, and that we should pray for sinners to repent and not that they die. After all, when Yaakov heard from his sons that the heavy-handed Egyptian viceroy, whom he did not know was actually Yosef, was subjecting them to extreme hardships, he did not pray that Yosef should die. Had Yaakov done so, he would have unwittingly killed his own son. Thanks to his father’s learned caution, Yosef was saved.
