The First Temple, why was it destroyed? Because of idolatry, murder and adultery.
The Second Temple, when they were occupied in studying Torah, doing mitzvahs, and acts of loving-kindness, why was it destroyed?
Because there were those who were intolerant of others without cause. Which teaches us that senseless intolerance is equal to idolatry, murder and adultery combined. (Talmud Yoma 9b.)
There is no sin of senseless intolerance listed in Torah. And yet, while the cardinal sins of Torah demanded only 70 years of exile, intolerance is so sinister, so powerful, it can take us almost two thousand years to heal from its wounds.
In simple terms, it’s much easier to deal with obvious, open failures and repair them. Intolerance, however, comes concealed beneath layers of justifications and self-righteousness. When you don’t believe you’ve done anything wrong, and on the contrary, that you were fighting a holy war, it’s hard to make up for all the damage caused.
Yet there is a deeper reason: Other sins, even the most heinous sins, are symptoms of flaws in the human person. To repair those flaws, each of us is granted 70 years upon this earth—ten years for each of the seven categories of emotions.
But intolerance of the other lies at the primal genesis of evil, at the point of fissure and subsequent fragmentation that occurred in the earliest stages of creation, as the universe lost contact with the infinite divine light that preceded it.
Because it is embedded so close to the core of our reality, it can attack the core of the human psyche, chochmah, the seminal point of reason.
That is why its antidote must also transcend reason. It must be related to the primordial infinite light itself, a light that knows no bounds. The key to healing humanity is therefore unreasonable.
Which means that with a single unpredictable and unconditional act of one human caring for another, connecting with another, especially another he feels he cannot tolerate, the whole of creation is healed and fulfilled.
The key in this fragment of the Rebbe is the word "senseless." meaning for "no reason at all, " we just hate because we hate. True there is little human tolerance for other people. and that is how hate comes into being. A good example is "Jew- Hatred" that simply is without reason at all., and each ideology finds a reason that when analyzed doesn't hold water. In other cases the reason of intolerance is not so clear, but it is true that some people do not like each other without a reason put forward. It is our responsibility to learn to hold our emotions in check. Yet, there is were the EGO is so necessary to see who we should stay away from and who we can trust. Actually, without Ego, there is no love and no friendship. Ego starts with the respect of the self, then extended to others. Obliterate the ego is to destroy the self. Taming it is the correct position. There is not going to be an" oceanic feeling" of brotherhood ever because, simply said. to survive we need Ego