QUESTION
Is it permitted to hate goyim?
ANSWER
Now that, you have to know, is a question that never comes up among Jews. Jews never talk about hating goyim. And I’ll explain that.
It’s true that there’s a mitzvah of ואהבת לרעך כמוך – you have to love your fellow Jew. It means that there’s no command to love somebody who is a non-Jew. To love non-Jews, there’s no mitzvah at all. But certainly nobody is told to hate anybody! Because hate is a boomerang. You just cannot hate and hate and hate without becoming a hateful person. Your nature changes. If a person is always muttering imprecations on goyim for nothing, then he becomes a low character.
Decent Jews are kind hearted and polite to everybody! זכאי שלא אמרו עליו על רבן יוחנן בן הקדימו אדם שלום מעולם – It was said about Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai that nobody ever said shalom to him in the street before he said shalom to them. He was the first one to greet a man. ואפילו נכרי בשוק – Even gentiles in the street (Brachos 17a); when he encountered a gentile, he was the first one to greet him. That’s politeness. That’s how a Jew behaves.
The truth is that Jews are always kindhearted to everybody; only that the mitzvah of loving a Jew is a specific mitzvah that’s only for fellow Jews. You don’t have that mitzvah for anybody else. But to be kind and polite, that’s not even a question.
TAPE # 630 (February 1987)
