Don't Carry That

Double Rebuke

*This will be delivered at Temple Israel Center on Saturday, May 11th, 2024

I have a relative who sees the world very differently than the way I do. We’ve had some intense conversations about this. Sometimes they end amicably and others end in more of an intense stalemate. One thing he has been saying forever that I always found a bit crass, slightly hyperbolic, and kind of jarring is that all Jews, no matter their ideology, ended up on the same cattle car.

For a long time, I would always ignore this line but more and more, it has been ringing in my head. As a people, we find ourselves in a particularly heightened state of internal strife. The last few weeks of protest regarding the war in Israel and Gaza have led to an unceasing amount of awful words being lobbed from one side to the other.

It feels like we’re embroiled in never ending game of mudslinging. On a more particular level, we in the Jewish community are constantly fighting the battles about who has the right Jewish message, who is saying the wrong thing, and who can be loudest and most exclamatory.

To the Jews on campuses and elsewhere parroting the language of an intifada revolution, I hear your anger and would ask that you think carefully about using language that has been used in the past to kill Jews. To the Jews who are part of the movement that is shouting for “no Zionists to be welcomed here,” I would ask you to think about what that means for the safety of your fellow Jews. Your identity as an anti-Zionist can exist without my identity being stripped and threatened.

To the Jews who are calling for a revoking of the status of the Jews that protest for a ceasefire, I would ask you to rethink what you’re saying. To the Jews who are mocking their fellow Jews for what they perceive as a shallow engagement with Judaism, I would say be wary of that judgement. And to the Jews like Rueven Kahane who was arrested after driving his car into a safety marshal at a protest this week, I would say there is a right way and a wrong way to wield our words, let alone our motor vehicles.

Intersectionality is messy. A focus on competing identifies that attempts to give voice to the marginalized is complicated when many groups argue for their marginalization. The events of these recent weeks leave no doubt about that. It has left many people hurt and many in need of rethinking their words. Because of how fraught that is, and how widely so many of us have missed the mark, this week’s parshah and its powerful but concise focus on rebuke feels resonant.

In this weeks parshah, a special one for me as it was my bar mitzvah portion, we read about what I think is one of the hardest mitzvot in all of the Torah in Leviticus 19:17:

לֹֽא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא׃

You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account.

It may be a familiar verse for you as it immediately precedes the “golden rule” where we learn to love our fellow as ourselves. We’ll get back to that. In and of itself, the verse is equal parts clear and murky. Don’t hate someone internally; rebuke them (literally: your people). Then, the perplexing piece; don’t carry the sin.

Our first explanation comes from the Talmud¹. It highlights two important linguistic pieces from the text. First the text specifies “in your heart,” which to them implies:

This teaches that the verse speaks of hatred in the heart.

In other words, don’t think that this verse is talking about only hatred that manifests physically. It’s not just that you can’t beat someone up because you hate them. You have to deal with your hate internally. From there, it picks up on the doubling language of the Hebrew phrase “rebuke them”:

As it is stated: “You shall rebuke [hokhe’aḥ tokhiaḥ] your neighbor.” If one rebuked him for his action but he did not accept the rebuke, from where is it derived that he must rebuke him again? The verse states: “You shall rebuke [hokhe’aḥ tokhiaḥ],” and the double language indicates he must rebuke in any case. One might have thought that one should continue rebuking him even if his face changes due to humiliation. Therefore, the verse states: “Do not bear sin because of him”; the one giving rebuke may not sin by embarrassing the other person.

The repetitive form of the verb rebuke in Hebrew gives the Talmud license to argue that even if the person whom you are rebuking resists, give it another go. But there is a limit. Namely, if you’re unrelenting in your rebuke and your friend becomes embarrassed, you have to stop. Otherwise, you incur guilt.

It’s a masterclass in the ways of the Talmud. The close read allows the Rabbis the opportunity to pull the text apart piece by piece to tease out an important message. We have to be lovingly persistent in our quest to help those around us be the best versions of themselves, and we have to know when to stop. There’s a constant waxing and waning in our interpersonal relationships.

Especially in moments like this, when tensions are heightened and chants abound about whose blood has more value than others, it would behoove all of us to sit with these texts and turn them over again and again.

So many of us are fueled by a sense of indignation right now. That feeling, especially when it comes from seeing something problematic from a fellow Jewish person, is ancient. We get that from this verse and its commentaries, especially this powerful reminder from the Ramban² who sees a link between this verse and the verse that follows that warns us not to bear a grudge or take vengeance. First he says, get curious about your anger. Ask this person why they did what they did. In doing so, you alleviate your burden of anger and you’ll learn about him and perhaps he will ask for forgiveness. And finally:

After that God admonishes [in the following verse] that you are not to take vengeance of him, nor bear a grudge in your heart against him because of what he has done to you, for it is possible that you will not hate him, but you will remember in your heart your neighbor’s sin against you; therefore God admonished him that he is to erase his brother’s sin and transgression against him from his heart. Following that admonition, God commanded that he love him as himself

Hatred left unfettered leads to loathing which can lead to vengeance. That golden rule verse is not linked here coincidentally. That’s the work.

When read back to back, as we did in the ritual Torah reading, they speak to each other. It’s really easy to hate because hate is often the surface level manifestation of more complicated feelings. We see things we don’t like and we grasp that enmity as a power source. But that doesn’t end well.

Rebuke is so important in times like this. But there is a needle to be threaded. Within that threading, one of the emotions we have to lean on is love, as trite as it may be. We receive that message loud and clear across the spectrum of commentary.

Relaying a tale about this verse, the Baal Shem Tov³ shares the following:

Torah scholars, leaders who admonish the people, must do so out of love, like a parent chastises their child whom they love, as it is written: “For whom God loves, God corrects” (Proverbs 3:12). But individuals who do so for their own prestige, for money, or for other self-centered reasons, God forbid, and who agitate their listeners with their woeful voices, about them, the verse says: “My tears were my bread.

This refers to two types of speakers, as in the following parable I heard from my Master: A king sent his only son away [for a long time]. He sent after him two servants. The first one returned with a disparaging report about the son. The second servant, however, while bring the same report, sympathized with the pain of the king and of his son, who had been gone so long that he forgot the ways of royalty, and all who had once honored him now belittled him. Then, the king was filled with compassion.

A loving relationship is one that is built on rebuke. But there is a worry here about self-serving rebuke. A scolding that is meant to be performative of which there is no shortage these days, undermines that very relationship.

There is an inherent expectation of disappointment in relationships across the board, and certainly within the Jewish world. That’s how it goes. But it’s how we talk about those who have disappointed us that demarcates between the healthy and the toxic. If we can bring some level of sympathy, even when it’s painful, especially when we feel hurt, then compassion results.

Our final text brings us back to the pairing of the reminder to not hate and the one to love your fellow as yourself. Shlomo Ephraim Lunschitz, better known as the Kli Yakar served as the Rabbi of Prague during the 17th century and was a master Torah commentator. Here is his take on these verses:

When love is found among the people of Israel, every person seeks out goodness for their fellow Jew. This comes in the form of rebuke so that no one falls prey to sinning. But when we hate one another, we never rebuke. On the contrary, we’re insincere when we tell them, “you didn’t do anything wrong.” This is beecause our whole intention is to banish him in order to see his downfall. This characteristic is one that we have been battling since the original sinat hinam (baseless hatred) brought down the 2nd Temple until this day. It continues onward until we receive divine assistance to remove our stoneheartedness.

Some of you have been boiling in your seats even since I started. I know you’re picturing your “enemy.” Maybe it’s the Jew on the college campus who has been appropriating Jewish rituals, spelling Hebrew incorrectly, or wearing a kaffiyeh. Others among you are thinking of the hawkish old friend from college who is saying on Facebook, to hell with Palestinians. Bombs away. You’re thinking, why should I love them?

To be clear, I am not telling you to love them. I am saying, if you do love them, offer them a loving rebuke. Start, as the Ramban suggest with curiosity. Why are you doing what you’re doing? Seek to dig. To hate them and never rebuke embeds something toxic deep within you as the Gemara argues.

There are red lines. I believe there are people who have gone beyond the pale. There are people who have said things that to be a Zionist is racist or that my identity as a Jew is problematic. I am not interested in engaging with people who don’t see my humanity.

I am interested in the brutally painful but vital work of trying to see if we all can be better at offering this rebuke. Over 2000 years ago, we lost our spiritual center not because we disagreed but because we misplaced our ability to love each other when we disagreed.

We are all the emissaries in the story of the Ba’al Shem Tov. We’re all the loved children of God. Can we find the ways to still find those words when we feel so far apart like the Kli Yakar asks? We’re in this together. Our enemies certainly think so. I’m working on remembering that for myself. Perhaps we all can help one another share this load.

1. Arachin 16b

2. Also known as Nachmanides, Moshe ben Nachman-12th century Spain/Israel

3. Kedoshim 14:1-Founder of Chasidism 18th century, Poland/Ukraine