Just days after American soldiers liberated Buchenwald, a young army chaplain named Rabbi Herman Schacter stood among the survivors and did something almost unimaginable. He didn’t gather them to plan vengeance. He didn’t preach hatred of the nation that had just tried to annihilate them. He led a prayer service. A photograph of that moment hangs today in Yad Vashem, a rabbi standing among skeletal survivors, choosing to turn toward God rather than toward rage.
That story surfaced recently in a conversation between Rabbi Tuly Weisz and Rabbi Dr. J.J. Schacter, Rabbi Herman Schacter’s son, on the new podcast The Universal Zionist. The two were discussing the approaching fast of Tisha B’Av, the day Jews mourn the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. But the conversation kept circling back to a much older question, one every generation of Jews has had to answer for itself.
How do you remember suffering without teaching hatred?
The Torah answers this question directly, and the answer is not soft. In Vayikra, the book of Leviticus, God commands:
Read that again. The Torah doesn’t say hatred is unpleasant or unproductive. It commands us not to carry it. The verse moves from an internal command, don’t hate in your heart, to an active command, rebuke your neighbor honestly, to a final command, don’t take revenge or hold a grudge. Feel the pain. Say something true about it. Let it go before it calcifies into hatred.
This is not naive. The same parsha that commands love of neighbor also commands justice, honesty in business, and protection of the vulnerable. The Torah does not ask us to pretend evil doesn’t exist. It asks us to refuse to let evil turn us into something we were never meant to become.
A few verses earlier, the Torah issues one more command Jewish parents have carried for thousands of years: v’shinantam l’vanecha, “you shall teach them diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:7). It does not say teach your children who to fear or who to despise. It says teach them diligently, meaning constantly, meaning with intention. Every generation decides what gets planted in a child’s heart before the world plants something else there first.
Schacter made a point on the podcast about Tisha B’Av that cuts right to this. The mourning of that day is directed inward and toward God, an exercise in introspection over the loss of a spiritual center, not hatred toward the nations who destroyed the Temple. We remember what the Babylonians and the Romans did. We do not build our identity around hating them. Two thousand years of Jewish survival prove that was the right choice. A people consumed by hatred does not outlast its enemies. A people anchored in God does.
The proof is standing in plain sight today. Christians who once inherited centuries of theology built against the Jewish people are, in growing numbers, standing with us now. If the Jewish people had built their entire identity on hatred of Christians after a thousand years of persecution, that friendship could never have happened. Because the Torah commanded a people not to carry hatred in their hearts, the door stayed open long enough for history to change.
That is the real inheritance Rabbi Herman Schacter passed down at Buchenwald, and the one his son is still teaching decades later. Remember everything. Learn the history cold. And still, do not let hatred move in and set up a home inside you. Rebuke what is wrong. Love your neighbor. Teach it diligently. That is not weakness. That is the strongest thing one generation can hand the next.
Watch the full interview between Rabbi Tuly Weisz and Rabbi Dr. J.J. Schacter on our YouTube channel, or listen to The Universal Zionist on Spotify.
