Are we the people we like to think we are?

The Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz, this Sunday, marks the beginning of the Three Weeks culminating in Tishah be’Av, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, during which our rabbis ask us to reflect on sinat chinnam, gratuitous hatred, and the destruction it leads to across the world.

President Trump provided a shocking example of such conduct when he told four congresswomen to ‘go home’. His comment exceeded the level of disdain to which there is a risk that we may have grown dangerously accustomed. It showed, in addition to its racism and sexism, precisely that contempt for democracy, that readiness to attack and try to undermine the very processes and institutions which brought him to power, which Yascha Mounk so disturbingly describes in his book subtitled ‘Why Our Freedom Is In Danger’.

Such words, let loose from the very top of the social hierarchy, have an incalculably injurious after-life. At a rally in North Carolina, the crowds chanted to their hero President, ‘Send her back; send her back’. One does not have to agree with everything the congresswoman may have said to appreciate the outrageous injustice and terrible consequences of fanning such populist hatred.

Yet we learnt this week from the President himself that he has not a racist bone in his body. So, at least, he appears to have claimed. He is far from being the only political leader on the current world stage to maintain that he cannot possibly be a bigot, xenophobe, misogynist, Islamophobe or anti-Semite. Some may simply not care; others may be under intractable illusions about themselves: ‘What? This can’t be me! I’m not sexist. I’m not a racist’.

It’s easy to see such self-delusions in others, harder to acknowledge them in ourselves. Most of us want to be the people we wished we were. We are all susceptible to the dangers of configuring the stories of ourselves accordingly: ‘I didn’t really mean…That wasn’t the real me…’ Who else was it then?

But we are not judged solely by the claims we make about ourselves. Nor are we judged only by those who love and may therefore flatter us. We are also judged by those we hurt. Therefore, if we have a conscience we will want to listen to what they have to tell us, not because it’s pleasant or convenient, but because it may be precisely from them that we have the most to learn.

Of course, the accusations may not be justified. But if we have integrity and self-respect we will at least listen, then filter them in our heart and conscience.

If, however, we maintain our denials, we become responsible for all the further wrongs which are likely to ensue. If we occupy positions of power, be it as parents, teachers, religious leaders, politicians or presidents, we are answerable for the cultures of dishonesty, disingenuousness, bullying, repression and intimidation which may well follow. Far from being an acceptable excuse, dis-acknowledgement constitutes an abdication of responsibility which adds insult to injury.

Few verses from the Prophets are as widely quoted as Micah’s rhetorical question: ‘What does the Lord require of you? Only to love kindness, act justly and walk humbly with your God’. It has never struck me before how significant it is that these should be the words we read on the Shabbat which every year exactly precedes the commencement of the Three Weeks.

If we want to avoid causeless hatred, we need to ask ourselves regularly and often if we are treating other people, whoever they are, with fairness and compassion. We need to consider whether we are listening to God’s voice as it expresses itself through them and if we are allowing it to humble and to teach us.