Parshah Commentary
All too often, when left-wing Jews critique mainstream American Jewish organizations’ nearly unconditional support of Israel, they are met with the predictable counter-charge that they lack ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people. Love of one’s fellow Jews, goes the logic, should compel us to moderate or even withhold such criticism. But this week’s parshah, Shoftim, can help us articulate a radically different understanding of love.
In its discussion of judicial testimony, the Torah states that “a case can be valid only on the testimony of two witnesses or more.” If there is only one witness to a crime, testimony—and thus judicial action—is impossible. However, even though a single witness cannot testify, the rabbis insist that the individual still has a legal responsibility “to hate the sinner until they change their ways.” While an obligation to hate may sound extreme, it was codified in several of the most authoritative Jewish legal codes, among them Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah and Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch. In a number of other central legal texts, the principle is extended beyond the specific case of a single witness and becomes a general legal obligation to hate anyone who repeatedly sins and will not accept rebuke.
What is the purpose of this hatred? For some interpreters, it relieves us of complicity with sin. For others, it is an act of identification with God: Since sinners rebel against God, we must hate them. But perhaps hatred serves a more subtle function. In the absence of a framework for holding those who do wrong accountable—whether because of the limitations of the legal system or because the sinner will not accept critique—hatred may prevent wrongdoing from being excused or forgotten.
Despite acknowledging the utility of hatred, the rabbis place limits on its expression, mandating that “one must still return [the sinner’s] lost objects and [assist them by] loading and unloading [animals] with them.” The reason for these restrictions may lie in the verse the rabbis cite as proof: “It is not My desire that the wicked shall die, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” Hatred should not be punitive; following God’s example, we are meant to keep alive the memory of wrongdoing not so we can punish those who sin but rather so we can encourage them to change their ways. This mandated care for those we hate demonstrates that we must still see them as worthy of love, and reveals that what we should really despise is their actions and the ways in which they’ve allowed themselves to be distorted, rather than their core being. But it also serves a function for those doing the hating: Absent such care, the medieval Talmudic commentators known as the Tosafot warn, our hatred is liable to become harmful.
Rabbi Moshe Amiel, a largely forgotten early religious Zionist who opposed war and the idolization of nationalism, followed the Tosafot in insisting on the importance of hatred while also delineating its risks. Though other mitzvot should ideally be done joyfully, he cautioned that hatred “should not be done with joy but rather with distress.” If we take joy in our hatred, we are more likely to foster revenge than repair. And whereas other mitzvot, Rabbi Amiel explains, can be performed rotely, even if it’s best to carry them out with intention, hatred should never be routine, for routine hatred inevitably leads to fantasies of domination. “Even though a person may have begun performing this mitzvah [of hatred of sin] for the sake of heaven,” he argues, “habituation has made hatred natural—a nature . . . of cruelty for the sake of cruelty.”
The rabbinic tradition thus suggests a far deeper understanding of ahavat Yisrael than the one advanced by the Jewish left’s detractors: Love for one’s fellow must at times come in the form of hatred for who they have become and what they have done. And yet Rabbi Amiel also reminds us of the risks that come along with loathing. It is easy for such an orientation to become reflexive and to nurture the very cruelty against which we are fighting. To truly love our fellow may at times require hatred, but paradoxically, that hatred demands an even greater degree of care.
Aron Wander is rabbinical student, organizer, and writer.
