By Rabbi Marcia Plumb
On returning to campus at the end of August, students at various American universities handed out antisemitic materials, implying they were from the administration.
This was a terrible thing to do, obviously.
How can we respect someone who spews lies and hate speech?
Does someone who treats an employee disrespectfully, deserve respect back?
Seeing someone who throws hate at you as a child of God to be respected is really hard, and feels impossible.
This is perhaps our hardest Mussar challenge.
We may want to pick the hammer out of our physical toolbox to (metaphorically hopefully) bash them, but instead we are going to pull out the Mussar tools of b’tzelem Elohim and kavod/respect:
B’tzelem Elohim is about looking underneath the horrible words or behaviour and seeing that the person is a child of God, loved like you and me.
The person is badly behaved, and may have forgotten their divine origins, but it is there nonetheless. Can our response to them help them remember who they were at birth and who they could be again?
That possibility may seem unrealistic and foolish, but is treating someone badly in return any less foolish? How does equally bad behaviour toward them do anything useful?
It may give us a moment of satisfaction and power, but in truth, it actually diminishes us. We don’t learn anything or grow in any way.
When we are tempted to shout back, stop and ask ourselves: how will my response help me or them grow as individuals? Will treating them harshly help us rebuild civil discourse? For example, will shouting at or harassing the students who handed out the pamphlets be helpful or will that only lead to more shouting?
Mussar teaches that every interaction is a chance to bring holiness. We can choose to increase holiness or diminish it.
Bashing someone with a metaphoric hammer when they upset us diminishes holiness.
Being polite increases holiness.
Which response will we choose?
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