mentalblog.com comments:
Tzemach, if you study the history of those days (in Gemara and Josephus/Yosifun - if there are other primary sources, I am unaware) you will see that the infighting was in fact the worst problem, and not only a spiritual cause, but a most probable military cause for the downfall of the Jewish nation at the time.
Josephus describes in detail how the only reason the war (and the Beis Hamikdosh of course) was lost was because of all the Jewish infighting - I recall that he wrote something like "It wasn't the Romans that won but the Jews that defeated themselves."
perhaps a better, more nuanced translation of sinas chinam is gratuitous or misplaced or wanton hatred
what's with the money for nothing chicks for free analysis?
Why not say that the hate was also the hate towards gentiles? Towards the Romans, and even towards the Greeks? After all, the Hasmonean geniuses decided to invite the Romans in to replace the Greeks even after they were no threat -- but Rome was.
Seems to me that the two answers posted don't answer the "chinom" question. Infighting usualy means different "opinions" about a given subject hence a reason. The reason is not "chinom".
I think that the "chinom" was not atributable to the Rabbis or leaders, they might have hated but it wasn't for "free" it came at a cost. That cost was legitimacy. But, the amcha who had no idea why either side held what they did, why did they hate? That's CHINOM.
For example. There are chasidim who hate "meshichistim". Fine! They can chazer maamorim they learn the sichos they are educated, therfore they have opinions as to what they think the Rebbe wants. Then there are the amcha who have no or a very limited idea of what the Rebbe wants or said about a given subject, let alone this one, who hate "meshichistim", why? Just because "that" Rabbi said what he said? Guess what, there are equally learned Rabbis who says different. Why do you hate? and vice a versa.
The same can be said for the average litvishe baalhabos who dispises and ridicules chasidim in general and chabad in particular. They have no idea what chasidus or chasidim are all about. I have spoken to many of these ignorants, man are they dumb. When you start explaining to them what a chasid is all about and what chassidus teaches they get this look of, huh, I didn't know that! I hate to say it, but even for the few of them that learn daf yomi it's lo pogah vlo nogah a chasid who learns half as much as them is a gaon and a tzadik.
Ignorance is "FREE" being educated costs. Thats why the "oilam is a goilam"
I don't chas v'shalom mean anything bad. I just want to make the point that if before one took a side on an issue he found out for himself why the other guy holds what he does he will at least erase the chinom part of his hatred.
Its just my take on the subject. Sorry for the length.
שנאת חנם means 'hatred for naught (without just cause)', not 'free hate'. See ויצאה חנם אין כסף
"Often an object of hate is a convenient target for all the negative projections."
The Aramaic translation of חנם is מגן (MaGoN). Curiously, it is the same שרש as the Hebrew word mogein - shield. In the contemporary metrosexual vernacular שנאת חנם can thus be termed as a defensive emotion.
I have this CD in my car. The Dear Heather by Leonard Cohen. And now I understand why these lyrics pierced me like a knife:
"Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defense."
why did the rabbis decided to obliterate the historical account of the destruction? by limiting the description to a couple of anecdotes in the talmud, they had done precisely that.
also, the concept of תן לי יבנה is truly horrifying, gemoro and rashi notwithstanding. the truth is that up to the time of the destruction the Temple had ceased to be the jewish religious center as the religion was practiced by the rabbis. in this aspect ארבע אמות של הלכה literally replaced the Temple.
tlamud as any human conversation is better with the anecdotes than with the historical accounts. Its the medium. The problem arises wheh human conversation is taken out of the context and presented as the historical account, and the rest of it..
DELETED
Edited By Siteowner
Shabbat 32:2 Rashi שנאת חנם -
שלא ראה בו דבר עבירה שיהא מותר לשנאתו, ושונאו that's it. in other words חנם means for no (halachic) reason. with no halachic permission to hate. so mundane.
Dear Tzemach,
"This is a grotesque oversimplification of the global cataclysm that determined the course of the world civilization for the millennia. "
From the esoteric standpoint, all of the global cataclysms of that era, including the rise of the Roman Empire, were simply epiphenomena. The real driving force in the western world's history was the spiritual development of the Jewish people, and if the sages tell us that "sinas chinom" brought about the churban of the Beis Sheini, I think they mean it.
All of those global cataclysms came about in order to manifest on the material level of Malchus, the spiritual strife which was caused by sinas chinom.
Perhaps if you wish to substitute an inherent psychological rationale for the stubborn survival of Am Yisroel for the tradition view that this is all Hashem's will & plan, you could so that it was the genius of the Jewish sages to lay the cause for the Churban and the Golus on the "sinas chinom" of the Jews themselves, for by making the Jews themselves responsible for all the tsuris they had to endure, the Jews remained at the very least in their own minds the masters of their fate. Thus, what they did mattered.
And it did.
And it does.
I did not have time to read all the comments so I do not know if I am parroting anyone; apologies if I am.
Chinam may translate literally as free, but I have always understood it as baseless...baseless hatred.
can you think of an example in your own life when hate is "baseless"? Hate might be for the wrong reasons but it is never ever "baseless". This is precisely the problem with this jingle. People repeat it "thoughtlessly" and then they think they just made an intellectual discovery. Indeed HJ, you are "parroting" but no the people on this thread.
I always understood the translation of sinas-chinam to be "undeserved hatred." (I actually don't like the word “hate” here, because in our society we may have relegated the word hate into something other than sina. Perhaps sina would mean anything from disgust, intolerance or basically that feeling that we just wish that guy didn't exist...)
lemoshul, the fact that I can't stand the guy down the street, for whatever reason, is in fact an overreaction and wrong on my part - I can disagree with him or feel offended, mistreated, etc, but he doesn’t deserve my “hatred” or the like...
ce, feelings have range, give up boxing the terms and the reason for the feelings. You do hate the the guy down the street. Its an emotion not a car model.
It dosen't mean that it's right though.
As long as I still hate the guy down the block, it prevents me from having a positive relationship with him. Sure, it's an emotion, but does any religion promote allowing for all emotions in all situaltions? It can still be wrong, can't it?
The problem is not with the sinas it's with the chinom. Yiddishkeit has been successful because it allows or promotes the channeling of many different emotions, positive and negative. I have lived in a non-Western society in which there was absolutely no outlet for any "negative" feelings at all, and the repression that required was and is a severe psychological burden for the people within that culture. Chazal know very well that yidden will negative reactions to each other, I think that what they are stressing is that unwarranted negative reactions are as bad as the avodah zarah which caused the churban of Shlomo's Beis.
Sinas chinom means that - despite having some ostensibly legitimate rationalization for the hatred - the bottom line is that you can't stand somebody else just because - by no fault of his own - he exists.
It's not his fault that he exists, anymore than it's your fault that you exist. It's not his fault that he eats perfectly good food and turns it into stinking poo anymore than it's your fault that you do the same thing. Of course, as reprehensible as it is that this guy makes foul, stinky shits in the toilet, your rational self knows good and well that that's not a sound reason for hating him. So, you back it up with a reason that seems more legitimate. He breathes funny, he chews with his mouth open, he yells at his kids, he knocks you with his butt while securing a place in the kiddush buffet line, he's a Brestlaver, v'chu'.
Following sidney's & tony's line, I think it is not the intention of the authors of the sinas chinam cliche to undermine the emotion that is hate (emasculated robots have projected their own limp worldview on that phrase) rather it seems they want us to examine the real underlying motives for hate. Do you hate him or his ideals? Or what came first you feeling uncomfortable with the person or the ideals the person professes? This is also in line with Rashi in Shabbos.
To hate someone completely because of their political/ideological/social views or behaviors is a gross oversimplification of the complex multilayered experience of each human.
No one thing defines the whole person.
I'll make it more simple.
When you hate someone, do wish that what you hate about him would change, or do you simply wish that he himself would just disappear?
i think that Rashi greatly simplifies the whole concept. what he says is that any hate is חנם as long as it is not permitted by law. in other words, שנאת חנם should be simply translated as “hate.” חנם comes to simply exclude the “permissible” hate.
what Tony says is a synopsis of the chassidic take on the issue as interpreted by the Rebbeim, who focused extensively on the term חנם. it is generally amazing how every generation is trying to force its culture onto past generations. take, for example, חז"ל who saw in the verses of שיר השרים references to a talmudic scholar immersed in his study of talmudic law, or שמואל הנביא מחדש חידושים בדין מסוכנת etc. etc. after a while it becomes difficult to strip the original text down to its original meaning.
"do wish that what you hate about him would change, or do you simply wish that he himself would just disappear"
and you can dissect a person away from the shoresh of his neshomo, yeh right.. give me a break. And next you know its not really the person but G-ds messenger and the rest of the tired baloney.
We're not talking about shoresh haneshomoh here, TA.
We're talking about something much more down-to-earth. When we love someone it is NOT because we see his shoresh haneshomoh and we hate him it's not because we don't see his shoresh haneshomoh.
It's pretty simple. Baseless hatred means that, deep down, you hate the guy for something that he is helpless to control - the very fact that he exists and takes up space.
If you say, "May he live and be well. I don't begrudge him anything. He just better stay the hell away from me and all other decent people, the sick bastard!" I would say that this could be a legitimate form of hate.
expanding on faruq: for no reason.
Commenting by HaloScan
