Do Not Hate
Your Brother In Your Heart(c)
Parashat
Kedoshim, 2014/5774
By Rabbi
David Baum
A teacher told
me an interesting story this week. In her class, there was an Israeli child who was making
fun of an African American boy in her class. The Israeli child kept calling him “poop
skin” and laughing at him. The teacher took the boy aside and asked him why he
is calling this child names based on his skin color. The child replied: “who cares if I make fun of him, he’s
not one of us!”
It was at
that moment that the teacher went to her desk, took out a ruler, and brought it
to him. As she showed
it to him, she asked him one question: “How does this make you feel?”
His face
changed immediately – gone was the care free smile and he became angry: “I
think it’s terrible - I don't like it.”
What made
this boy react this way? The ruler was something the teacher keeps in her drawer,
something she found in her class room years ago. On the rule was a picture of a face on
it…covered with a swastika.
The teacher
told him – I could have thrown this ruler away when I found it, but I keep to
remind me of something – if you don’t like being treated in a hateful way, then
don’t do it to others.
It seemed to
me like a modern Hillel and Shammai story! In a famous story in the Talmud, a non-Jew
comes to Shammai and asks him, “Take me on as a student for conversion, but on
one condition, that you teach me the entire Torah on one foot” Shammai becomes
incensed and actually chases the man away with a rod. The non-Jew comes before Hillel and
asks the same thing, and Hillel says, “What is hateful to you, do not do unto
your fellow man. This is the
entire Torah, all of the rest is commentary, now go and study it.”
Why was
Shammai so angry? Maybe because
the question can seem like an insult. We cannot read emotions through words, so I
wondered: what if the
non-Jew was demeaning Judaism? It makes sense doesn’t it? As we know, we have libraries of study,
and even our Torah is five books long! How can one possibly summarize it a couple of
minutes? It belittles
the countless hours of study that a Rabbi spends in his (or her) life time!
With this in
mind, Hillel’s response because even more interesting.
He tells the
man – do you want to insult others, make unreasonable demands of them, and
embarrass them?
That’s not
what it means to be a Jew – don’t hate others – it’s that simple – don’t let
hate into your heart. If you cannot
understand this, than the conversation must end here.
It got me
thinking about basic ethics – Judaism does a great job of teaching us what
actions we should take – but what about how we should feel in our hearts?
We
finally arrive at the heart of Leviticus, parashat Kedoshim, which contains the holiness code. "You
shall be holy, for I the Lord God am holy." (Leviticus 19:2)
Much of this section deals with ethical behavior. Do not steal or deal
deceitfully. Do not defraud your fellow. Pay workers on time.
Do not insult the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind. Do not
hate your fellow. Do not take vengeance. At then, at the heart of
this section is the Golden Rule - love your fellow as yourself.
This is a
very famous line that most Jews can recite in Hebrew by heart; this famous
line, which Rabbi Akiva declared as the greatest principle of the Torah (k'lal gadol ba-torah, Nedarim 9:4)– V’avahta L’Re’echa KaMocha,–
but I am fascinated by what immediately precedes this mention of love – hate.
“Lo Tisnah at achicha b’levavcha – Do
not hate your brother in your heart.” Leviticus 19:17
What exactly
does this mean?
Ramban
(Nachmonides – a famous Medieval commentator) gives us some insight when he wrote– “for people who hate
have a tendency to conceal their hatred in their heart: ‘An enemy dissembles with his speech,
inwardly he harbors deceit’ Proverbs 26:24. Our text is not saying that it is all right to
hate openly; it is prohibiting the more common thing.” (Here, the Ramban is commenting on what
one may think – that it is ok to hate someone out in the open, but not in the
heart, but he says all hatred is prohibited, but especially in the heart which
is the most common form of hatred).
And it’s true
– when we look back at this story that I told, do we think that the child’s feelings
towards people of color began when he first uttered those words?
Sun Zsu
famously said in his book, the Art of War: “Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.”
Our rabbis
often talk about our two selves – the yetzer harah and the yetzer hatov, the
good inclination, and the bad – they battle each other, and where does this
battle begin? In our
hearts, and it ends when the mouth is opened, because, as we know, words can
never be taken back.
As Jews, we
have become used to being hated throughout our history. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks confronts this
fact, going through history. Finally, he writes: “Reviewing this history, it is clear that
anti-Semitism is not a unitary phenomenon, a coherent belief or ideology. Jews have been hated because they were
rich and because they were poor; because they were capitalists and because they
were communists; because they believed in tradition and because they were
rootless cosmopolitans; because they kept to themselves and because they
penetrated everywhere. Anti-Semitism
is not a belief but a virus.” He goes on to say, “Viruses are effective when they
persuade the body’s immune system that they are part of the body itself. Viruses mutate so as to appear to host
cells not as enemies but as friends.”[1]
I think
anti-Semitism has a root – hatred – and it continues to infect.
We thought
that the world would see the truth after the Holocaust – but it still exists. We see a man trying to kill Jews in
Kansas City, a man who said he hated Jews more than any other minority. In Ukraine, a synagogue was fire
bombed, and notices, fake or not, were given to Jews to register with the
central office reminding this population of the Shoah.
How do we
counteract this hate? The Torah
tells us immediately – “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Loving others
is not easy – it’s actually easier to hate, and sometimes, it might be more
fun. Loving others means to love difference, and each unique person.
We are all
unique – each human being. The Mishnah states, “When a human being makes many coins
in the same mint, they all come out the same. God makes every person in the same image
– His image- but they are all different.”
Hate loves
when we can paint everyone with one brush – love demands that we look at each
person as if they are God’s image.
Hate is an
emotion, but Love demands action.
A modern
Bible scholar, Abraham Malamat translates this famous phrase, V’ahavta L’Recha
KaMocha not as love your neighbor as yourself to but TO your neighbor…he writes: "The Bible is not
commanding us to feel something - love - but to do something - to be useful or
beneficial to help your neighbor."
So how can we
be useful to our neighbors?
We are the
constant survivors of hatred– we must say Never Again – never again will we
allow hate to go unabated, to infect the hearts of man – not just anti-Semitism,
but all hate.
And we cannot
allow ourselves to fall into the same traps of hate. Recently, there was a shocking story –
five Ultra-Orthodox men in America brutally assaulted a gay-black man who was
walking through their neighborhood. The main assailant was quoted as saying, “stay down, f----t, stay the f--- down,” while
the other man cheered him on.
I wish Hillel
was there to see this, I wish Rabbi Akiva was there to see this – but they
weren’t, we are.
So we must
stand in their place and say, Never Again.
We must march
with Jews and non-Jews against hatred. That’s why telling the story of the Shoah is
so important, because it reminds all humanity that violence and murder due to
hatred can happen again, and we must counteract it with acts of love.
I hope you
can march with me this Sunday to say Never Again, and to remember those who
lost their lives to the virus of anti-Semitism and hatred.
We Jews play
an essential role in the world – God demands that we should be holy, for the
Lord our God is holy – but love and holiness take action –
Rabbi Sacks
writes, “A world without room for Jews is one that has no room for difference,
and a world that lacks space for difference lacks space for humanity itself.”
This Sunday,
on the March of Remembrance (CLICK HERE FOR MORE
INFORMATION), we not only march for ourselves, we march for all
humanity, for the past, the present, and most importantly, the future.
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