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I rejoiced not at the destruction of him that hated-me, or exulted when evil found him. (Job 31:29) | |
If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink. (Proverbs 25:21) | |
Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart. (Leviticus 19:17) | |
Let not kindness and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck, write them upon the table of thy heart; so shalt thou find grace and good favor in the sight of God and man. (Proverbs 8:3-4) | |
Alas for him who saith: ‘I have been humiliated, be my fellowman humiliated. I have been cursed, be he also cursed.’ Let him remember when he humiliates and curses a human being, it is God’s image that he humiliates and curses. (Genesis Rabba 24.7) | |
Our worst enemy is our self. Others may hate us but our own misleading phantasies and our ungoverned impulses are foes beside which all other foes are negligible. These baneful qualities within us are the cause of most of the hostilities that we suffer from others. We assume insults where insults were never intended and slights where slights were not dreamed of. Subsequent reconciliation and explanation reveal how unnecessary the suffering has been which we caused ourselves and others. | |
When a person is our enemy and dislikes or hates us, how shall we overcome his hatred? By retaliation? By inflicting reciprocal pain or injury? Surely not, but by substituting, so far as lies in our power, acts and attitudes that will help and gladden. No other antidote to hatred is conceivable. No other means of counteracting enmity are rational. To meet enmity with enmity is like fasting to overcome hunger, sprinkling oil to quench fire or pouring water to allay dampness. This is true of our national and racial hostilities as well as of our personal ones. When the misguided self of another cherishes hatred and our misguided self magnifies it, then naught can bring peace but patience and forgiveness. We must meet our fellowman with the abundant lovingkindness which we ask of God. | |
Father Everlasting, who understandest the hearts of men, none is wholly righteous in Thy sight, yet Thou graciously pardonest Thy children, even when they rebel against Thee. Teach me, I pray Thee, to purify myself before I rebuke others. Open Thou my eyes that I may be enlightened. Keep me from seeking foes where there are no foes, and give me the insight to seek within and rout my foes where foes really lurk. Take from my soul the indolence and vanity, the selfishness and thoughtlessness that brings me into ill favor with my fellowmen. Imbue me with that righteousness without which there can be no peace, that love without which there can be no harmony, that brotherhood without which there can be no concord. Not that I might love my enemies do I pray, but that I might through goodness transform them; nay, that I might regard none as my enemy. May there be granted me the wisdom to earn, through rectitude of my conduct, the love, regard and good favor of all whom my life may touch. Amen. |
“Our Enemies” is the thirty-first prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 105-107. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume. However, the pacifist language and argument in this prayer strongly identifies it as having been written by Rabbi Abraham Cronbach. For a comparative, find Rabbi Cronbach’s prayer, “Our Contemners” published in his own collection, Prayers of the Jewish Advance (1924), pp. 8-11.
Source(s)
“Our Enemies, an exhortation to look inward to resolve conflict (CCAR 1923)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication.
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