 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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