Hatred is rising in the United States. Hate crimes reached their second-highest recorded levels in 2024, and preliminary data in the nation’s largest city suggests the trend continues upward. Focusing solely on hate crimes, however, understates the problem. Hatred does not only appear in explicitly bias-motivated violence; it also appears in the estrangement between people — a byproduct of rising political and social polarization.
In a 2026 study, researchers found that participants, regardless of their party affiliation, consistently treated members of opposing parties worse. Yet research from the Polarization Research Lab also shows that it is not necessarily differing opinions causing people to treat those on the other side of the metaphorical aisle poorly. It is simply that they sit on the other side.
Division is turning into disaffection, and a loud and hostile minority is making us see each other not as neighbors, fellow citizens or human beings, but as threats, enemies, obstacles or symbols of everything wrong with society.
Social media is an accelerant. So are economic instability and the weakening of civic institutions, such as recreation leagues, service clubs, and religious organizations, that once brought different kinds of people into regular contact. However, beneath all of these factors lies a deeper psychological impulse: allowing hatred to morph into moral indignation.
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Moral indignation is the self-righteous feeling that turns hatred into a virtue. It makes hatred feel good. We no longer merely dislike or oppose someone; we convince ourselves that they are evil, and once we label others as evil, actions that would otherwise seem immoral begin to feel permissible — maybe even noble.
Moral indignation allows us to say things like, “It is only baseless hatred (sinat chinam) that destroys the world; hating evil is an act of repairing the world (tikkun olam)!” We may quote the Bible, “Those who love God hate evil” (Psalms 97:10) and say that “there is a time to love and a time to hate” (Ecclesiastes 3:8). We may justify speaking about others in dehumanizing ways by claiming that ignoring wrongdoing is itself a moral failure.
While the Bible does teach that loving God includes hating evil, Jewish tradition also draws a crucial distinction between opposing evil wrongdoing and condemning the people who commit it.
The Talmud tells a story about Rabbi Meir, who became so frustrated with local hooligans that he prayed for them to die (Berachot 10a). He believed he was acting righteously, following King David’s words: “May sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked be no more” (Psalms 104:35). Hearing his prayer, Beruriah, Rabbi Meir’s wife, asks him (with what I can only imagine is a tremendous amount of side-eye), “What are you thinking?” She then tells him that, even if he is considered the most brilliant mind of his generation, he read the verse incorrectly. “The word doesn’t say ‘sinners’ (chotaim),” she says, “It says, ‘sins’ (chataim)!” The verse does not say that sinners should disappear, but that sins should disappear. The wicked become “no more” not because they are eliminated but because they change their actions.
This distinction matters because hatred thrives on estrangement. Once we define people only by what they have done wrong, or by the group to which they belong (and we don’t), it becomes much harder to see any similarity between “us” and “them.” They become strangers.
This is why the Torah does not merely prohibit oppression of the stranger (Exodus 23:9); it commands: “You shall love the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:19).
At first glance, this seems impossible. Even the commandments to love God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and one’s fellow (Leviticus 19:18) raise the question of how love can be obligated at all. The commandment to love a stranger seems even more difficult because it asks us to love someone with whom we do not have any bond or sense of connection. Even Martin Buber in I and Thou has difficulty with the commandment to love the stranger, since he does not view commandments of love as obligations at all. “Duty and obligation,” he writes, “are rendered only to the stranger; we are drawn to and full of love for the intimate person.” Like other commandments to love, the commandment to love the stranger may be less an external demand than an invitation for relationship.
There is wisdom in Buber’s view, but I believe that the Jewish tradition points to something even more demanding. Love is not merely a feeling; it is sustained through practices of attention, responsibility and commitment. Relationships require effort. We do things for those we love, and those we love ask things of us – not only for their sake, but for ours as well.
The commandment to love one’s fellow reminds us not to let our relationship die through neglect. It demands that we work to ensure that we stay connected. The commandment to love the stranger is different. It asks us to resist drifting toward estrangement. The stranger is not yet a friend, yet the Torah demands that we cultivate empathy and recognize some prior bond that may already exist.
That is why the Torah grounds this commandment in memory of our own estrangement: “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). We know what it means to feel alien, misunderstood, vulnerable or excluded. We wish that others would see us for more than our caricatures. The Torah reminds us that we should act in the same ways that we wish others would act towards us.
Loving the stranger certainly does not mean approving of everything another person espouses or does. It does not require abandoning moral judgment or pretending that evil doesn’t exist. Rather, it means refusing to let moral conviction justify estranging ourselves from others because they disagree. It means remembering that the goal is not the destruction of other people but the building of community.
This essay initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on August 15, 2026. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
