mitzvah in the Torah is "don't hate your brother in your heart."
If I hit someone, God forbid, am I violating the law of hating? Maimonides
says you are not permitted to hit, but not because of the mitzvah against
hatred. Not being permitted to hit is another law.
The law we're talking
about is that you're not permitted to hate in your heart. If I hit someone
and I hate him at the same time, I am violating 2 laws. You are not
permitted to hate, and you are not permitted to hit, but one has nothing
to do with the other.
There were a few people
who wrote down all 613 commandments. Maimonides was one. Another was
"Chinuch" who was in Spain later on, and he says hatred
in the heart is the cause of a lot of evil things between people. This
is the cause of the "sword between man and his brother." In
those days people would tell on each other to the police, give each
other to the government. He says this is the lowest and ugliest and
most repulsive emotion there can be in anyone who has a little bit of
sense.
The Talmud says an evil
eye, evil spirits, and hatred of people can really kill you. That can
mean two things. If I fight with people there might be a whole war,
and I might be killed, but that is not the real point. It is possible
to die from hatred. Who is the strongest of the strong? The strongest
of the strong is someone who can love someone who hates him. Turning
the other cheek means I walk up to you and say, "You hit me once,
thank you, so hit me again." According to my theory, if someone
hits you, say, "Will you please take your paws off." I'll
tell you, if a little man hates me, should I hate him back, because
he hates me? He should cut me down to his size?
The Talmud says something
even stronger. When you hate somebody you are really killing. You don't
have to use a knife, you know. According to Maimonides, I transgress
whenever I hate somebody. If I hate five times a day, I transgress five
times a day.
Here is another interpretation
of this mitzvah. Since the Torah says 'love your neighbor as yourself,'
naturally you cannot hate. You shouldn't have to say it, so why does
the Torah say 'don't hate your brother?' The contradiction probably
didn't bother Maimonides very much. Because there is one law
of loving, and another against hating.
The Yad HaK'tana,
was another little holy man who wrote down all 613 mitzvah, about four
hundred years ago. He says anything which you keep in your heart grows
in a very deep way. If you hate someone in your heart and you don't
tell him, and you don't try somehow to salve it, it will grow until
it will eat you up. If you tell the person, even if you still hate him,
at least the hatred won't grow, won't become stronger. If you tell him,
"I hate you," at least there is contact between you. Then
he says, "What do you do if you hate people for no reason, and
you can't get out of it?" The only way out is loving people for
no reason. Just love, because love is a very holy fire that will drag
out all the darkness of hatred.
