Many people think that only physical organic viruses are a danger to human health.Others have thought more deeply and realised that mental attitudes, such as cleanliness, can prevent the proliferation of dangerous pathogens. Some have reflected even deeper, and understood that there are systemic underlying causes to the spread of viral sicknesses, especially among certain disadvantaged and fragile populations, such as the poor, who are often the first-line victims of illnesses. Social equality could therefore be a way to envision solutions. However the most lethal and dangerous virus according to Torah, and the one with the most destructive effects is hate.
Hate, Sinn’a שנאה in Hebrew, is the very core of body, mind, and soul disintegration.
Wherever it is promoted, and not uprooted, the most violent and lethal symptoms can follow. Minds succumb to the psychological hate attacks on their own reasoning, and logical pathways get distorted. Hate proceeds with stealth before taking over emotions and behaviour. Once it has taken over the individual is ready to be bought or sold, wherever hate sets its traps. No community or individual is safe from it unless they are committed to heal themselves, and those around them, from this unforgiving disease.
Even before we turn to Love, we must first eradicate hate. Hate can use Love’s pathways, and make people turn to hating in the name of protecting what they love. We must be extremely vigilant. Hate uses whatever mental excuses to breed words and thoughts, and start multiplying again. It is very important to know from the start that hate’s primordial territory of proliferation is language. First it uses the language of thoughts, then it goes to the mouth. From there it proliferates through the ears of the listener, and thus it can enter in the language of thoughts and breed again. This virus of hate can lead to the total destruction of the soul, G-d forbid, if the person does not ask for the help of Hashem, and whole heartedly repent.
In the Book of Psalms, King David said: “your haters Hashem I do hate…” meaning the spirits of hate, the viruses of hate, against them should their own energy return, because it is Your creation they hate. So we cannot allow hate to take any room in our hearts, because any form of hate is directed at the Creator.
Racism is a spawn of hate. Its many forms, anti-black, antisemitism, anti-Arabism, anti-asianism, and all such hateful discourses, are the symptoms society is infected with this self destructive virus. Hate was breeding COVID-19 when no one was looking. The silly competitive conflict over treatments between countries was the real test, not the disease. Hate just punched humanity in the face.
Two years later, we are still trying to stand up. Our inability to identify the root cause as hate, and face our weakness, is showing. It is hard to admit to this generation’s youth that we have hate in our hearts, and that it is what led to their endangering.
Black and brown ghetto youth shooting each other, families torn apart, communities economically destroyed by the sheer power of this viral mental infection. Is it surprising that such things happen, in a country where everyone saw George Floyd after countless others like him, killed by hate?
Hate, not just cold heartedness or indifference, caused the murder of 6 million Jews in WWII, millions of Ethiopians during the Derg regime, killed 1 million Rwandans in a single month, and hundreds of thousands in Algeria in the 90’s, among other contemporary tragedies.
Hate spreads lies. The Jew-hating manual called Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been purposely promoted by Western Far Right parties in many Arab countries, with no other objective than spreading the hate virus. Some people make profit out of spreading hate, they are the ground zero of this stupidity-inducing contagion, which zaps the neurons of decent humans to turn them into reactive beasts.
Any true sincere spiritual path should apply its own forces on helping reverse the damages of this terribly destructive disease. For Jewish people, Yom Kippur is the moment in the Jewish year where we focus our minds and hearts on the redeeming and healing power of repentance. We must urgently repent, and call everyone around us to do as well, from the evil influence of hate. We must remind ourselves that it is from within one’s heart that the world battle against hate starts. We must evaluate hate’s negative impacts on our surroundings, personal to global. Then make strong inner decisions to forbid hate any entrance into our minds, and never allow its diseased language to proliferate in our hearing, or thinking space.
All other religious communities should do the same, for the benefit of their constituency.
Whether we are from one religious background or another, let us remember that we all take the Almighty as our refuge. We all know and believe that Love is the true nature of our bond with the Originator of the Universe, beyond the diversity of names and languages to describe that bond.
In a famous song Stevie Wonder rightfully warned : “Hate is going round, breaking many hearts, Stop it please before it’s gone too far!” While he cannot physically see, Mr Wonder’s vision is brighter than many millions with fully functional eyes. It clearly shows us who deliberately choses to turn their gaze away, from a truth everyone is supposed to know. FJN wishes to everyone
Gmar Hatima TOVA
May you be written in the Book of the living and the loving!