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Rabbi Barry Leff Digest
Number 41 Date 050803
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41. Kedoshim 5763 love your neighbor
From: "Rabbi Barry Leff" <rebbarry@yeladim.org>
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 22:18:56 -0700
From: "Rabbi Barry Leff" <rebbarry@yeladim.org>
Subject: Kedoshim 5763 love your neighbor
Kedoshim 5763
You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord…Leviticus 19:18
This week’s Torah portion is about holiness. God commands us to be
holy, and then we are given a whole assortment of different
commandments—which we follow to make ourselves holy, set aside for God.
Many very important commandments are found in this week’s parsha,
everything from observe the Sabbath to do not steal. But there is one
commandment in particular in this week’s parsha that several of our most
illustrious rabbis have said is a fundamental principle in the Torah.
There is a famous story of a prospective convert who at one time came
before Shammai and said he was interested in converting to Judaism, on
the condition that Shammai tell him the essence of the Torah, while
standing on one foot. “Give me the summary, rabbi!” Shammai was
incensed by this person’s presumptuousness. Shammai was a builder by
trade, and he literally chased the prospective convert away with a
yardstick. The prospective convert went to visit the other big rabbi in
town, Hillel and asked the same question. Hillel told him: "What is
hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole
Torah; the rest is just commentary. Go and study it." Hillel’s succinct
summary is not found in the Torah anywhere. There is no commandment
which reads “what is hateful to you, do not do to others.” Rather,
Hillel’s rule, the original formulation of the Golden Rule, is his
interpretation of a commandment which appears in this week’s Torah
portion. V’ahavta l’ra’acha k’mocha, love your neighbor as yourself.
Do you agree with Hillel’s interpretation? Do we fulfill the mitzvah of
“love your neighbor as yourself” if we simply refrain from doing
something to someone else that we would not like done to us? Or does
this commandment call on us to do more?
If Hillel’s formulation is not enough, how DO we fulfill this
commandment? If we take it literally—love your neighbor as yourself—how
could we ever possibly live up to that? Wouldn’t we all exert ourselves
more on our own behalf than on behalf of a stranger? Are we therefore
all sinners? Or is there some other way to understand this commandment?
The commentators understand the word “k’mocha,” not as “as yourself,”
but rather as “as toward yourself,” in other words how you would EXPECT
others to behave toward you. You are not obligated to hand over to your
neighbor everything you own, because if you are sane you would not
expect him to hand over all his stuff to you just because you asked.
The commentators explain that the “love” the Torah expects us to extend
toward others is a reciprocal sort of love; what we would want others to
do for us. The rabbis teach that there are several ways in which we
express this kind of love for others: 1) be sincere, without
pretensions; 2) treat him with honor; 3) ask after his well being; 4) be
compassionate toward his sorrows; 5) greet people cheerfully; 6) give
people the benefit of the doubt; 7) make at least a little effort on
someone else’s behalf; and 8) lend him something if he needs it. You
get the idea—these actions, and others that would be similar to them, is
what we obligated to do for other people, all based on this one
commandment in this week’s Torah portion: love your neighbor as
yourself.
Accordingly, if we somehow strengthen the “ani,” the “I,” we also
strengthen our relationship to others. If we are willing to do more for
others, than we can also expect others to do more for us. If you both
expect more of others, and are willing to do more for others, we can
make the world a much better place. And this may be the reason why
Hillel said that this is the whole Torah, and Rabbi Akiva said of this
verse, “zeh c’lal gadol b’torah,” this is a great principle of the
Torah. What makes this verse so important is that we should be
elevating ourselves, and recognizing that every person is created in the
image of God: we are all b’tzelem Elokim, and the other person,
therefore, is also k’mocha, he is like you—like you in the sense that he
is also created in the image of God.
This in fact is the reason that this commandment, “v’ahavta l’ra’acha
k’mocha,” love your neighbor as yourself, continues with “ani Hashem,” I
am God. It is as if to say “I am God, I created all of you, and I, God,
obligate you to have unity with your fellow Man. You are all created in
my image.”
Bringing God into the equation substantially raises the bar for this
commandment. If we take God out of the equation, and say we should do
to others what we expect others to do to us, our selfishness comes to
the forefront. There is a famous situation that is used in game theory
called the prisoner’s dilemma. Imagine two criminals arrested under the
suspicion of having committed a crime together. However, the police do
not have sufficient proof in order to have them convicted. The two
prisoners are isolated from each other, and the police visit each of
them and offer a deal: the one who offers evidence against the other one
will be freed. If none of them accepts the offer, they are in fact
cooperating against the police, and both of them will get only a small
punishment because of lack of proof. They both gain. However, if one of
them betrays the other one, by confessing to the police, the defector
will gain more, since he is freed; the one who remained silent, on the
other hand, will receive the full punishment, since he did not help the
police, and there is sufficient proof. If both betray, both will be
punished, but less severely than if they had refused to talk. The
dilemma resides in the fact that each prisoner has a choice between only
two options, but cannot make a good decision without knowing what the
other one will do.
Just as a rational exercise, most people would speak up against the
other person. And in fact, if we go with the idea of reciprocity, that
you should do to others what you would expect them to do to you, you
would probably rat on the other person, figuring he would probably do
that to you. An intellectual approach to treating others the way you
would expect to be treated will end up with both of you being punished
more heavily than if everyone kept their mouth shut.
If we bring God into the picture, however, what is the appropriate
action to take in the prisoner’s dilemma changes. If we see the other
person as in the image of God, we could not consider making a false
charge against the other person. If the other person also sees us as
created in the image of God, they also would not make a charge against
us. And both parties benefit. Overall there will be less suffering.
Love your neighbor as yourself does not mean a lot if you have low self
esteem. If love your neighbor as yourself means treat others the way
you expect them to treat you, it doesn’t mean much if you don’t expect
much of others. On the other hand, if we can see the other as someone
who is also created in the image of God, as someone who is not only a
relative because we share a common creator but someone who literally has
a piece of the Divine within him, we will raise both our own behavior,
and our expectations of others greatly. If we love our neighbors as
ourselves, seeing a manifestation of God in both ourselves and others,
we will surely be using this commandment to fulfill the directive given
at the very beginning of the parsha: To be holy. And we will make the
world a better place at the same time. Which maybe is what it means to
be an “am kadosh,” a holy nation.
Shabbat Shalom
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The world is built on three things: on the Torah, on service of God, and
on lovingkindness…Pirkei Avot 1:2
Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4
phone: (604) 271-6262
fax: (604) 271-6270
email: rebbarry@yeladim.org
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