Bar Kamtza’s Kiddush

Kamtza and Bar Kamtza used to be good friends: they used to hang out together; they used to invite each other for Shabbat; they used to go to shiurim together. It was very friendly, very nice. Likewise, Mrs. Kamtza and Mrs. Bar Kamtza also seemed to get on pretty well. There were a few awkward moments – like the time Mrs. Bar Kamtza nearly passed out in the passenger seat of Mrs. Kamtza’s car, because Mrs. Kamtza was worried the air-conditioning would guzzle up too much petrol – but otherwise, it worked pretty well.

Until one day, Mrs. Kamtza went to a workshop to lose all her inhibitions, and came back a changed person. Very soon after that, she came and sat on Mrs. Bar Kamtza’s couch, and ripped her friend’s life and personality to shreds.

Mrs. Bar Kamtza was in shock. She knew her friend could be prickly, but she’d never suspected that secretly, she’d been looking down on her so much, or that she held her whole life in such disdain.

Let’s be polite, and say the friendship got quite strained. For a few more weeks, it hobbled along very lamely. Mrs. Bar Kamtza tried to avoid her old friend as much as possible, while she worked out what to do about it all. But the new, inhibition-free Mrs. Kamtza wasn’t about to stand for that, oh no siree. She started coming round for ‘discussions’ with Mrs. Bar Kamtza, trying to force her back into being ‘good friends’. Each conversation left Mrs. Bar Kamtza more and more of the view that Mrs. Kamtza  needed to be avoided like the plague.

While all this was going on, Kamtza and Bar Kamtza were still good buddies; they still went to shiurim together, they still had a nice chat after davening. Until one day, Mr. Kamtza decided that he, too, was going to go to a workshop to lose his inhibitions. He also came out a changed man: whereas in the past, he’d make a big effort to hide his fundamental lack of belief in Hashem, or be much more careful about making disparaging comments about praying and tzaddikim, now, he wasn’t.

Now, every conversation he had with his friend, Bar Kamtza, was leaving the latter with a gnawing feeling in his stomach that he’d just been spiritually mugged. Whatever progress he was trying to make, spiritually, there was Kamtza pulling it down, or telling him that it was ‘only for tzaddikim’, and not for guys like them; or disparaging the rabbis for being ‘out of touch’ or ‘unrealistic’.

After a few months, Bar Kamtza realized the ‘friendship’ was doing him a lot of spiritual damage. It was time to challenge Kamtza on all his not-so-closet heresy. Let’s be polite, and say Kamtza didn’t take it well. He reacted by trying to get Bar Kamtza kicked out of the local shul, while Mrs. Kamtza raced around to deliver a hand-written note to Mrs. Bar Kamtza’s children, which described in great detail all of Mrs. Bar Kamtza’s ‘problems’ and bad character traits.

A state of war ensued.

The Bar Kamtzas literally couldn’t stand the sight of their former ‘friends’, and for a few months, they avoided any social functions where they might run into them. But then, there came a wedding of a good mutual friend that couldn’t be avoided, and they for sure were going to be there.

The Bar Kamtzas had butterflies in their stomach, worrying about what would be. It was a very uncomfortable night. Mrs. Kamtza physically accosted Mrs. Bar Kamtza by the canapés, and started screeching at her that ‘what she was doing wasn’t nice’. Mrs. Bar Kamtza did what any self-respecting person would do – and ran away.

After that night, the social awkwardness escalated higher and higher. The Bar Kamtzas didn’t want to speak badly of the Kamtzas to others, because that would be evil speech. But in the meantime, they were running into the Kamtzas all over the place, and even just seeing them made the Bar Kamtzas feel ill.

For a couple of months, Mrs. Bar Kamtza started scanning the ‘homes for sale’ column of the Jerusalem Post, day-dreaming of moving to a place where the Kamtzas could never find her….

This could have carried on for months, even years. Until one day, Bar Kamtza happened to be reading about the forthcoming elections in Israel. He came across an article that shocked him to the core: rabbis, big rabbis, were apparently saying the most horrible things about each other, publicly, all in the name of upholding truth.

Bar Kamtza sighed a very deep, loud sigh. Truth was important, wasn’t it? Evil people pretending to be good had to be exposed, didn’t they? They had to be sidelined and avoided at all costs, didn’t they?

But it was so ugly, even if it was ‘true’.

Bar Kamtza went to talk to G-d about it all, and he had a sudden flash of clarity: G-d didn’t want all the arguments and accusations, even when the other side really was about as bad as they come. G-d wanted peace.

Hmmm.

The Bar Kamtzas had a simcha coming up in a couple of weeks’ time; the bar mitzvah of their son. They’d spent so many months trying to avoid the Kamtzas at this wedding, and that brit, and this sheva brachot, that the thought of having a peaceful event, where the Kamtzas definitely weren’t invited, was like an oasis in a very hot desert.

But if they didn’t invite the Kamtzas to their simcha, people would definitely notice. They would definitely understand that the Bar Kamtzas and the Kamtzas were no longer friends.

Bar Kamtza had been waiting for that moment for months….

But now? Now, his conscience was telling him that the biggest present he could give G-d, and give his child, was to invite his worst enemy to his bar mitzvah.

Ohoooohooo, the argument he had with himself!

Back and forwards it went, until eventually, he made the decision: “I want blessings in my life! I want my son to have blessings, too! I know Hashem is going to bless my family so very much, if I swallow my pride and my spite and invite those horrible, poisonous, religious hypocrites to my do!” (Let’s be polite, and say it was still something of an internal struggle.)

So that’s what the Bar Kamtzas did. By the time you read this, maybe the third temple will have been rebuilt. Maybe Mashiach will have been revealed. But even if not, the Bar Kamtzas are still feeling sooooo good, from trying to give G-d that present of ‘free love’, or ahavat chinam.

It took one petty dispute about not being invited to a party to destroy the last temple; who knows if Bar Kamtza’s invite didn’t go a long way towards fixing that issue, once and for all?