Our society is in a bad way and the country is plagued with injustices. One gets the impression sometimes that the battle against crime using the legal violence of the law enforcement authorities is a losing battle. Perhaps the time has come to try non-violent methods? Perhaps mutual tolerance has a respectable role to play even in this sphere?

Ever since the first man ate from the Tree of Knowledge we have presumed to know good from evil. The trouble is that though all men are created in the image of God they are nonetheless created with different faces, different opinions, different tastes and different eyesight. The early sages recounted of Moses that he prayed to God to give his people leaders “who would have patience to deal with each person within his own understanding”. Moses had in mind not only freedom of opinion and conscience but also the freedom to define and distinguish good and evil. People who differ in opinion, belief and worldview will also perceive good and evil differently. The kings of Judah and Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord — but in their eyes it was good. Each and every one is entitled to say: Where you see good, I see bad; and I don’t care if where I see good you see bad.

But once the rule of law is established, it also establishes categories of evildoing which, even if certain eyes see them as right-dealing, nonetheless the law of the land prevails and enforces its own judgement. But the law does more than impose penalties on those who do "evil” in its sight: it also arrogates to itself the exclusive right to enforce the law. It forbids the insulted or assaulted or robbed individual to take the law into his own hands. The individual may — sometimes even must — set the wheels of law enforcement in motion but he has no choice but to “wait for those charged with law enforcement to do their duty” (as Shulamit Aloni puts it). Not that we must reconcile ourselves to “evil”, we must fight it by every legal means. But violence — individual, physical or verbal — is not a legal means.

The difference in each one’s perception of good and evil, the revulsion a person of conscience feels witnessing evil in his (or her) sight, are both perfectly compatible with “a policy of tolerance”. Not only do the tolerant enjoy freedom of opinion and speech and demonstration and protest but they are the biggest beneficiaries of these freedoms because only they can be trusted not to abuse them. They will broadcast their opinion without using insults; they will denounce official wrongs without uttering threats; they will demonstrate and protest without attacking or assaulting. They will carry out the commandment to “rebuke they neighbour and not suffer sin on his account” in measured language.

Hillel the Elder’s renowned dictum: “Do not to others what you would hate done to you” is indeed the whole of “tolerance” in a nutshell. It is as obvious as night and day that if you insult someone, you will get insulted back; if you attack someone he will only return the assault with greater force; if someone is doing to others what you perceive as evil and you defame or expel him — this is precisely “what you would hate done to you”. Treat him, says Hillel, as you would want him to treat you. And if you retort that this does not apply if you are already the injured party, that in that case you are entitled to ‘get your own back’, then I retort on you that that route has no end to it: you will pay him back and then he will pay you back with force, you will pay him back again, and so on and so on into endless chaos. When, however, you are defending yourself against someone trying to injure you this does not apply: no extent of tolerance and no law forbids you take action, even evil and criminal action to defend yourself or another from immediate injury.

True, our society is in a bad way and the country is plagued with injustices. One gets the impression sometimes that the battle against crime using the legal violence of the law enforcement authorities is a losing battle. Perhaps the time has come to try non-violent methods? Perhaps mutual tolerance has a respectable role to play even in this sphere?