What Does Judaism Say About Revenge

So one of the most well-known passages in the Torah is almost never quoted in full. And while virtually everyone knows this famous phrase, almost no one is familiar with the entire verse. The part that's regularly quoted is, you shall love your neighbor or you shall love your fellow as yourself. The golden rule. You shall know, you shall love your neighbor or love your fellow as yourself. Basically everyone on the planet knows that phrase. What people generally don't know is that it's part of a larger verse and people don't know the larger context. What So this is from Leviticus, the book of Vayikra, Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18, which in full reads as follows. You shall not take revenge and you shall not bear a grudge against the members of your people. You shall love your fellow as yourself. I am the Lord. Now the Talmud discusses the difference between revenge and holding a grudge. The verse speaks about both, but what's the difference? So the Talmud gives the following example. I just changed the names. One day Alan comes to his neighbor Bob asking to borrow a ladder, but Bob refuses him. A while later, Bob comes knocking at Alan's door, asking if he can borrow a flashlight. If Alan says, look, you wouldn't lend me your ladder when I needed it, so I'm not going to lend you my flashlight. This is a violation of the biblical prohibition against taking revenge. If, however, when Bob comes to borrow a flashlight, Alan says, you see, I'm not like you. You refused to lend me your ladder when I needed it, but I'm going to lend you my flashlight anyway. Here, Alan has transgressed the biblical prohibition against holding a grudge, and our sages explain that even if he didn't actually point out that while he refused to lend, while the other fellow refused to lend, you're not like him, but you lend him anyway. It's still a violation of holding a grudge if you lend to your neighbor unenthusiastically, meaning even if you don't point out verbally that you're not a jerk like he is, and you're willing to lend a flashlight even though he didn't lend you a ladder, but you lend it unenthusiastically, that is considered to be bearing a grudge. Now, this biblical commandment is obviously a tall order, because we are naturally offended and outraged by unfairness, and instinctively we want to retaliate. About 1100 years ago, a great Torah sage, Rav Saja Gaon, wrote that the desire for revenge was implanted into the souls of human beings in order for God's justice to be carried out against wickedness in the world. With this instinct, the social order and welfare of humanity can be maintained, meaning that if we didn't have this instinctual revulsion against unfairness, then we may not fight for the right thing to be done in the world. God wants a world that is living properly, and so human beings have this instinctive, implanted in us, revulsion against that which is unfair, that which is unright, and that goes a long way in helping maintain the social order. This is, of course, true on a personal level as well. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto writes in his classic work, Pathway of the Upright, that people are extremely sensitive to insults and slights to their honor, and we suffer great anguish from it. Revenge is the only thing, he writes, that will put us at rest. And he says it is sweeter than honey to us. Revenge is sweeter than honey. However, even though it is not easy, the Torah believes that we have the ability to control our feelings, and therefore the Torah teaches in the previous verse in Leviticus, in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 17, that we should not hate our brother in our heart. And in the very next verse, not to take revenge and not to hold a grudge. If it was impossible, the Torah would not mandate this. Rabbi Moses Maimonides, one of our great sages, writes that taking revenge is an extremely terrible trait. It's very bad. He says a person should be accustomed to rise above their feelings and rise above worldly matters which are vanity and emptiness and just simply not worth taking revenge for. At the end of the day, when put into perspective, most of these conflicts that provoke us to seek revenge and provoke us to hold grudges, most of them are trivial and simply not worth pursuing and not worth escalating. The Jerusalem Talmud provides a metaphor to help us gain a more healthy perspective on taking revenge. The Talmud says if you accidentally cut your hand while you were carving meat, you wouldn't of course think for a moment of cutting the hand that did the damage to take revenge because you'd only be hurting yourself. If we have cultivated the realization that we are all children of one God, we are all brothers and sisters, children of one God, and that we are really all one and we develop a proper degree of love for our fellows, then taking revenge against others is foolish as we are really only hurting ourselves. Not only is it wrong to take action against someone you are at odds with, King Solomon writes in Proverbs that you should not rejoice internally when your enemy stumbles. Even if you don't do anything, even if you don't say anything, but to feel good when an opponent of yours, an enemy of yours stumbles is prohibited. In Torah ethical literature, we learn that the main reason we are put into this world is to work at overcoming our negative character traits and the Torah directs us to model our lives after the example of God. We should follow in the ways of God. Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, known as the Ramach, in his famous ethical work, The Palm Tree of Deborah, he explains that at the very moment a person violates the will of God, the very moment a person is sinning, God is endowing that person with the ability to breathe and to move his limbs. Who is enabling this person to sin against God? It's God himself. That's how much patience God has with those who violate his will. God is not quick to take revenge and God waits patiently for people that are sinning to repent, to change their ways. And so if God is not quick to take revenge, so we as well should follow suit. It's important for us to remember that God runs the world and he is the ultimate arbiter of justice in society and we are not. We are not here as the judge, jury, and executioners of what is to be correct and right and fair and proper in our world. It's not our job. It's God's job as he runs the world. He makes sure that ultimately justice is served. God will make sure that justice will be done and people will ultimately get what they deserve and it's not our job to do this. True faith in God, true faith in God, negates the need. It negates the need for us to take revenge. It's only an arrogant disregard of divine providence that will lead someone to take matters into their own hands. One thing for us to remember is the directive of the Talmud not to judge other people until you are in their place, until you're standing in their shoes. People may disappoint us. People may do the wrong thing but we are not necessarily aware of what's going on in their life that causes them to act inappropriately. We're not aware of sometimes the desperate situation that people are in, how people are pushed to the limit sometimes. So the Talmud says don't judge people until you are standing where they are and the truth is we're never standing where other people are. We're never in their shoes. So better off not to judge, not to jump to conclusions and the Talmud as well teaches us we should give people the benefit of the doubt for this very reason. There may be many factors in the other person's life that we may not be aware of that can explain their behavior towards us. This is why that there are many reasons why it's customary at the time that we're going to sleep to recite the Shema Yisrael. There's a custom to recite before we go to sleep the Hebrew paragraphs from the Torah beginning with the paragraph Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. There are paragraphs that we read every morning in our prayers, every evening in our prayers, but there's a custom to say these paragraphs before we go to sleep as well. And there are some people who add on the following declaration, Master of the Universe, I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me or who sinned against me. Every night we make this declaration that we shouldn't hold grudges against people. Master of the Universe, I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me or who sinned against me, whether against my body, my property, my honor, or against anything of mine, whether they did so accidentally, willingly, carelessly, or purposely, whether through speech, deed, thought, may no one be punished because of me. Of course, this teaching of the Torah, not to take revenge and not to hold a grudge, it's not a requirement that we be a doormat as we go through life. If someone actually hurts you, if they damage your property, if they steal something from you, you may certainly take them to court. And this is not considered taking revenge. This is totally legitimate.