SEPTEMBER 12 • 2019 | 55
A Basic Conflict
T
he comedian Jay Mohr
said that the key to his
marriage is not that
he and his wife like the same
things, but rather that they hate
the same things. Their mutual
loathing of other things brings
them closer together and
creates a deeper bond.
At first, I thought this
was kind of funny, but
realized that it contained
a darker truth about
many of the problems in
our society today.
It may not be a bad
thing if we and our
friends and family hate
the same songs, movies
or foods. However, it
is very destructive to
society if we hate other
groups of people for who
they are or how they live their
lives in order to create connec-
tions within our own group.
This need to hate others
just to become closer to the
members of our own group
comes from two conflicting
impulses that all humans seem
to have wired within us. We
have natural inclinations toward
goodness. We also have natural
inclinations toward hating peo-
ple who are different from us.
Nicholas Christakis, a profes-
sor at Yale, writes, “We have this
capacity to surrender ourselves
to the benefits of the whole
group. Now, that can also lead
us astray. We can so identify
with our own group that we
demonize other groups …
“There’
ve been many exper-
iments with small children
in this regard. You can take a
group of 3-year-olds and ran-
domly assign them T-shirts of
different colors. The children
know that they didn’
t do any-
thing to deserve these colors,
and yet, once you assign them
these colors, they immediately
hate the other group. Those
blue T-shirted children should
be punished. They’
re awful
children. They shouldn’
t get any
toys.
“It’
s crazy. You just scratch the
surface of human beings, and
you get this quality.”
Our Torah portion is con-
cerned with this demonizing
of the other in order to
create closer tribal bonds.
Deuteronomy 21:10
begins, “When you go to
war against your enemies
...” The word enemies
here seems redundant.
Whom else would you
go to war against? How
many times, though, have
leaders created enemies of
others who were no real
threat in order to create
patriotism and unity
among their followers?
How many times have
they tried to make their own
people feel superior by dehu-
manizing others?
There are some truly danger-
ous people in the world, and
they do terrible and destruc-
tive things. They need to be
stopped, and sometimes war is
the only response left. So many
wars, though, are fought just
because we have been taught
to hate who the other person
is, not what he does. We see
others as different, and alien,
and, therefore, threatening to
our way of life. This threat is
rarely true, but it serves as an
effective deflection from the
issues that a group of people
may have among themselves.
Instead of trying to figure out a
solution that benefits everyone,
we look to blame others for our
problems.
The Torah, by demanding
that we only battle against those
who are a genuine danger to
us, is asking us a fundamental
question. Can we love ourselves
without hating others?
Rabbi Aaron Bergman is a rabbi at
Adat Shalom Synagogue in
Farmington Hills.
Parshat
Ki Tetze:
Deuteronomy
21:16-25:19;
Isaiah
54:1-10.
Rabbi Aaron
Bergman
Spirit
torah portion
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