The invisible devil

Imagine a force, that started every war; imagine a force that started every relationship battle

Such a force exists, but it is buried deep within us

For are we too, not humans; and were humans not the ones who did this

What is this demon lying in the grass, ready to strike, inflicting internal and hence external poison – paralyzing human sensitivity and transforming our inborn sensitive hearts into furnaces of destruction?!

It’s called jealousy

Our sages teach, the first Temple, destroyed for the three cardinal sins of idolatry, adultery and murder – after seventy years the Jews repented – and never again indulged in such lurid despicable traits.

Yet the sin – as they say, the hidden sin – of the second Temple, obviously has not been rectified, because two thousand years later, we still await the messianic redemption?!

What is this hidden sin?

It is in fact, well know – for it is the sin of brotherly hate, of looking down at another person!

But if that’s the case, why is it called hidden?

For if I God-forbid committed one of the three evil cardinal sins, “murder, adultery or idolatry,” I know it was a crime of passion and I know immediately afterwards, that I shouldn’t of – the guilt will remind me to repent.

But if I hate someone, I know not why I hate, and hence I cannot uproot this evil.

And here is the shocking simple truth:

We never ever ever look askance at someone else, because we are so righteous that their evil bothers us – none of us are that righteous – and even if we were, we wouldn’t look down on the other, only on the evil they are doing!

As the Tanya explains, the consummate righteous person despises – never hates, evil; for to hate, must mean that it has affected my ego, and how can another’s evil affect my ego?!

Ironically, it’s not their evil; rather their compassion that bothers me!

You see, by nature, we all want to be happy and as four thousand years of irrational anti-Semitism culminating in the holocaust, perpetuated by the Arabs today, have proven, it is the compassionate soul, that are hated, not the evil one!

For it is compassion, that creates happiness (as Einstein said, “the Germans couldn’t be against Jews as a race, for Jews come from every race, rather, they were against the compassionate tendency found in all Jews.”)

In other words, jealousy lies buried deep within our subconscious ego – the ego itself is something, as the Baal Shem Tov teaches, we aren’t even aware we have! (He gives an example, of a person who falls asleep in a wagon, and the driver goes up a hill, then flattens out on the higher road; so to, we don’t even know we think so grandly of ourselves – but if we didn’t, we couldn’t get angered, which is a by-product of jealousy!)

So the bottom line is this, we must have absolute clarity, that just as children don’t judge others, they are open-hearted – make friends with anyone – for as the Ran says, “A child finds the imperative to play, more important than being right!” (as they are naturally not egoistical, sensing their inferiority, relative to the adult world) similarly, whenever we hate God-forbid, it is not rooted in the conscious accusations which are rationalizations justifying our hatred; it is rooted in the subconscious egotistical pride, which has been wounded, either personally or vicariously, namely “someone has something we think we too are entitled to, but we don’t have.”