לא תשנא את אחיך בלבבך
“Don’t hate your brother in your heart” (Lev. 19: 17)
We usually understand this phrase to mean – your brother out in the world, don’t hate him in your heart. But maybe we could read it as “your brother in your heart” – akhikha belivavekha – your inner brother, your inner parts – don’t hate them.
Do we hate parts of ourselves? It may be hard to recognize, but I think most of us do. There are certain parts of us that we dislike, are ashamed of, that we try to get rid of or to fix or control or hide away or deny. This dislike of certain aspects of ourselves brings aggression, self aggression into our system, harshness and judgment and destructiveness. There is a feeling sometimes of being at war with ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. Even “inner work” – this constant striving for self-improvement that we are engaged in here – can have a tinge of this aggressiveness to it, as it assumes there is something wrong with the way we are now.
This sense of an inner war is important to notice. We look with great distress at the images of the war in Ukraine and feel helpless and hopeless. But there is something we can do internally to fight hatred and war in the world – it starts right here, inside us. We can notice the inner aggression and gradually learn to let it go, to turn away from harshness and toward gentleness inside us. This inner turn has ripple effects. It begins inside, but it flows out and affects the world.
Lo tisna et akhikha belivevekha – don’t hate those parts inside you. This is a big ask, to just turn off the inner hatred. But the first step is noticing it is there, and often, in the noticing, there is a slight softening, a sense of opening, of possibility – do I really need to be this harsh to parts of myself? There is a gentler way. I can gradually move toward the ahavah, the love of the next pasuk, of loving myself as well as my re’a, my friend. I can turn towards these parts that have been so harshly treated inside me, turn to them now with tenderness, seeing their suffering, and understand that they, too, are re’im, friends, who have been sent inside me to be loved.
