Responding to Hate
Not what we envisioned writing about on Substack, but here we are
Last week, Israeli analysts stood in front of members of the Israeli Knesset, sharing data on the tens of thousands of people in Gaza who are in imminent danger of, or are currently experiencing starvation. Some government representatives screamed at them that it simply wasn’t happening, that they were perpetrating Hamas lies.
We consider the history and current reality of Israel and Palestine to be genuinely complex. Some parts of this war have been genuinely complex.
In this moment, however, we have to be clear that not everything is complicated. Using starvation as a war tactic is wrong from a moral and humanitarian level, strategically abhorrent, and impermissible in Jewish law.
We are grateful to Israelis who are bravely speaking out against the war, Palestinians who are bravely protesting Hamas, and Americans who are trying to find ways to work across political division to focus us on moral lines. I (Rena) am signing these letters, not because I believe they are the perfect response to this horrific moment but because it is important to indicate to our government and our leaders that large swaths of the Jewish people oppose what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza.
We are also continuing to donate to individuals in Gaza who are trying to escape, as well as groups that are raising money for food and supplies. We continue to cheer on our Israeli friends and family who are out in the streets demanding that Netanyahu end the war and ensure a swift return of the hostages. All of these responses are important.
Articles we’ve found helpful this week:
This one from Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the President of the Union for Reform Judaism
This one from Dahlia Scheindlin of Haaretz
This one from Jay Michaelson of The Forward.
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A question from you we’re answering this week is: “How to deal with hateful people in the world? How to respond to anti women/gay/trans/liberal comments from people who should know better?”
Dear Question Asker,
WOW, what a question! Just going straight to the hard, most important stuff it seems… We have been thinking a lot about the polarization in the world and how our Jewish values can shape what it means to be living in a time when we are becoming increasingly separated from people with different values from us. And this is all reinforced because the current presidential administration keeps passing resolutions and laws that are anti-women, anti-gay, anti-trans, and all around make it less safe to be a human here in America. So we are not responding to your question as though it is theoretical and only interpersonal: it exists in a very real context with too often devastating effects for many of us.
So let’s take the theoretical piece first: how to deal with hateful people in the world? To a certain extent, there always have been hateful people and there always will be. Recognizing this is a simple fact of life. The earliest Rabbis (circa 130 CE) taught: Bimkom sh’ein anashim, hishtadel l’hiyot ish - in a place without humanity, strive to be human. In other words, while there will always be hateful or cruel people around us, we are never free of our responsibility to treat others with dignity and care. In other words, no matter how others around us speak or act, we must not give up our bedrock values of kavod, treating others with respect, and chesed, kindness. Or, as Michelle Obama has famously said, “when they go low, we go high.” (As tempting as it is to take the Tom-from-Parks-n-Rec path - ‘I never take the high road! That’s for other people, there’s more room for me on the low road.’ A funny joke but NOT GOOD in practice).
But the way you phrased your question makes us wonder if you’re in contact with people making comments that are dehumanizing. We love to interrupt these moments with a simple, “really?” or “what do you mean?” that forces people to step back and explain what they are saying. This works specifically if you have faith in the person’s ability to be reflective. It also depends on the person and your relationship. If you’re in the back of a taxi, this may not be the moment. If it’s your aunt with whom you otherwise have a great relationship, maybe you say, “oh, what do you mean by that?”
The research on polarization and healthy relationships - from intimate relationships like marriages to large societal relationships - tells us that the point at which our relationships become in danger of breaking is when we develop contempt for those who are different from us (or those who have different views than us). This means, in our context, we have to do the work of challenging language and ideas while avoiding disdain or hatred. It means not recoiling in horror from people and thinking, “how could you say such a thing?! what a terrible person!” and cultivating curiosity instead.
This is extremely hard to do when we aren’t receiving it back or when we ourselves are being treated with contempt. Certainly we are not required to be open to everyone, regardless of how they treat us. But there is a difference in protecting your heart and protecting yourself from the painful words of others, and shutting ourselves down completely.
This is why we like to think of compassion not as something static, but as a practice. It’s similar to what we wrote about hope last week. Hope is a tool, and so is compassion. When we encounter hatred in others, how can we challenge it? How can we maintain compassion for how someone got to articulating something hateful and not accepting their hatred? This is the work of practicing what it means to be human. This nuance is what we must hold on to. This is not easy but this is our spiritual work.
Love, MR