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your enemies and pray for 
those who persecute you”). 
This is entirely untrue. There 
is a wonderful teaching 
in Avot deRabbi Natan: “Who 
is the greatest hero? One who 
turns an enemy into a friend.” 
What sets the Torah apart is 
its understanding of the psy-
chology of hatred.
If someone has done us 
harm, it is natural to feel 
aggrieved. What then are 
we to do in order to ful-
fil the command, “Do not 
hate your brother in your 
heart?” The Torah’s answer is: 
Speak. Converse. Challenge. 
Remonstrate. It may be that 
the other person had a good 
reason for doing what he did. 
Or it may be that he was act-
ing out of malice, in which 
case our remonstration will 
give him, if he so chooses, the 
opportunity to apologize, and 
we should then forgive him. 
In either case, talking it 
through is the best way of 
restoring a broken relation-
ship. Once again, we encoun-
ter here one of the leitmotivs 
of Judaism: the power of 
speech to create, sustain and 
mend relationships.
Maimonides cites a key 
prooftext. The story is told (2 
Samuel 13) of how Amnon, 
one of King David’s children, 
raped his half-sister Tamar. 
When Absalom, Tamar’s 
brother, hears about the epi-
sode, his reaction seems on 
the face of it irenic, serene:
Her brother Absalom said 
to her, “Has that Amnon, 
your brother, been with you? 
Be quiet, now my sister; he is 
your brother. Don’t take this 
thing to heart.” And Tamar 
lived in her brother Absalom’s 
house, a desolate woman. 
When King David heard all 
this, he was furious. Absalom 
never said a word to Amnon, 
either good or bad …”

Appearances, however, 
deceive. Absalom is anything 
but forgiving. He waits for 
two years, and then invites 
Amnon to a festive meal 
at sheep-shearing time. He 
gives instructions to his men: 
“Listen! When Amnon is in 
high spirits from drinking 
wine and I say to you, ‘Strike 
Amnon down,’ then kill him.” 
And so it happened.
Absalom’s silence was not 
the silence of forgiveness but of 
hate — the hate of which Pierre 
de LaClos spoke in Les Liaisons 
Dangereuses when he wrote the 
famous line: “Revenge is a dish 
best served cold.”
There is another equally 
powerful example in Bereishit: 
“Now Israel loved Joseph 
more than any of his other 
sons, because he had been 
born to him in his old age, 
and he made a richly orna-
mented robe for him. When 
his brothers saw that their 
father loved him more than 
any of them, they hated him 
and could not speak a kind 
word to him (velo yachlu 
dabro leshalom, literally, ‘they 
could not speak with him to 
peace’).”
On this, R. Jonathan 
Eybeschuetz (c. 1690-1764) 
comments:
“Had they been able to 
sit together as a group, they 
would have spoken to one 
another and remonstrated 
with each other and would 
eventually have made their 
peace with one another. The 
tragedy of conflict is that it 
prevents people from talking 
together and listening to one 
another.” A failure to commu-
nicate is often the prelude to 
revenge.

CONCLUSION
The inner logic of the two 
verses in our sedra is there-
fore this: “Love your neigh-

bor as yourself. But not all 
neighbors are loveable. There 
are those who, out of envy or 
malice, have done you harm. 
I do not therefore command 
you to live as if you were 
angels, without any of the 
emotions natural to human 
beings. I do, however, for-
bid you to hate. That is why, 
when someone does you 
wrong, you must confront the 
wrongdoer. You must tell him 
of your feelings of hurt and 
distress. 
 It may be that you com-
pletely misunderstood his 
intentions. Or it may be that 
he genuinely meant to do you 
harm, but now, faced with 
the reality of the injury he 
has done you, he may sin-
cerely repent of what he did. 
If, however, you fail to talk it 
through, there is a real possi-
bility you will bear a grudge 
and in the fullness of time, 
come to take revenge — as 
did Absalom.”
What is so impressive 
about the Torah is that it both 
articulates the highest of high 
ideals and, at the same time, 
speaks to us as human beings. 
If we were angels, it would 
be easy to love one another. 
But we are not. An ethic that 
commands us to love our 
enemies, without any hint as 
to how we are to achieve this, 
is simply unliveable. Instead, 
the Torah sets out a realistic 
program. By being honest 
with one another, talking 
things through, we may be 
able to achieve reconciliation 
— not always, to be sure, but 
often. How much distress 
and even bloodshed might be 
spared if humanity heeded 
this simple command. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 

served as the chief rabbi of the 

United Hebrew Congregations of the 

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings 

are available to all at rabbisacks.org. 

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