The First Temple, why was it destroyed? Because of idolatry, murder and adultery.

The Second Temple, when they were engaged in Torah, mitzvahs, and generosity, why was it destroyed?

Because there were Jews who hated other Jews unreasonably.

Which teaches us that unwarranted hatred is equal to idolatry, murder, and adultery combined. (Talmud Yoma 9b.)

How is it possible that the cardinal sins of Torah demanded only 70 years of exile, while unwarranted hatred is so sinister, so powerful, it can take almost two thousand years to heal from its wounds?

There’s a simple reason given: When your faults are blatant and obvious, you face up to them and fix yourself. Hatred, however, comes cloaked within layers upon layers of justifications and self-righteousness. When you don’t believe you’ve done anything wrong, nothing motivates you to repair the damage you’ve caused. All the more so when you’ve convinced yourself that you’re standing up for the dignity of Torah and fighting a holy war against those who desecrate it. Why repent for being a hero?

But there is a deeper reason the tikun (repair, healing) for this sin requires such a long and arduous exile—one that requires us to look deeper into the challenges of the human condition. And that, in turn, requires a deeper understanding of what’s wrong with our reality at its very core.

Cosmic Wound

Other sins, even the most heinous sins, are symptoms of flaws in the human persona. To repair those flaws, each of us is granted our 70 years upon this earth. Some are granted more, some less, but the average of 70 grants us ten years for each of the seven categories of emotions.

Hatred, however, is a category all its own. Raw, unwarranted hatred lies at the core of evil, at its primal genesis.

The master Kabbalist, the Arizal, explained this in his story of creation:

At the emergent stages of our reality, he taught, a catastrophe occurred. The primordial world of Tohu collapsed. Fragmentation entered the cosmic scheme, each new shattering cascading into countless more. The universe lost contact with the infinite divine light that preceded it.

That fragmentation became a defining feature of our reality, and our mission upon this earth is to heal it, to bring all the scattered pieces back into a single, harmonious whole.

To put it another way: The signature element of our reality is our sense of otherness. Otherness from the energy that creates us and sustains us. Otherness from one another. Otherness from the universe out of which we emerge.

It all stems from one source: a fissure, an empty chasm, between the creation and its Creator.

Cosmic Healing

Why did G‑d make it this way? Why not create all things in harmony with one another from the beginning?

Because He desired to leave that up to us. He wanted us to be His partners in creating our world. So He left this final stage for us to take care of: To take these fragments and bring them to sing in harmony. To repair the fissure between our world and G‑d’s oneness.

Every mitzvah you do provides healing to this fissure. Every time you grow in emotional maturity, refining your character in accordance with Torah values, your tikun is of cosmic impact. Whenever you uncover the divine spark within an object, an experience, or a human interaction, you are reaching into the firmware of the cosmos and resetting its parameters.

None of us act alone. We all emerge from the same womb of creation. Our missions are perfectly aligned. Like the agents of healing that rush to reconstruct broken tissue in a living organism, we are each divinely led to do our part, each of us contributing their vital tikun to the process.

But of all the wounds, the most stubborn is sinat chinam, hatred without cause, intolerance of the other just because he is other, just because his persona does not fit neatly into your universe. This is not just another wound. It is the essence of all wounds.

It is embedded so close to the core of our reality, it can attack the core of the human psyche, chochmah, the seminal point of reason. The wisest among us can convince themselves they are fighting a noble, sacred battle, when the only thing truly at stake is their own ego.

Midian

For each thing that exists in time and space, says the ancient Sefer Yetzira (Book of Formation), there is a place within the human soul.

The seven nations that occupied Canaan, too, exist within the human soul. They are the seven raw emotional modalities that every human being must conquer and transform—such as selfishness, anger, impatience, and jealousy.

But before entering Canaan, the Israelites first had to battle with Midian.

The Zohar connects Midian to the word madon—“a quarrel.” Midian is the womb of all quarrels, disputes, divisiveness and intolerance—the diametric opposite of the realm of holiness where all is oneness and harmony.

Midian is the place in the human soul where there is no room for another. It says, “If I am here, how dare you occupy space of your own!” It is not rational, nor can it be reasoned with. It sits at the core-essence of human identity and of every negative human trait.

So that, once it is conquered, all the rest of a person’s character is opened to transformation.

But how can something unbounded and irrational ever be conquered?

Unconditional Transformation

That is why the antidote must also transcend reason. It must be related to the primordial infinite light itself, a light that knows no bounds. The key to healing humanity must be unreasonable.

Here, again, the Arizal guides us. He taught that there is a holy Midian within each of us as well. It is the place in the human soul of unconditional love, love that has no reason other than that it is divine to love one another.

With unconditional love, ahavat chinam, unwarranted hatred is conquered and transformed.

With a single unpredictable and unconditional act of one human caring for another, connecting with another, especially another whose very presence he cannot bear, the whole of creation is healed and fulfilled.

If we are things, we are many. If we are light, we are one. Be light.

Likutei Torah, Matot 86a, 88b. Maamar Hechaltzu 5659, chapter 3.