Since every Jew has a divine soul, and since the commandment to love one’s fellow is based on the essential unity of the souls, it follows that this commandment applies to every Jew without exception. In fact, however, we find the Talmud exhorting us to hate certain fellow Jews. How do we reconcile these apparently contradictory requirements? The Alter Rebbe proceeds to clarify:
As for the Talmudic statement;) that if one sees his friend sinning, he should hate him, and should also relate the fact to his teacher so that he too will hate him—how does this conform with what was said above?
וּמַה שֶּׁכָּתוּב בַּגְּמָרָא, שֶׁמִּי שֶׁרוֹאֶה בַּחֲבֵירוֹ שֶׁחָטָא – מִצְוָה לִשְׂנֹאותוֹ, וְגַם לוֹמַר לְרַבּוֹ שֶׁיִּשְׂנָאֵהוּ.
This applies only to one’s companion—one’s equal—in the study of Torah and the observance of the mitzvot.
הַיְינוּ – בַּחֲבֵירוֹ בְּתוֹרָה וּמִצְוֹת,
The sinner in question is a Torah-observant scholar but has lapsed in this one instance. In this case, his sin is much more severe than usual, since it is written that even the inadvertent misdeeds of a scholar are as grave as deliberate sins.;) But even this general assumption of the gravity of his conduct is not sufficient cause to hate him, as the Alter Rebbe continues. Yet another condition must first be satisfied:
He has also fulfilled with him—with the sinner—the injunction, “You shall repeatedly reprove your friend.”;)The word used here for “your friend” (עֲמִיתֶךָ) also indicates, as the Talmud points out, עַם שֶׁאִתְּךָ—“he who is on a par with you in the Torah and the mitzvot,”;) who, nevertheless, has not repented of his sin, as it is written in Sefer Charedim.
וּכְבָר קִיֵּים בּוֹ מִצְוַת "הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת עֲמִיתֶךָ" – עַם שֶׁאִתְּךָ בְּתוֹרָה וּבְמִצְוֹת, וְאַף־עַל־פִּי־כֵן לֹא שָׁב מֵחֶטְאוֹ, כְּמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב בְּסֵפֶר חֲרֵדִים.
At this point, there is no need to exaggerate the gravity of his sin: it is clearly a deliberate transgression.
Footnotes
8.
Cf. Pesachim 113b.
9.
From a note by the Rebbe. Apparently, the Rebbe is addressing the difficulty inherent in the requirement to hate a pious and scholarly Jew who lapses on occasion but to love one who is far removed from study and observance of the Torah. The reason for this differentiation cannot be, says the Rebbe, that one might learn from the lapses of the pious Jew, who is on a level similar to one’s own, but is less likely to learn from the behavior of the nonobservant Jew, who in any case lives differently in general. The Rebbe rejects this on several grounds: (1) If the requirement to hate the sinner was based on the fear that one might come to learn from him, then this hatred should be directed at a sinner who is in contact with oneself at any level, not necessarily one’s peer in Torah observance or scholarship. (2) To avoid imitation of the sinner, it would be enough to keep one’s distance from him; why the need to hate him? (3) The whole concept that someone is to be hated not because of something hateful about him but to protect the hater is most difficult to accept. Chasidut requires one to actually suffer harm himself if failure to do so might lead to the remote possibility of his harming his fellow. Such a doctrine would certainly not countenance the suggestion of definitely harming one’s fellow (by hating him) in order to forestall possible harm to oneself, and, at that, to forestall a harm that could befall one only if he failed to resist his own evil inclination! Clearly, then, the requirement to hate the sinner is not intended to solve one’s own problem of learning from his sinful ways. (This problem is in any event solved by the exhortation of the Mishnah, “Do not fraternize with a wicked man”; Avot 1:7.) The Alter Rebbe’s differentiation between one’s peer in Torah and mitzvot and others is thus grounded in the reason given in the text.
10.
Leviticus 19:17.
11.
Shevuot 30a.