Hate Evil and Love Good

"Indifference toward the wicked" is better than infatuation with wickedness. For those who are addicted to it, indifference is a necessary first step: "cease to do evil". But the baal teshuva ought to progress: "learn to do good". To devote yourself to, lit. to "seek justice" is one among the many ways of "doing good", and it involves an active hatred of evil, more than a merely passive hatred, or indifference to it.

"Establish justice in the gate" is the only positive commandment given universally to all the sons of Noah, and it assumes that the judges will not remain merely indifferent toward evil, but will take an active retribution in order to quell it and prevent it from reoccurring. This is specified to the sons of Israel with the refrain ".. and you shall purge the evil from your midst" Since we are social creatures, it is a part of human nature to do this. In societies unenlightened by the light of the law, and without courts, the giving of retribution becomes sudden, extreme, vicious, and unjust. But the first step in adminstration of justice is to teach it: "the Torah of kindness is on her tongue". And the second to give warning and ethical guidance, without hating our brother in our hearts. By forcing resentful silence into the open, we turn hatred into loving reproof, absolve ourselves of silent complicity, and also gain the opportunity to stand corrected by more information, which prevents mere misunderstandings or harmless differences from metastasizing into the "baseless hatred" for which, it is said, the second temple was destroyed on the 9th of Av.