SEPTEMBER 8 • 2022 | 45

enemies of Israel, but the former were 
not. In a later age, Isaiah would make a 
remarkable prophecy — that a day would 
come when the Egyptians would suffer 
their own oppression. They would cry out 
to God, who would rescue them just as He 
had rescued the Israelites:
“When they cry out to the Lord because 
of their oppressors, He will send them a 
savior and defender, and He will rescue 
them. So the Lord will make Himself 
known to the Egyptians, and in that day 
they will acknowledge the Lord” (Isaiah 
19:20-21).
The wisdom of Moses’ command not 
to despise Egyptians still shines through 
today. If the people had continued to hate 
their erstwhile oppressors, Moses would 
have taken the Israelites out of Egypt but 
would have failed to take Egypt out of the 
Israelites. They would have continued to 
be slaves, not physically but psycholog-
ically. They would be slaves to the past, 
held captive by the chains of resentment, 
unable to build the future. To be free, you 
have to let go of hate. That is a difficult 
truth but a necessary one.
No less surprising is Moses’ insistence: 
“Do not despise an Edomite, because he 
is your brother.” Edom was, of course, 
the other name of Esau. There was a time 
when Esau hated Jacob and vowed to kill 
him. Besides which, before the twins were 
born, Rebecca received an oracle telling 
her, “Two nations are in your womb, and 
two peoples from within you will be sepa-
rated; one people will be stronger than the 
other, and the elder will serve the young-
er” (Gen. 25:23). Whatever these words 
mean, they seem to imply that there will 
be eternal conflict between the two broth-
ers and their descendants.
At a much later age, during the Second 
Temple period, the Prophet Malachi said: 
“‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares 
the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau 
I have hated…” (Malachi 1:2-3). Centuries 
later still, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said, 
“It is a Halachah [rule, law, inescapable 
truth] that Esau hates Jacob.” Why then 
does Moses tell us not to despise Esau’s 
descendants?
The answer is simple. Esau may hate 
Jacob, but it does not follow that Jacob 
should hate Esau. To answer hate with 
hate is to be dragged down to the level of 

your opponent. When, in the course of a 
television program, I asked Judea Pearl, 
father of the murdered journalist Daniel 
Pearl, why he was working for reconcilia-
tion between Jews and Muslims, he replied 
with heartbreaking lucidity, “Hate killed 
my son. Therefore, I am determined to 
fight hate.” 
As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, 
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only 
light can do that. Hate cannot drive out 
hate, only love can do that.”
Or as Kohelet said, there is “a time to 
love and a time to hate, a time for war and 
a time for peace” (Eccl. 3:8).
It was none other than Rabbi Shimon 
bar Yochai who said that when Esau met 
Jacob for the last time, he kissed and 
embraced him “with a full heart.” Hate, 
especially between family, is not eternal 
and inexorable. Always be ready, Moses 
seems to have implied, for reconciliation 
between enemies.

ADVICE FOR TODAY
Contemporary Games Theory — the 
study of decision-making — suggests the 
same. Martin Nowak’s program “Generous 
Tit-for-Tat” is a winning strategy in the 
scenario known as the Iterated Prisoner’s 
Dilemma, an example created for the 
study of cooperation of two individuals. 
 Tit-for-Tat says: Start by being nice to 
your opponent, then do to them what they 
do to you (in Hebrew, middah keneged 
middah). Generous Tit-for-Tat says, don’t 
always do to they what they do to you, 
for you may found yourself locked into 
a mutually destructive cycle of retalia-
tion. Every so often ignore (i.e. forgive) 
your opponent’s last harmful move. That, 
roughly speaking, is what the Sages meant 
when they said that God originally creat-
ed the world under the attribute of strict 
justice but saw that it could not survive 
through this alone. Therefore, He built 
into it the principle of compassion. 
Moses’ two commands against hate 
are testimony to his greatness as a lead-
er. It is the easiest thing in the world to 
become a leader by mobilizing the forces 
of hate. That is what Radovan Karadzic 
and Slobodan Milosevic did in the former 
Yugoslavia and it led to mass murder and 
ethnic cleansing. It is what the state-con-
trolled media did — describing Tutsis 

as inyenzi, (“cockroaches”) — before the 
1994 genocide in Rwanda. It is what doz-
ens of preachers of hate are doing today, 
often using the internet to communicate 
paranoia and incite acts of terror. Finally, 
this was the technique mastered by Hitler 
as a prelude to the worst-ever crime of 
humans against humanity.
The language of hate is capable of cre-
ating enmity between people of different 
faiths and ethnicities who have lived 
peaceably together for centuries. It has 
consistently been the most destructive 
force in history, and even knowledge of 
the Holocaust has not put an end to it, 
even in Europe. It is the unmistakable 
mark of toxic leadership.
In his classic work, Leadership, James 
MacGregor Burns distinguishes between 
transactional and transformational lead-
ers. The former address people’s interests. 
The latter attempt to raise their sights. 
“Transforming leadership is elevating. It is 
moral but not moralistic. Leaders engage 
with followers, but from higher levels of 
morality; in the enmeshing of goals and 
values both leaders and followers are 
raised to more principled levels of judg-
ment.” 
Leadership at its highest level trans-
forms those who exercise it and those 
who are influenced by it. The great leaders 
make people better, kinder, nobler than 
they would otherwise be. That was the 
achievement of Washington, Lincoln, 
Churchill, Gandhi and Mandela. The 
paradigm case was Moses, the man who 
had more lasting influence than any other 
leader in history.
He did it by teaching the Israelites not 
to hate. A good leader knows: Hate the sin 
but not the sinner. Do not forget the past 
but do not be held captive by it. Be will-
ing to fight your enemies but never allow 
yourself to be defined by them or become 
like them. Learn to love and forgive. 
Acknowledge the evil men do but stay 
focused on the good that is in our power 
to do. Only thus do we raise the moral 
sights of humankind and help redeem the 
world we share. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the 

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have been 

made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This essay 

was written in 2013.

