Is the world’s most ancient hatred linked to the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai? With antisemitism spiraling out of control despite the horrors of the Holocaust still in living memory, many are trying to understand what drives the fury directed toward the people of Israel.
A young believing couple, Yaron Lischinsky (28) and his soon-to-be financé, Sarah Milgrim, were shot at close range by a man screaming, “Free Palestine”. They were peacemakers with a heart for the whole Middle East, and had been attending an event hosted by the American Jewish Congress in Washington, D.C. They were killed purely because they were Jewish and aligned with Israel, yet already the justification for this cold-blooded murder has begun, just as it did shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks of 2023. Somehow, people will always find a way of blaming Israel — even for being attacked. To the sane, it seems increasingly irrational. What on earth is going on?
Sinat Sinai: The root of hatred at the foot of Mount Sinai
Receiving God’s Law at Mount Sinai is seen as a pivotal event in Judaism, much as the cross is for Christians. Today the giving the Law is celebrated at Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, as it was given seven weeks after the Exodus from Egypt. Why would receiving the Law single the people of Israel out to be uniquely hated all this time?
In the multi-volumed rabbinic discussions of the Talmud, just one line is given to the subject of antisemitism, in Tractate Shabbat. The context of the discussion isn’t even really about antisemitism, it’s about the name of Mount Sinai. Here’s what they say:
One of the Sages said to Rav Kahana: Did you hear what is the reason that the mountain was called Mount Sinai? Rav Kahana said to him: It is because it is a mountain upon which miracles [nissim] were performed for the Jewish people. The Sage said to him: If so, it should have been called Mount Nisai, the mountain of miracles. Rather, Rav Kahana said to him: It is a mountain that was a good omen [siman] for the Jewish people. The Sage said to him: If so, it should have been called Har Simanai, the mountain of omens. Rav Kahana said to him: What is the reason that you do not frequent the school where you can study before Rav Pappa and Rav Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua, who study aggada? As Rav Ḥisda and Rabba, son of Rav Huna, both said: What is the reason it is called Mount Sinai? It is because it is a mountain upon which hatred [sina] for the nations of the world descended because they did not accept the Torah. (Tractate Shabbat 89a)
The nations hate Israel, the Sages surmise, because they hate the Law of God, given at Mount Sinai. Sinat Sinai: the divine event that inflamed the world’s hatred.
Don’t judge me!
You might have seen those cheesy tattoos declaring “Only God can judge me”, but the truth is that unregenerate humanity recoils at the thought of being held accountable to God. Even as believers, we can only contemplate the thought of Judgement Day because we know Yeshua has wiped away our sin.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31)
No one likes to be judged, neither are most fond being held accountable. As much as the people of Israel have repeatedly fallen short of God’s standards, the fact is that they are a constant reminder, by their very existence, that God does indeed have standards.
The Ten Commandments remain in our consciousness to this day, almost 3700 years after they were given. They were written in stone, never to be erased, and continue to prick our consciences whenever we’re reminded that God is the One holding the moral yardstick.
We see people doing all kinds of mental and moral gymnastics to assuage their consciences, trying to prove to the world (but probably primarily to themselves) that they are a “good person”. No one likes to think otherwise. Yet God’s Law looms. And Israel is like a poke in the eye to those who wish to forget it.
The return of Israel to the Land just makes it all the more concrete. Judgment Day is getting closer. Things are getting increasingly real. This is no fairy story, and Israel quietly demonstrates that God isn’t going anywhere by virtue of their history. So the nations rage and hate.
To hate Israel is to hate God Himself
Just as Yeshua pointed out to Paul on his way to Damascus that to persecute His people was to persecute the Lord Himself (Acts 9:5), so we see the same principle in Psalm 83. The Psalm begins by calling on God for help, equating the enemies of Israel with enemies of God in a chiasm identified by Kinzel and Korotkiy:1
83:3 (A) Enemies of God “For behold, Your enemies …”
“Those who hate You …”
83:4 (B) Enemies of Israel “… against Your people …”
“… against Your treasured ones
83:5 (B’) Enemies of Israel “… let us wipe them out as a nation …”
“… the name of Israel …”
83:6 (A’) Enemies of God “For they have conspired …”
“Against You …”
“The psalm further develops the recurring theme that to oppose Abraham’s descendants is to invoke God’s curse; those who hate God are the same ones that attack the chosen people,” Kinzel and Korotkiy clarify, listing the numerous attempts at genocide Israel has faced throughout the ages. Hatred of Israel is equated with hatred of God.
God chose to put His name here, in Israel, and upon the people of Israel, when the blood covenant was confirmed at Mount Sinai (Exodus 24). He said He would be our God, and we His people (Deuteronomy 26:16-19). We carry God’s name, and God carries ours: He is the God of Israel. By binding our names together at Sinai, the hatred of God is directed at the people of Israel. Similarly, the people of Israel remind people of their hatred of God. This is “Sinat Sinai” — the hatred generated by God’s covenant with Israel on that mountain.
It’s not limited to one nation, one worldview, to right or left leaning people. The hatred of Israel is found across the board. It’s replete in Muslim countries, but also among liberal elites in Europe. Its extremities are seen in far right fascism and also the extreme left. Whether people despise the rich or the poor, the native or the stranger, the cultured or the assimilated, the people of Israel are still the butt of hatred because there is no logical basis for it. Sinat Sinai is a demonic hatred of God, God’s laws, God’s ways, and God’s sovereignty.
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
(Psalm 2:1-3)
You see that? They don’t wish to be bound. People don’t want to be constricted by God’s law. It’s uncomfortable for all of us, because we all fall short. And so the nations rage against all the reminders, because the Judge of all the earth won’t go away.
Projection and blaming, our response to guilt
“I still can’t get over the fact the people who have colonized a quarter of the planet have convinced Ivy league kids in the West that they are anti-colonialists,” wrote someone on social media.
This is what happens when the hatred of Israel kicks in: projection.
Israel is like a blank canvas on which to project your own evil, Douglas Murray suggested.
Those trying to take of the world by stealth accuse the little Jewish country, the size of New Jersey, of doing so. Somewhat hilarious bearing in mind how very disorganized things are round here. Medieval Europe accused the people of Israel of being greedy (like Shakespeare’s Shylock) but it was they who forced the Jews to do the dirty work of lending money so they didn’t have to, often extorting and stealing the money they supposedly borrowed. And it goes on. With any accusation directed at Israel, it’s typically the accuser who’s guilty of that very crime, Murray maintains.
The West has been subject to virtue signaling on steroids as people protest their innocence, furiously deflecting attention towards ‘evil’ Israel. Envy disguised as the pursuit of justice provokes people to loathe what God has chosen, denying Him the sovereign right to choose. He is perfectly loving and just, even when we don’t understand, and the challenge is to acknowledge God has every right to act without our approval.
Now of course the people of Israel are no angels. Nor have they ever been. But it is the very concept of God’s people and the Law they represent that irks a troubled conscience. At the very beginning, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. Cain blamed his brother Abel. When God comes knocking, wanting an account, the fingers are pointing in every direction, anywhere except ourselves. Israel is an easy scapegoat, but we will all need to account for our thoughts, words, and actions on the day of reckoning before God. No one is innocent.
The right way to point
God knows we all sin. That’s why He sent the Messiah, to pay our debt. Before Yeshua came in the flesh to pay for our sin at the cross, God gave Israel the sacrificial system as a means of atoning for sin. The Sinai covenant included a “get out of jail free” card: total forgiveness for sin. Solomon prayed for the people at the dedication of God’s temple:
“If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them … yet if they turn their heart … saying, ‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul … Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant and to the plea of your people Israel, giving ear to them whenever they call to you. For you separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be your heritage, as you declared through Moses your servant, when you brought our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.”
(1 Kings 8:46-48, 52-53 – contracted for brevity).
This is the way to break free of the bonds of the Law of Sinai: only through the grace and forgiveness that comes from God Himself.
Instead of deflecting our guilt by pointing at the manifold flaws of Israel (both real and imagined), God points us to Yeshua who can wipe away our sin and give us a brand-new clean conscience. Yeshua willingly made Himself the scapegoat, paying our debt so that we don’t have to.
The book of Hebrews in the New Testament (the New Covenant) says that the Messiah brought in the new and better covenant which was promised in Jeremiah 31. In verse 29-30, it explains that everyone is responsible to God for their own sin (“everyone shall die for his own iniquity”). But then God promises a new covenant to come, not like the covenant of Sinai. He was going to make a new and living way:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
The antidote to Sinat Sinai, a guilty conscience avoiding accountability, is forgiveness for sin. Only God can do that.
- From THE MASTER’S SEMINARY JOURNAL Vol. 36, Spring 2025, p.119 in the paper “THE BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE HATRED OF ISRAEL AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR ANTISEMITISM: TO BE THE ENEMY OF ISRAEL IS TO BE THE ENEMY OF GOD” by Brian J. Kinzel Ph.D., Bar-Ilan University and Oleg Korotkiy, Ph.D., Bar-Ilan University (in progress)
