Point/Counterpoint on Kamtza and Bar Kamtza

Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
July 27, 2012
Parshat Dvarim/Tisha B’av
NOTE TO HEAR RABBI FREEDMAN"S VIEW, check with him!
Tonight we are offering a brief point/counterpoint, but since we are rabbis, we won’t call each other ignorant or pompous.

The Kamtza/Bar Kamtza story is one of my favorite stories in rabbinic literature.  We take a huge social, political, overwhelming tragedy and turn it into a story of two people who cannot get along.  When you look at the world, how much conflict comes down to the fact that one person did not treat another with respect.

This story reminds us that every encounter is an opportunity to be a better person, not with hubris, but with humility.  If we see the Divine light that is in another human being, hopefully we can treat them better and prevent larger conflicts.

The genius of this story (and the rabbis) was in recognizing the individual nature of conflict.  Ideology, warfare, rebellion all start somewhere and frequently that start is from a single chaotic and personal act.  While your middle school history teacher taught you up how the Balkans were a powderkeg, and the entangling alliances were a setup for war, it wasn’t until the assassination of an archduke that the war began.

The rabbis use this story to teach that while Solomon’s Temple was destroyed because of “serious” sins like murder, idolatry and incest; the Second Temple was destroyed because of “baseless hatred”, sinat chinam.  Rabbi Daniel Gordis, quoting Rabbi Joseph Telushkin wonders why, if the sins of the First Temple were seemingly so much greater than the sins of the Second, was the First Temple rebuilt after only 70 years, while the Second Temple has yet to be rebuilt.
(Source:http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107449/sinning-against-each-other)
Rabbi Telushkin uses the answer from his own teacher, Rabbi Aharon Kreiser, said

“that baseless hatred, dismissive attitudes, and communal rancor are different. They are the sorts of actions for which we can always find explanations and justifications, and so, we never really confront the fact that we’ve sinned. This is why, Rabbi Kreiser said, the Temple that was destroyed because of baseless hatred has never been rebuilt.”

So to make a short story long, the reason I love this story is its humanity.  It teaches a difficult lesson, makes it clearer, but it also makes us think.  Was the sin the hatred between Kamtza and Bar Kamtza and their host?  Was the sin the rabbis keeping their mouths shut when they should have prevented the undue embarrassment?  Was the sin the destruction of the sacrifice? Or the refusal to offer it?

The sin was all of the above.  It was compound interest on poor choices.  Our tradition teaches that mitzvah goreret mitzvah, averah goreret averah (מצווה גוררת מצווה; עברה גוררת עברה.) "one good deed will bring another good deed, one transgression will bring another transgression."

May we always choose the path of mitzvot and find the holiness of community.