What Really Drives Hatred of the Haredim

The writer says she was unsettled and frightened by the idea that Jews could hate other Jews, and set out to understand where such hatred comes from. She reflects that the desire to hate often masks fear, especially fear of closeness, vulnerability, or being hurt, and argues that hatred needs projection and a sense that the evil is really inside the hater.

To explore the issue, she turned to books, comparisons with anti-Jewish hatred in Europe, and conversations with people who could help her think through it, including her husband and the psychoanalyst Hani, whom she describes as a senior analyst. She says Hani had previously taught her the term “sezura,” a cut or break in time and events, and that Hani helped her understand how personality is formed and how hatred develops.

The two are also preparing a workshop in Bnei Brak on personality, how it is built, how roles are shaped, and what in the mind pushes people toward one place or another. The writer says they find deep resonance between psychological ideas, holiday imagery, and Torah explanations, and she insists that the opposite of love is not hate but fear, fear of loving, fear of being hurt, and fear of giving oneself fully.

She then recounts an encounter at a hotel on a recent Saturday, when a Haredi couple told her about the strange comment they repeatedly hear from secular coworkers in Jerusalem, “At this rate you will become secular.” The husband said he excels in an office job that requires intelligence and thought, and his wife wanted to know why doing well at work leads others to assume the next step is abandoning observance. The writer concludes that Jews do not truly want to hate one another, unless the other side feels so distant and so like the nations that hatred becomes a way to resolve inner conflict.