In the days leading up to Tisha B’Av and on Tisha B’Av itself we will all be hearing a lot about the sinas chinam (baseless hatred) for which the second Beis HaMikdash was destroyed and that therefore forms the root of our current Exile.
I have never quite understood what is meant by the term. For better or worse I can’t think of anyone I hate. But I’m sure that if I did it would be for good cause — at least in my own mind. And I suspect that most of us feel the same way. We do not readily identify with the emotions or attitudes said to be preventing the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdash.
Perhaps the true meaning of sinas chinam is the failure to fully appreciate the tzelem Elokim in our fellow Jew. In every failure no matter how small to recognize what is most elevated about our fellow Jews there is an element of sinas chinam.
As Rabbi Jeremy Kagan puts it in his remarkable new book The Choice to Be about which I shall be writing frequently: We are only blind to the tzelem Elokim in others if we have not fully realized it in ourselves.
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