Righteous Hatred: When Being Nice Is Not Enough

Last week, during the Nine Days leading up to Tisha B’Av, we witnessed one of the most disturbing scenes of recent months—and recent months have supplied no shortage of disturbing scenes.

I refer to the assault on Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Feivelson, a prominent Haredi Rosh Yeshiva, Torah scholar, and thinker. Dozens of protesters, many of them young Haredi boys of yeshiva ketana age, surrounded him in the street. They shouted “heretic,” “murderer,” and other abuse, pushed and struck him, and damaged the vehicle into which he was eventually able to escape.

And where did this take place? Not in Mea Shearim, among the more insular circles of the Old Yishuv, nor in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, which is often associated with the more extreme fringes of Haredi society. The assault occurred in Kiryat Sefer, one of the great centers of Israel’s Lithuanian-Haredi Torah world.

It happened in the heart of the camp.

In the face of such scenes, one would have expected immediate and unequivocal condemnation. Yet for many hours the response was almost complete silence. By late morning, neither the established Haredi press nor the leading Haredi news sites had addressed the incident in any meaningful way. Some reports appeared later, and vague voices of condemnation were eventually heard (for the English media, see the report here). But these were the exception to the rule, and the initial silence spoke loudly. An attack on a senior and respected rabbinic figure, in the middle of a major Haredi city, did not immediately cross the threshold of what the community’s principal institutions felt compelled to denounce.

Nor can the incident easily be dismissed as the work of marginal extremists. Attacks and campaigns of intimidation against rabbis and Torah figures—including Rabbi David Leibel, Rabbi Uriah Inbal, the Karlin Rebbe, Rabbi Feivelson, and others—are no longer exceptionally rare. They have become a recognizable feature of Haredi public life.

The atmosphere of intimidation is not confined to internal rabbinic disputes. Only days before the attack, employees of the Israel Tax Authority conducting inspections in Bnei Brak were surrounded by a large crowd, their vehicle was damaged, and they required police assistance to leave the area. The head of the Tax Authority subsequently announced that services relating to war-damage claims in the city would be suspended until the municipality publicly condemned the violence.

Certainly, contemporary Israel suffers no shortage of internal hatred. Yet the assault on Rabbi Feivelson and the communal hesitation to condemn it suggests that we have crossed another line.

We have likewise seen soldiers spat upon and attacked at anti-draft protests, police officers assaulted, and public servants treated as though their very presence in a Haredi neighborhood constitutes an act of aggression. As many Haredi apologists are quick to point out, there may be other bad actors in the fray—the Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and so on. Yet, it is hard to escape the harsh realization that something is happening to us.

It is especially troubling to contemplate these scenes during the Nine Days, when we mourn the destruction of Jerusalem and recall the Talmud’s teaching that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam (Yoma 9b). Certainly, contemporary Israel suffers no shortage of internal hatred. Yet the assault on Rabbi Feivelson and the communal hesitation to condemn it suggests that we have crossed another line.

How did we reach this point? What, precisely, is the nature of the sinat chinam we are called upon to repair? And how can we conceive of a path forward?

 

Why Can’t We Just Be Nice?

I once attended part of a day-long Tisha B’Av presentation given by Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter. I was not present for the entire program, but I remember that while discussing sinat chinam, he placed considerable emphasis on the importance of good character. At one stage, as I recall it, he asked a disarmingly simple question: “Why can’t we just be nice?”

There is much truth in the question. A great number of interpersonal conflicts would disappear—or at least diminish—if we were more patient, generous, forgiving, and considerate. Many disputes begin not with profound ideological differences but with wounded pride, jealousy, insensitivity, poor communication, or the ordinary inability to see the world through another person’s eyes.

The Talmudic account of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza begins with precisely this kind of moral ugliness. A man humiliates his enemy in public, refusing to allow him to remain at a banquet even when Bar Kamtza offers to pay for the entire affair. The sages sit by and fail to protest. Bar Kamtza concludes that their silence indicates approval: “Since they did not protest, it follows that they were content with what he did.” His humiliation becomes a desire for revenge, and a private act of cruelty develops into a national catastrophe (Gittin 55b–56a).

Basic decency matters. Middot matter. The ability to refrain from humiliating another person, to listen, to concede, to speak gently, and to control anger is indispensable to any healthy society. Yet, I do not believe that “being nice,” important as it is, addresses our deepest social conflicts.

Good character can prevent a minor disagreement from becoming a feud. It can soften the manner in which a dispute is conducted, opening space for listening and compromise. But it cannot make the substantive disagreement disappear when the parties are committed to competing visions of the good.

Imagine that parents disagree over their child’s school. One believes that the present school is damaging the child emotionally and religiously and that he must be transferred immediately. The other is convinced that removing him would be disastrous. This is not a dispute over who failed to wash the dishes. It concerns the child’s future. Both parents may be kind, patient, generous people; both may speak respectfully. But neither can simply “be nice” and surrender what he or she sincerely believes to be the child’s welfare. Precisely because they love the child, they will fight.

The same is true of the major questions confronting a community or nation. What kind of education should we give our children? What risks may be taken to preserve a way of life? Who should bear the burdens of national defense? What compromises can be made with modernity? What does fidelity to Torah require at this moment in history?

These are not artificial controversies generated by bad character. They emerge from rival understandings of truth, justice, responsibility, and the good. Indeed, the more morally serious the parties are, the more intense the conflict may become. Good character is therefore necessary, but insufficient. Middot can regulate a great dispute; they cannot resolve it merely by making everyone agreeable.

The crucial question is what prevents a principled dispute from becoming sinat chinam.

 

When the Dispute Has a Basis

The conventional English translation of sinat chinam is “baseless hatred” or “causeless hatred.” Yet this translation can be misleading.

The hatred of the Second Temple period did not necessarily emerge from trivial disputes. The groups fighting one another in Jerusalem believed that matters of the highest importance were at stake. The sages advocated accommodation with Rome; the zealots demanded war. The zealots were so determined to force the population into battle that they burned Jerusalem’s stores of grain and barley, eliminating the possibility of waiting out the Roman siege.

The disagreement was not baseless. The parties faced a real enemy and an existential decision. Should they negotiate with Rome or resist? Which policy offered the Jewish people the best chance of survival? Which course reflected courage, faith, and loyalty to God?

These questions had no easy answer. Those who advocated war presumably saw compromise as cowardice and betrayal. Those who sought an accommodation saw rebellion as collective suicide. Each side believed the other was endangering the nation and profaning the divine name. The dispute had a basis.

But the hatred did not.

Sinat chinam does not necessarily mean hatred without any psychological cause. Human beings almost always have reasons for their hatred. We feel threatened, betrayed, humiliated, frightened, or morally outraged. We tell ourselves that the other person or group has endangered everything we hold dear.

The hatred is “baseless” because the disagreement does not justify transforming a covenantal partner into an enemy who must be silenced, expelled, or destroyed. The dispute concerns a policy, an interpretation, or a vision of the good. Hatred begins when we cease to distinguish between the disputed position and the human being who holds it.

The hatred is “baseless” because the disagreement does not justify transforming a covenantal partner into an enemy who must be silenced, expelled, or destroyed. The dispute concerns a policy, an interpretation, or a vision of the good. Hatred begins when we cease to distinguish between the disputed position and the human being who holds it.

At that point, we no longer say: “You are gravely mistaken.”

We say: “You are evil.”

We no longer say: “Your policy will lead to disaster.”

We say: “You are a traitor, a heretic, a murderer.”

The opponent is stripped of his standing as a member of the common home. His very presence becomes intolerable. Once he is no longer a partner, there is no reason to hear him, persuade him, compromise with him, or respect the mechanisms through which a common decision must be made.

The substantive dispute may be entirely legitimate. The hatred is gratuitous because it extends beyond the dispute and denies the legitimacy of the person.

How, then, can we fight fiercely over matters of ultimate importance without falling into this hatred?

The Talmudic study hall offers a model.

 

Enemies in the Study Hall

The Gemara interprets the biblical phrase “enemies at the gate” as a description of Torah study:

“Even a father and his son, or a rabbi and his disciple, who engage in Torah together at one gate become enemies of one another. Yet they do not move from there until they become lovers of one another” (Kiddushin 30b).

The Gemara does not portray disagreement in the study hall as polite, detached, or bloodless. Father and son become enemies. Rabbi and disciple become enemies. They struggle over their divergent positions with the intensity normally reserved for battle.

They do so because truth matters.

If the text is misunderstood, if an argument is flawed, if a halachic distinction cannot be sustained, then courtesy cannot be permitted to blur the issue. The participants challenge, contradict, refute, and attempt to defeat one another’s claims. Yet the Gemara adds that they do not leave the study hall until they become lovers once again.

The final love is not an apology for the preceding conflict. It reveals what the conflict was all along. The scholars did not fight despite their relationship; they were able to fight so fiercely because of it. Their disagreement took place within a shared enterprise. Both were servants of the same Torah, seekers of the same truth, and inhabitants of the same spiritual home. Their enmity was local and instrumental. Their love was fundamental.

Elsewhere, the Gemara refers to Torah scholars gathered in the study hall as ba’alei terisin—literally, “bearers of shields.” Rashi explains that these are scholars who “defeat one another in halacha” (Berachot 27b). The image is striking. Battles are ordinarily won with swords, arrows, and spears. A shield is a defensive weapon. It protects its bearer; it does not destroy the opponent. Why describe the warriors of Torah specifically as bearers of shields?

The purpose is not to eliminate the person standing on the other side. The scholar must defend his position, withstand the force of the opposing argument, and expose himself to intellectual attack. Yet both combatants must remain standing, because the truth can be clarified only through the encounter between them.

The image suggests the distinctive nature of the study hall’s warfare. The purpose is not to eliminate the person standing on the other side. The scholar must defend his position, withstand the force of the opposing argument, and expose himself to intellectual attack. Yet both combatants must remain standing, because the truth can be clarified only through the encounter between them.

A sword silences the opponent. A shield permits the battle to continue.

Torah warfare requires an adversary strong enough to test our position. We need the person who disagrees with us. Without his challenge, our arguments become weak, our assumptions remain unexamined, and our search for truth becomes a performance of self-confirmation. The opponent is therefore not an obstacle to the common goal. He is a necessary partner in achieving it.

This is the paradox of the study hall: the parties fight like enemies because they are partners. They can attack the argument without seeking to annihilate the person. The overarching framework is not hatred but covenant, connection, and even love.

 

A Common Home

Such disagreement is possible only when there is profound common ground.

The combatants must share something deeper than the issue dividing them: a common search for truth, a common set of values, a common identity, and a common home. They must understand that whatever the outcome of the dispute, they will remain responsible for one another.

This is true in the study hall, but it is equally true in a family, a community, and a nation.

Spouses may fight bitterly over what is best for their child. But if each remains convinced that the other loves the child, is committed to the marriage, and seeks the family’s welfare, the dispute can remain within the home. It may be painful and difficult, but the parties are not trying to defeat one another as people. They are attempting, together, to reach the right decision.

The same principle applies to public life. If we agree that we are members of one people, bound by a common covenant and responsible for a shared future, then disagreement—even profound disagreement—need not become a war of annihilation.

One side can believe that the other’s proposal will cause grave harm. It can organize against it, expose its flaws, and seek to ensure its defeat. But it will not deny the other side’s right to participate in the common conversation. It will not define every alternative position as treason or heresy. It will not treat the opposition as a foreign body to be removed from the nation.

This, I believe, is the meaning of the Mishnah’s distinction between a dispute for the sake of Heaven and one that is not:

“Every dispute that is for the sake of Heaven will ultimately endure. And one that is not for the sake of Heaven will not ultimately endure. What is a dispute for the sake of Heaven? The dispute of Hillel and Shammai. And one that is not for the sake of Heaven? The dispute of Korach and his congregation” (Avot 5:17).

A dispute for the sake of Heaven endures because the purpose that unites the parties is greater than the disagreement that divides them. Not every position becomes practical law. A decision must ultimately be rendered. But even when the law follows Beit Hillel, the words of Beit Shammai remain part of Torah. Their position is studied, preserved, and transmitted. No side is erased.

The relationship between the two schools demonstrates what this means in practice. The Gemara records that although Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed over matters with serious implications for marriage and family status, they continued to marry into one another and conducted themselves with “affection and friendship,” fulfilling the verse, “Love truth and peace” (Yevamot 14b).

Truth and peace were not alternatives. The pursuit of truth did not require the abandonment of peace, and peace did not require the suppression of truth.

The Gemara likewise explains that the law was established in accordance with Beit Hillel not merely because of their intellectual arguments, but because they were accommodating and forbearing and would teach the words of Beit Shammai before presenting their own position (Eruvin 13b). They did not weaken their disagreement. They demonstrated that they understood it. They could state the other side’s position fairly, preserving the dignity of the opponent. They could recognize that the truth they sought was not their private possession.

Ultimately, a common society requires decisions. The Torah therefore establishes the Sanhedrin, majority rule, and authoritative legal procedures. In other settings, decisions emerge through communal institutions, political mechanisms, or compromises shaped by circumstance. A shared goal does not guarantee agreement. It does, however, make defeat bearable.

I can lose an argument without losing my place in the study hall. I can lose a vote without ceasing to belong to the community, or accept a decision I opposed when I know it was reached through a mechanism that all parties recognize and within a covenant that protects my continuing membership. Compromise becomes possible when neither party interprets compromise as surrender to an alien enemy. We remain on the same team, even when one side’s position does not prevail.

 

The Hatred of the Righteous

It is difficult, in this context, not to recall the Netziv’s famous description of the Jewish people on the eve of the Second Temple’s destruction:

“They were righteous, pious, and devoted to Torah study, but they were not upright in their dealings with the world. Because of the baseless hatred in their hearts, they suspected anyone whose conduct in the service of God differed from their own of being a Sadducee and a heretic. This led them to bloodshed in an extreme degree and to every evil in the world, until the Temple was destroyed… The Holy One, blessed be He, is upright and does not tolerate such ‘righteous’ people unless they also conduct themselves uprightly in the ways of the world, without crookedness—even when that crookedness is for the sake of Heaven—for it brings about the destruction of creation and the ruin of human society.”

The Netziv’s words, found in his introduction to Bereishit, are among the most penetrating explanations of sinat chinam. The people he describes were not indifferent to Torah. They were “righteous, pious, and devoted to Torah study.” Their hatred did not arise from a lack of religious conviction, but from its distortion.

They loved truth, but came to identify truth exclusively with themselves. They feared religious error, but lost the ability to distinguish between error and heresy. They sought to defend the covenant, but ceased to recognize their fellow Jews as members of it. Thus, anyone who served God differently was suspected of being a Sadducee or an apostate. Difference in religious conduct became proof of disloyalty. Once the other person was placed outside the covenant, violence against him could be interpreted not as wickedness but as righteousness.

Difference in religious conduct became proof of disloyalty. Once the other person was placed outside the covenant, violence against him could be interpreted not as wickedness but as righteousness.

This is the hatred of the righteous: hatred that does not experience itself as hatred. It understands itself as fidelity, courage, and zeal for Heaven. For precisely this reason, it is so dangerous.

Ordinary hatred can sometimes be restrained by shame, checked by our internal moral compass. Religious hatred is fortified by moral certainty. The more cruel it becomes, the more its bearer may congratulate himself on his uncompromising loyalty to truth.

The Netziv therefore emphasizes yashrut, uprightness. Torah observance alone cannot save a society whose members have lost the capacity to deal honestly and humanely with those who differ from them. God, he writes, does not tolerate righteousness that proceeds through crookedness, even when the crookedness is undertaken for the sake of Heaven.

These words were written about the period of the destruction, but we are obliged to read them in the present tense.

 

From Distinction to Isolation

Haredi society has long depended on mechanisms of separation. These mechanisms, neither arbitrary nor malicious, protected a vulnerable Torah culture against powerful forces of secularization and enabled it to build institutions, communities, and generations of committed Jews.

Yet separation carries a danger. A mechanism designed to protect a distinct identity can gradually produce a consciousness in which every encounter is interpreted through the lens of “us” and “them.”

In such a framework, other groups are no longer partners with different strengths, failings, and visions. They become threats to our identity. Every public question becomes a zero-sum struggle: if their position gains legitimacy, ours must lose it; if their voice is heard, ours is being silenced; if we acknowledge their contribution, we weaken the purity of our own claim.

The walls separating the community from the outside world then begin to arise within the community itself. One Haredi group questions the legitimacy of another. A rabbi who studies differently, speaks differently, or relates differently to the world is not merely mistaken. He is accused of destroying souls. A rival educational vision is not debated; it is denounced as heresy. A communal disagreement becomes a struggle to define who is inside the camp and who must be expelled from it. The result is not the preservation of Torah disagreement, but its destruction.

A genuine Torah dispute requires shields. It requires strong opponents who remain present in the study hall. The moment one party seeks to remove the other from the room—to intimidate him, prevent him from teaching, or physically attack him—the war of Torah has ended. Something else has taken its place.

 

The Teachings That Provoked the Attack

Rabbi Feivelson’s Torah—I consider myself a friend and disciple—is original and compelling. By contrast with classic Haredi teaching, it gives serious attention to the plain meaning of Tanach, places confidence in sound human judgment—what we often refer to as common sense—and engages directly with the concrete realities of human and national life. His teaching attracts many precisely because it does not ask them to choose between loyalty to Torah and an honest encounter with reality.

Yet perhaps more fundamental is his language of covenantal partnership.

Rabbi Feivelson insists that divergent individuals and groups living in a covenant with Hashem are partners. Each group has its virtues and its deficiencies, its moments of insight and its episodes of failure. No single sector embodies the fullness of the Jewish people, and no single community can discharge the responsibilities of the covenant alone.

This claim does not erase differences. On the contrary, it validates them. It does not declare every position correct or every way of life equally desirable. Partners can and should disagree sharply. They can believe that the other side is making a grave mistake. But partnership—and in the Jewish case, brotherhood—defines the framework for the disagreement.

A partner, and certainly a brother, is someone whose welfare remains bound up with mine even when I oppose him. I cannot reduce him to an obstacle, and I certainly cannot desire his disappearance. I cannot build my identity upon the denial of his legitimacy.

This is surely part of what makes Rabbi Feivelson’s voice so attractive to thousands of Haredim. As the same time, it may also be part of what makes it threatening to those whose identity depends on an absolute division between the camp and everyone outside it.

The attack therefore contained a bitter irony. The young men who shouted “heretic” and “murderer” enacted precisely the pathology that Rabbi Feivelson’s teaching seeks to overcome. They did not confront his Torah with Torah. They did not enter the study hall carrying shields. They attempted to expel him from the camp.

The attack therefore contained a bitter irony. The young men who shouted “heretic” and “murderer” enacted precisely the pathology that Rabbi Feivelson’s teaching seeks to overcome. They did not confront his Torah with Torah. They did not enter the study hall carrying shields. They attempted to expel him from the camp.

And the silence that followed was no less troubling.

From Kamtza and Bar Kamtza we learned the danger of “Since they did not protest, it follows that they approved.” Silence does not always indicate agreement. People may be frightened, uncertain, or reluctant to become involved. Yet public silence has public consequences. When violence receives no immediate and emphatic condemnation, the perpetrators learn that their conduct remains within the range of what the community will tolerate.

When institutions and public figures that fan the flames pay no communal price; when accusations of heresy and murder become legitimate tools of public controversy; and when attacks are excused as the work of “young hotheads,” we should not be surprised when the next attack is more serious than the last.

A society of Torah requires clear boundaries against incitement, humiliation, and violence. Not despite its devotion to truth, but because of it.

 

What Must Be Restored

The answer to sinat chinam is not the abolition of conflict. It is not ahavat chinam, either. A society without disagreement is either lifeless or coercive. Nor can serious disputes be resolved merely by asking everyone to be nicer, to love each other more.

We should, of course, be nice. We should cultivate patience, generosity, humility, and the discipline to hear another person fairly. Beit Hillel’s character was not incidental to its Torah; it was part of the reason the law followed its rulings. But on the great questions, niceness will eventually run out. What must remain when it does is covenant.

We must recover the knowledge that we share a common home; that the truth is greater than any one camp’s possession of it; that those who disagree with us may still be servants of Hashem and partners in the Jewish destiny; and that no faction can build the future of the Jewish people alone. This requires more than private virtue. It requires a communal culture.

It requires rabbinic and political leaders who condemn violence even when violence is directed against their ideological opponents. It requires institutions that impose a price on incitement rather than rewarding it with prestige and influence. It requires media that report hatred within the camp with the same urgency with which they report hatred directed against it. It requires educational systems that teach young people not only how to defend their position, but how to recognize the person across from them as a legitimate participant in the covenantal conversation.

Above all, it requires a renewed language of partnership.

The fact that Rabbi Feivelson has thousands of followers within Haredi society is therefore a source of hope. He is not alone. Across the Haredi world, voices are emerging that combine deep fidelity to Torah with responsibility for the Jewish people, greater intellectual openness, and recognition of the covenant that binds together Jews of different communities and outlooks. These voices do not seek to dissolve Haredi distinctiveness. They seek to restore it to its proper place within the wider Jewish covenant.

“Why can’t we just be nice?” Well, we should be. But the greater question is whether, even when we cannot be nice—when the stakes are too high and the disagreement too deep—we can still remember that we are brothers, partners, and members of one covenant.

It is harsh to see our community in its present condition. But the darkness has also clarified what is at stake. We have no shortage of people prepared to fight for truth. What we urgently require is the knowledge of how Torah asks us to fight: not with weapons intended to eliminate the opponent, but with shields that allow both sides to remain standing.

“Why can’t we just be nice?” Well, we should be. But the greater question is whether, even when we cannot be nice—when the stakes are too high and the disagreement too deep—we can still remember that we are brothers, partners, and members of one covenant.

May we learn to fight fiercely for what we believe while holding fast to one another. May we restore dignity to disagreement, replace the hatred of the righteous with the uprightness demanded by the Netziv, and merit, from within the present darkness, to see the great light that Israel and the Jewish people so urgently need.

 

Photo: Rav Eliyahu Meir Feivelson, at an event held in his honor on the day after the attack.