After Tish B'Av

Baseless Hatred Ruins Everything

Last week, we sat on the ground and read from Eichah (Lamentations) after three weeks of intense mourning for the Temple. This year, we read “The joy of our heart has ended. Our dancing has become mourning” and it hit harder. G-d allowed the Babylonians to destroy the First Temple to punish idolatry. Two generations later, we built the Second Temple. Why did the Second Temple burn? Baseless hatred. According to the sages, baseless hatred destroyed the Temple and baseless hatred blocks its renewal.

Josephus blames the Zealots. Like modern terrorists, the Zealots believed that they were the resistance and that fact sanctified their every action. They killed Romans. They killed their fellow Jews. They killed each other. According to the Talmud, they burned all the food in Jerusalem because dead civilian suited their righteous mission.

Why do we hate the Zealots and praise the Maccabees? Weren't both groups waging guerrilla warfare? Didn't both groups kill assimilation prone Jews? Is it only because the Maccabees won and the Zealots lost? Maybe. However, Hanukkah isn't about the Maccabees. Hanukkah celebrates the survival of the Jewish people, our beliefs and our practices, in defiance of centuries of forced conversion and mass murder. The oil burning in the menorah symbolizes a people who should have been a trivia question.

Similarly, Zealots are not solely responsible for the Second Temple's destruction. They were merely the most obvious offenders. Baseless hatred is more than hatred. Often, hatred is acceptable. We can hate Hamas, Hezbollah and the Crusaders. We can hate Chmielnicki, the Nazis and the Iranian government that sponsors murder. We can even hate Roger Waters, Caitlin Johnstone and Mia Khaalifa and everyone who celebrated our murder and rape on October 7.

We shouldn't hate without cause though. We shouldn't hate those who fall for antisemitic propaganda, even our fellow Jews, if there's a chance for tshuvah. We shouldn't hate individual Iranians who have suffered enough under their Handmaid's Tale shitshow of a government. We should not hate every critic of Israel, right or wrong. We shouldn't be Zealots. Baseless hatred destroyed the Temple Baseless hatred keeps the Temple from being rebuilt.

Shortly before the destruction, a wealthy man put on a large party and invited hundreds. His servants were supposed to invite his friend Kamtza, but they ended up inviting his hated enemy Bar Kamtza. As soon as the host saw Bar Kamtza at his party, he ordered his servants to forcibly remove him. Bar Kamtza begged to stay, offered to pay for the food. Then he offered to pay for the party. Respected elders watched the exchange and didn't intervene. No one stepped in to help. After his humiliation, Bar Kamtza ran to the Romans and told them that the Jews were planning a revolt. Tensions were high and the Romans only needed minor proof to attack.

Like the Book of Job, the story is mostly fiction, but teaches us more on repetition. Why did Bar Kamtza come to the party? Why was the host so eager to humiliate him? Couldn't he have asked Bar Kamtza to leave without embarrassing him? Why didn't the sages intervene? Why did Bar Kamtza turn informer so easily? Didn't he know that he was going to get people killed, people who had nothing to do with the host?

No one is innocent. Bar Kamtza was a fool who started a war. The host was an asshole. The sages were supposed to be leaders but let this scene play out. No one had enough empathy to prevent a tragedy.

So often, we turn off our empathy in order to embrace the extremes. We become Zealots, no better than Bar Kamtza or the host. Jewish history is a history of non-Jews eagerly believing the worst about us. They believe we kill Christian babies and bake their blood into our matzah. They believe that we rule the banking system. They believe that we are committing genocide whenever we wage war. It makes it easier for them to kill us without guilt.

Only we aren't the only genocide victims. Turks committed genocide against Armenians at the tale end of WWI. White Americans lynched thousands of black people, often believing that they were saving white women. As a Zionist, I've seen post-October allies spreading the same lies about Muslims that allowed the Serbs and the Myanmar Buddhists commit genocide without shame.

As Ian McShane playing that fucking septon in that one Game of Thrones episode said “Violence is a disease. You don't cure a disease by spreading it.” He's only partially wrong (he ends up dead at the end of the episode) but apply that statement to baseless hatred. You can't counter antisemitism by hating all Christians or all Muslims. You only infect others.

Baseless hatred allowed the Zealots to run rampant and help the Romans destroy Jerusalem. Baseless hatred destroyed the Temple. Because of baseless hatred, we live in a broken world full of murder and rape. We live in a world where ideology allows scumbags to justify rape, mass murder and genocide under the rubric of decolonization, G-d's will, racial purity or whatever those people like this week.

May we live in a better world soon, a world with empathy and kindness. A world without baseless hatred. A world where we don't even need hatred because there's no reason to hate.

If you’re Jewish, have a great Shabbos (unless you get this after Shabbos, then Gut Woch/Shavua Tov). If you’re not Jewish, have a great weekend.

As you know, I’m a freelance writer and my job took a big hit in the past few years because of ChatGPT. If you need a writer or an editor, feel free to email me. If you’d like to support me, you can get a paid subscription (only $5 a month) or help me out by donating to my Gofundme.

For more Jewish thought, feel free to buy a copy of Maurice Liber’s Rashi biography.