Acharei Mot - Kedoshim : The Space between Hate and Love
In this week’s parsha (Torah portion), the Torah explores the process of moving our hearts from hate to love, and requires that each of us do so.
17 You shall not hate your brother in your heart
You shall surely rebuke your fellow, but you shall not bear a sin on his account.
18 You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Eternal.
- Leviticus 18:17-18
Let’s take this apart.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart.
What is hate? The word in Hebrew is “soneh” which can also mean “turning against.” Hatred is, at its core, a turning away, or rejection of what is. It is the creation of division within one’s own mind or heart – good and bad – and then the calcification of the heart against those we consider “bad.”
The trouble with hatred is that it freezes us in time, hardening and narrowing ourselves against some part of life that we find fearful, or unpleasant, or irritating. The less we challenge our hatred, the more space it takes up in our lives, limiting our natural ability to be open, loving and present. When I feel hatred in my own body, I can feel its rough edges, its toxic energy, and its ability to cloud my vision.
God is telling us to refuse to allow anger and fear to progress to the point of hatred. We must back out of that dark corner, and trace the hatred backwards.
You shall surely rebuke your fellow, for you shall not bear a sin on his account.
This is a bit of a puzzling verse. How does this follow from not hating your brother?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that this verse requires us to try engaging with the
person that is causing us pain. Not challenging this person is equivalent to bearing the same sin as this person. He cites Rambam, who wrote:
When one person sins against another, the latter should not hate him and remain silent…Rather, he is commanded to speak to him and to say to him, “Why did you do such-and-such to me? Why did you sin against me in such-and-such a matter?” As it is said, “You must surely admonish your neighbor.” If he repents and requests forgiveness from him, he must forgive and not be cruel…
The Torah, if we agree with this interpretation, is advocating a holy method of engaging in conflict. Don’t stay silent and simply hate the person that is causing you harm. Using direct and clear language, confront the person and explain the harm that they are doing.
This confrontation is not easy, of course, and shouldn’t be undertaken hastily Rambam’s emphasis on the importance of forgiveness implies that the confrontation must occur when the one who has been harmed is in an emotional state of openness and equanimity such that forgiveness is truly possible. Rashi argues that the confrontation must be done in a way that does not shame the offender In both cases, striking when the iron is cool, at the right time, and without piling on additional shame is critical.
Do
not take revenge or bear a grudge against the children of your people.
These are the two traditional outgrowths of anger when we don’t or can’t confront the aggressor, or when the confrontation does not yield an apology. We want revenge on a primal level – to hurt the other as we, ourselves, are hurting. We want to push the terrible pain within ourselves out and onto the person who hurt us. Of course, aside from a moment of satisfaction when we lash out, most acts of revenge – big and small – simply cause more pain and damage to all parties involved.
Bearing a grudge, on the other hand, is simply revenge turned inwards. It is swallowing poison and hoping the other person dies. There are people in my family – as in many families – who have grudges against other family members so deep, I’m not sure they remember what the original hurt was actually about. Grudges corrode us from the inside, keeping toxic stories and pain locked in our hearts.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Here is the real leap. Love?? We are supposed to actually love others? Even those who hurt us? How are we to do that?
If we take this line as less of a directive and more of a description, we actually have the answer We are not to love our neighbor as ourselves, we will love our neighbor as ourselves. The degree to which we are able to love others, the degree to which we
are able to tolerate those who intentionally and unintentionally cause us harm, is directly proportional to the degree we love and understand and know ourselves. If we want to love others more, we must start with ourselves – our own demons and ugliness and fears.
Mindfulness is a process through which we do that. Through looking within, we get to know our own demons so well that we are not repulsed or repelled when we see them in others. We don’t need to separate ourselves or turn away from them, becoming hateful, vengeful, or repressed.
When I think about the people I am drawn to hating (most politicians, people who slighted my family members, certain ex-boyfriends), my first instinct is to push away any way that they and I are similar. Yes, I may on occasion do something selfish or hurtful, but I am certainly not as bad as they! When I approach my anger and hatred with mindfulness, however, I can see the qualities these hateful people possess (fear, clinging, ignorance, black-and-white thinking) are the same qualities I exhibit when I take up space in my heart hating them. I fall into the same trap of minimizing their humanity, which then minimizes mine. This of course doesn’t mean I condone the harm these people do. It does mean that I want to make room in my heart to love those terrible parts of myself, which then, someday, might enable me to fully love my neighbor.
In Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman’s book, Love your Enemies, Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School, a training center for civil rights activists, tells the story of a conversation he had with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “ Marty [MLK] used to say to me, ‘You have to love everybody.’ And I would say, ‘No, I don’t. I’m only going to love the people that deserve to be loved.’ And Marty would laugh and say, ‘No, no, no, you have to love everybody’” (49)
I am the Eternal.
There is a reason Rabbi Akiva says that loving our neighbor like ourselves is “a fundamental [all-inclusive] principle of the Torah” (Rashi, quoting Torah Kohanim 19:45). It is at the core of Judaism – the core of holiness. We get a reminder of the importance of that love with this final line. Lest we forget who is giving us this nearly impossible instruction – God says “I am the Eternal.” It feels to me like an assurance. You can do this very hard thing. You can do it because I do it You can do it because you were made in my image, and that image is Love.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection.
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