We have been discussing the concept that although we have a right to hate a wicked person, that is only in a case where the person was rebuked and did not accept the rebuke. It is rare, these days, to find someone who knows how to properly rebuke. Therefore, everyone is considered before rebuke, and thus we have no right to hate anyone.
This is fairly explicit in the pasuk, Vayikrah 19,17:
לֹא־תִשְׂנָא אֶת־אָחִיךָ בִּלְבָבֶךָ הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶךָ
Don’t hate your friend in your heart,
Give him rebuke.
So, before you have a right to hate a person, you must rebuke him.
Right after that, it says Veahavta LeRe’echa Kamocha Love your friend like you love yourself. For which I heard an explanation that rebuke only works if it comes out of love. You can’t jump straight to hating the guy. First you have to love him, because only then are you able to rebuke him. Then, after you’ve loved him and rebuked him, and he didn’t accept it, then you have a right to hate him.
But more often than not, people get stuck on the hate.
There’s a other beautiful story about the Chafetz Chaim that relates to this topic, told over by Rabbi Mordechai Shapiro, the late father of Rav Ephraim Shapiro.
There was a rabbi who was once giving a class in Miami, discussing something that happened once in the yeshiva of the Chafetz Chaim. In those days, there were challenges of the Reform movement, even in the Yeshiva world, and a boy was caught smoking on Shabbat. That is obviously grounds for expulsion, but before they expelled him, they brought him to the Chafetz Chaim’s office. After the Chafetz Chaim spoke to him for a few minutes, the boy never smoked a cigarette again, and he went on to become a religious man. No one ever knew what happened in that office, but that was the power of the Chafetz Chaim.
After the rabbi finished the lecture,, an old man approached him and confessed that he had been that boy, and offered to tell the rest of the story. He explained that the Chafetz Chaim had held his hand and said, over and over, “Shabbat, Shabbat, the holy Shabbat,” and started to cry. His tears fell onto the young man’s hand, and he was able to feel the Chafetz Chaim’s love for him, his warmth and concern. After that, he couldn’t bring himself to smoke a cigarette again.
Every time he felt the urge to smoke, he felt the warm tears of the Chafetz ChaIm on his hand, and he couldn’t bring himself to smoke.
That’s rebuke, and that is the art that we don’t necessarily have today.