This past Shabbat was the 9th day of the Hebrew month called Av, the day in which we mourn the destruction of both the first and second Temples in Jerusalem, in the years 586 BCE and 70 CE. Shabbat is a day in which we do not do any of the mourning rituals of our tradition, so this year we commemorated the date on Sunday. The 9th of Av is the saddest day in our calendar, and also the most hopeful day—according to our tradition, on this day the possibility of a time when peace will reign in this world will become reality.
According to the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 9b), the First Temple was destroyed due to the fact that the Jewish people were involved in idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed. The Talmud the asks, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, and that they did not perform the sinful acts that were performed in the First Temple, why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to the fact that there was wanton hatred (Sin’at hinam) during that period. This comes to teach you that the sin of wanton hatred is equivalent to the three severe transgressions: idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed (based on the William Davidson Talmud).
More than anything else, wanton hatred, sometimes translated as baseless hatred, is the thing that can create the biggest amount of destruction.
In America right now I feel that people sharing willful misinformation are responsible for creating a dangerous kind of baseless hatred. One thing is to have a different read of the facts—quite another is to disseminate lies. Such is the case of Alex Jones and his fake news website Infowars. For many years he and his associates have been making outlandish claims, including one that says that the murder of 26 people, of which 20 were kindergarteners, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax. According to Jones, there were actors who posed as parents and propagated the story created by the liberal elites. Because of these lies, these parents not only suffered the loss of their children to gun violence, they also feared for their lives as they received death threats and were vilified by many people in our country. This week, Justice is starting to be served: Alex Jones, the main disseminator of these lies, has to pay forty-nine million dollars to compensate for damages to two families, and this is probably only the beginning of his nightmare. I truly hope that this man pays for the damage he has inflicted not only to these families, but to our Country. For it is people like him, who are telling lies and fanning the flames of discord, that bear responsibility for much of the friction happening in our days. Lies are not protected by the First Amendment. Proclaiming one’s imaginations as truths is not free speech. In Hebrew, “thing” and “word” are the same: davar. Words have weight, power, and permanence in the same way that things do. The lies in Infowars destroy our society, and this past week we finally are taking the first steps in dismantling the causes of baseless hatred here.
In our tradition, on the same day we remember destruction, we celebrate the potential for lasting peace, with hearts filled with both sadness and hope.
At the end of this past week, with the indictment of Alex Jones and Infowars, we continue to grieve for the families of the children and adults murdered in Newtown, experiencing the sadness of the collective loss, and are hopeful as we see the baseless hatred provoked by misinformation being treated as what it truly is: a crime.