Love and (how to) hate

You should learn Hebrew. For a number of reasons. For example, to talk about love; or to say it in a better way: to talk about the difference between love and hate.
This week’s Torah portion includes the very famous commandment, “you shall love your neighbour as yourself”. Despite what you may have heard, it is not an innovation included in the New Testament. It is Jewish, and you can find it in Leviticus 19:18. וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ

And if you want to better understand what love is, just look at the context, in the same verse: “You shall not take vengeance against the sons of your people”. לֹא-תִקֹּם וְלֹא-תִטֹּר אֶת-בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ

In the commandment about love, there is a prefix, the letter ל. Which means “toward”. The sentence can be translated this way: “you shall feel love towards your neighbour” or “in the direction of your neighbour”.
It is very direct; it’s not mediated. While the relation of hate is described with the help of a fascinating and somehow mysterious preposition: אֶת. As every grammarian knows, the preposition אֶת introduces the object of the verb. Like: “you will not hate אֶת your people”.

Those who know Torah have been looking into the text and have discovered this: every time there is some variation of “to hate” (like “to destroy” “to reproach” “to take revenge”), there is always this אֶת preposition between the verb and the object.

Why? Scholars have been scratching their heads around this problem and have some hypothesis, but I am more interested in what can we learn from this.
Love is always direct, not mediated. While hate is mediated. The object of hate is always introduced by this small proposition אֶת which is composed of the first and the last letter of the alphabet aleph and tav. Why?

One fascinating explanation is that these two letters represent the speech, the faculty we human beings have to talk. Indeed, hate is always expressed with words: a declaration of war, an insult… While love is direct, love does not need words. I mean: words of love are fine but not always necessary.

This is a fascinating explanation, but there is something even more profound. This difference between the two verbs tells us something about which kind of hate we are allowed to feel.
We are not allowed to hate anyone completely. We can hate a part of a person. We can feel bad at something a person has done, but not against a person as a whole.

Figure out this small proposition, אֶת as a part of the personality of our enemy.
It can be big; אֶת is the first and the last letter of the alphabet, encompassing the whole alphabet. It can be small: after all, it is a very short proposition.

The main point is that our feelings, our bad feelings, are not directed against the whole personality of anyone but only against a small part.

This is extraordinary. First of all, the Torah doesn’t forbid us to feel hate. The Torah does not command us to feel love and only love and pleasant, peaceful feelings. We are allowed to have our share of bad feelings.
They must be addressed against something that somebody has done; they must not be addressed against a whole personality.

There are actions that are hateful; there must not be persons whom we hate.

On the surface, we may think that hate is just the opposite of love, but it is not. Love is direct, love doesn’t require mediation, love is addressed to all personality, not only to a part. On the other hand, hate is a human feeling, and the Torah teaches that it must be addressed to specific parts; and not to the totality of a human being.

And here, I want to be personal.
As you know, I am one of the few Reform Rabbis who over the last few years has not hesitated to talk about antisemitism in Arab lands. This synagogue, Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue has been one of the firsts in England to observe the commemoration of the Jewish communities from Arab lands on November 30. Even before the day was inscribed in the official calendar of the State of Israel, we commemorated these victims during our service.

It is safe to say that it was not a popular choice. I have been violently attacked on social media. They even called me a racist. Think about it: they call you racist because you want to talk about antisemitism…

Antisemitism in Arab lands is a taboo subject in Progressive circles; you can talk about it only if you blame Israel for it, possibly in the same sentence (another nonsense).

The results? Because talking about the antisemitism they suffered is forbidden, the whole experience of Sephardi Jews is completely erased. There are no English Mizrahi students at Leo Baeck College. And try to commemorate the victims of antisemitism in Arab Lands among certain Progressive Jews: good luck with that.

It is a sad state of affairs. I won’t hide that it has caused me deep suffering being told that mentioning the victims of Muslim-led pogroms in Iraq or Libya (not to mention places such as Hebron) was detrimental to interfaith dialogue. I had to keep silent.
As much as they pride themselves on being inclusive and pluralistic, Progressive and Reform synagogues are dramatically failing to include Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.

The fact has now been officially recognised. As you probably know the Board of Deputies has commissioned an enquiry on the inclusion of non-Ashkenazi Jews, whose final report has been released last week. Among the recommendations, you can read something very specifically addressed to Reform and Progressive synagogues.

We have to be more welcoming and inclusive towards Sephardi Jews. Commemorating the end of Jewish communities from Arab lands on November 30 (like we at BHRS already do!) is highly recommended as a significant step in such a direction

Let’s get back to the differences between love and hate or, to be more precise to what hate is in the Torah.
And let me ask a question: do we hate the Arab Nationalists and Islamists that have caused the end of Sephardi communities and have murdered Jewish children, for example, in front of the Rome Synagogue in 1982?

The answer is no!

Of course, we want justice. But we also celebrate the new era of good relationships between the Jewish State and the Arab States that has begun. Anti-Semitism exists in the Arab world; it is tolerated too much by governments, by the Western public opinion and sadly by many Jews as well.
But we do not make an equivalence between antisemitism and Arab culture or Arab people. We want to change a part of Arab culture; we don’t want to destroy the whole Arab world.
And commemorating the victims of antisemitism in Arab lands is a necessary step to build a better future.

I really hope that many other synagogues will join us in writing this page of history, to honour the memory of Sephardi Jewish martyrs from Arab lands.

May this be God’s will.