Sin’at Hinam—Causeless Hatred: Tisha B'Av 2018

Sin’at Hinam—Causeless Hatred

Tisha B’Av, 2018

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Today is Sunday—in Israel, an ordinary, secular day. Traffic outside my mother’s apartment near Tel Aviv is as per usual for this time of the morning: people hurrying to work on their scooters, bikes, cars and trucks, all intent on getting where they’re going on time, impatient with anyone who isn’t quite on the ball, anyone who might still be dreaming, anyone who waits for a split second longer than necessary at the stop light.

Mid-August; it’s still early in the day, but the temperature here is already, well, hot. Though there are no clouds in the sky, the humidity is high. Just a normal mid-summer day.

And yet this day is different. You can feel it in the air.  It may be a work day for most, but it is also Tisha B’Av (the ninth day in the Hebrew calendar month of Av). This is the day set aside long ago in remembrance of national disasters that have befallen the Jewish people throughout our history. Tradition has it that on this very day Moses smashed the first set of Ten Commandments—written by God’s own hand—at Mount Sinai. The two Temples in Jerusalem were also destroyed on Tisha B’Av, and almost 2000 years ago the day was set aside by the Rabbis as a day of national mourning and fasting.  Since then, more tragic events took place on Tisha B’Av: In Medieval times, the expulsion of the Jews from England (1290) and the expulsion from Spain (1492) fell on this date.  In 1941, approval for the Nazi “Final Solution,” the plan to exterminate the Jewish People, was granted on Tisha B’Av. The first transport of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka came exactly one year later.

Whether on purpose or not, the “disengagement,” the uprooting of the 8000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, took place on the tenth of Av, August 15, 2005 (the ninth was a Saturday, the Sabbath).

For tradition-observing Jews all over the world, the Ninth of Av is a formal day of fasting, as sacred as Yom Kippur.  Many stay up the entire night before, sitting on the floor, tearfully reciting the book of Lamentations from the Bible as well as many other poems and prayers of penitence and lamentation. In Israel, where Jewish history and survival are always hot topics, the Western Wall Plaza on this day is filled with throngs of people who have come to pray at this last remaining vestige of our Holy Temple. And though not everybody fasts, the meaning of the day is never far from everyone’s thoughts.

Jewish reasoning and logic are never limited to dates, times and numbers. For thousands of years, an additional element has been an essential component of our thinking. To be Jewish means to be in a special relationship both with fellow Jews and, ultimately, with God.  The many national disasters thus have never been seen as merely incidental.  The coincidence of so many of them falling on this particular date is seen as more than a fluke or twist of fate. There has to be a reason; there has to be meaning to everything that happens.

In the view of the ancient Rabbis, the reason for the national disasters was sin’at hinam, a concept that means causeless hatred.  Since the most ancient days, Tisha B’Av was understood as the consequence of the failure of the Jewish people to follow the most important teaching of Judaism: Love. Rabbi Akiva as well as Rabbi Hillel, two of the chief early formulators of Jewish Law, ruled that the Torah’s injunction,V’ahavta lerei’acha kamocha(“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Leviticus 19:18), is the most important concept in the Torah, with all the rest serving only as commentary. Love was the reason God created the universe. With boundless, eternal, love, God gave Israel the Torah. If love, then, is the foundation of the world, hatred is its undoing.

That is not to say that we are not permitted to hate.  Hatred is a basic human emotion, forceful and at times violent.  Like other emotions, it is hard to contain and control.  We hate evil; we hate those who perpetrate evil and violence, who spill innocent blood, who cause needless pain.

So what is sin’at hinam, causeless hatred? Can hatred exist without a cause?

For the Jewish People everywhere, Tisha B’Av has become a journey of exploration and soul-searching as we try to understand what undermines our national existence and what, on the other hand, keeps us unified and alive.

In Israel, where politics and religion are inextricably connected, where tradition and modernity are in constant conflict, the question of sin’at hinamis possibly even more quintessential. 

In Israel, a country where fading blue-ink numbers on Holocaust survivors’ forearms compete with modern, colorful, exuberant body tattoos; where secularism and tradition are in constant struggle; where the hidden meanings of Torah contend with the mysteries of cyberspace; where science and faith, prejudice and tolerance wage a fierce and unending battle; where there is hardly one family that hasn’t lost a friend or loved one to enemy fire; in this crucible of antiquity and modernity, there is no simple answer. How do we maintain our love for “the other,” the one who doesn’t share our faith or knowledge, for the stranger, and for the one whose life choices we don’t agree with?

Mingled with ancient prayers and lamentations, today three questions preoccupy our minds: Two laws recently passed by the Knesset—Israel’s parliament—and the tragic death of a soldier.

The first of the two laws states that Israel is the “Nation-State of the Jewish People.” Though this is an expression of the eternal Zionist dream, the distillation of a two-thousand-year-old hope as expressed in Israel’s national anthem, Ha-Tikva, this law is perceived by many as discriminatory. There are many minorities—Christian, Muslim, Druze as well as others—who live as full citizens of the State of Israel. The tone of this law has made many of them today feel like second class citizens.  I don’t blame them.  They are law abiding citizens.  They pay taxes, and many of them serve with honor in the Israel Defense Force. Many have even paid the highest price and are buried in military cemeteries alongside their Jewish brethren. A law that states the obvious yet underneath it all feels wrong is one that needs to be rethought. Is Israel to be a home only for Jews? Is that the morality the Prophets argued for? Is this the promise they envisioned in their exalted poetry of the Days To Come? In Israel, this question isn’t rhetorical; it’s more than philosophical. It’s very clear and evident. It’s about the Jewish identity of Israel, but it is also about the meaning and purpose of Israel’s existence.

The second law topmost on our minds today is even more discriminatory. This law provides for single women access to state-funded surrogacy services. Outwardly it’s an expansion of Israel’s social services.  However, explicitly excluded from these services are single men and gay couples.  In a country that touts liberal and modern attitudes, this law is a huge step backwards. It demonstrates prejudice, injustice and inequality. Israel and Judaism have come a long way since the time of the Torah. We have reached a new level of understanding of humanity and sexuality. This surrogacy law, backed by the extremist religious right wing in Israel politics, discriminates against an entire segment of Israel’s population.

Is this not an example of sin’at hinam, causeless hatred of one’s neighbor?

And the third event that is on the mind of all Israelis today is the death last Friday of an Israeli soldier, Staff-Sergeant Aviv Levi, of blessed memory.  One week away from his 21ast birthday, Aviv is the latest Israeli casualty in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist organization that has sworn to destroy the State of Israel. 

Loss and tragedy are nothing new to Israel. In the struggle to establish and maintain a Jewish national home in Israel, nearly 25,000 Jews have fallen. This incomprehensible number is engraved in our souls. The names and faces of the fallen are always before us. Their heroism and selflessness are the stuff of legends.  

Yet Israel’s goals and methods in achieving security are not unquestioned, neither abroad nor—least of all—in Israel.  Even as we mourn the death of an Israeli soldier, we cannot but feel pity for the population of Gaza, kept in abject poverty and misery by their corrupt leadership, a cadre of terrorists that thrives on the perception of victimhood. The Arab-Israeli conflict, which has been going on for 100 years now, has engendered more discussion and argument among the very people who are threatened by it the most—the Jews. The moral and ethical questions of survival are among the most difficult to resolve and have proven among the most divisive issues that underlie the unity of the Jewish People.  

Sin’at hinam—causeless hatred—is one of the byproducts of unresolved issues.  As this year’s Tisha B’Av reminds us, sin’at hinamis also one of the greatest dangers that our people faces today.  On this day of introspection, it isn’t enough to fast and mourn long-ago disasters. It is a day to reflect on who we—the People of Israel—are; who we want to be; and where exactly we are on the path to realizing our dreams and objectives.

© 2018 by Boaz D. Heilman