[A Jewish scholar declares below the difference between Judaism and Christianity: The Jewish faith sanctions "hate." Christianity does not. This is arguably the origin of all Jewish problems. Jews "hate" anti-Semites, and -- by Jewish doctrine -- that is virtually everyone.] The Virtue of Hate, by Meir Y. Soloveichik, First Things, January 2003: 41-46. "An examination of the respective replies of Christians and Jews reveals a remarkable contrast. 'When the first edition of The Sunflower was published,' writes Dennis Prager, 'I was intrigued by the fact that all the Jewish respondents thought Simon Wiesenthal was right in not forgiving the repentant Nazi mass murderer, and that the Christians thought he was wrong.' ... [In Jewish religious tradition] Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. And lest one dismiss Samuel’s and Samson’s anger as exhibitions of male machismo, it bears mentioning that the prophetess Deborah appears to relish the gruesome death of her enemy, the Philistine Sisera, who had, fittingly, been executed by another woman. Every bloody detail is recounted in Deborah’s ebullient song: Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite Of tent–dwelling women most blessed. She put her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet. She struck Sisera a blow, she crushed his head, she shattered and pierced his temple. He sank, he fell, he lay still at her feet; At her feet he sank, he fell; there he sank, there he fell dead ... In his At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, journalist Yossi Klein Halevi speaks with Johanna, a Catholic nun who is struck by the hatred Israelis bear for their enemies. Johanna tells of an Israeli Hebrew teacher 'who was very close to us. She told us how her young son hates Saddam. . . . She said it with such enthusiasm. She was so proud of her son.' 'I realized,' Johanna concluded, 'that hatred is in the Jewish religion.' She was right .... During my regular weekly coffees with my friend Fr. Jim White, an Episcopal priest, there was one issue to which our conversation would incessantly turn, and one on which we could never agree: Is an utterly evil man—Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden—deserving of a theist’s love? I could never stomach such a notion, while Fr. Jim would argue passionately in favor of the proposition. Judaism, I would argue, does demand love for our fellow human beings, but only to an extent. 'Hate' is not always synonymous with the terribly sinful. While Moses commanded us “not to hate our brother in our hearts,” a man’s immoral actions can serve to sever the bonds of brotherhood between himself and humanity. Regarding a rasha, a Hebrew term for the hopelessly wicked, the Talmud clearly states: mitzvah lisnoso—one is obligated to hate him ... [A] theological chasm remains between the Jewish and Christian viewpoints on the matter. As we can see from Samson’s rage, Judaism believes that while forgiveness is often a virtue, hate can be virtuous when one is dealing with the frightfully wicked. Rather than forgive, we can wish ill; rather than hope for repentance, we can instead hope that our enemies experience the wrath of God. There is, in fact, no minimizing the difference between Judaism and Christianity on whether hate can be virtuous. Indeed, Christianity’s founder acknowledged his break with Jewish tradition on this matter from the very outset ... God, Jesus argues, loves the wicked, and so must we. In disagreeing, Judaism does not deny the importance of imitating God; Jews hate the wicked because they believe that God despises the wicked as well. Among Orthodox Jews, there is an oft–used Hebrew phrase whose equivalent I have not found among Christians. The phrase is yemach shemo, which means, may his name be erased. It is used whenever a great enemy of the Jewish nation, of the past or present, is mentioned. For instance, one might very well say casually, in the course of conversation, 'Thank God, my grandparents left Germany before Hitler, yemach shemo, came to power.' Or: 'My parents were murdered by the Nazis, yemach shemam.' Can one imagine a Christian version of such a statement? Would anyone speak of the massacres wrought by 'Pol Pot, may his name be erased'? Do any Christians speak in such a way? Has any seminary student ever attached a Latin equivalent of yemach shemo to the names 'Pontius Pilate' or 'Judas'? Surely not. Christians, I sense, would find the very notion repugnant, just as many Jews would gag upon reading the Catholic rosary: 'O my Jesus . . . lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.” Why, then, this remarkable disagreement between faiths? Why do Jews and Christians respond so differently to wickedness? Why do Jews refuse at times to forgive? And if the Hebrew prophets and judges believed ardently in the 'virtue of hate,' what about Christianity caused it to break with its Old Testament roots? ... [M]y grandfather, a rabbi, joined those on the Israeli right in condemning the Oslo process, arguing that it would produce a terrorist state responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths. As a rabbinical student, I could not understand my grandfather’s unremitting opposition. He was, I thought, so blinded by his hate that he was unable to comprehend the powerful potential of the peace process. Now, many hundreds of Jewish victims of suicide bombings later, and fifty years after the Holocaust, the importance and the necessity of Jewish hate has once again been demonstrated."