Shabbat Achrei Mot–Kedoshim

Love Your Neighbour

In a week of celebration, we are still plagued by dissent.

This week, the Torah will give us the well-worn phrase “VeAhavta LeReyacha Kamocha” (Vayikra 19:18). It is usually translated into English as, “And you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” For most people, this is understood to mean that we should love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves. Which seems both an impossibility and an improbability. How can one realistically require this? And what if one does not love oneself? Let alone one’s neighbour?

Both grammatically and in common sense, it should not be translated into English as “Love your neighbor as yourself: but rather as, “Show love (empathy, compassion) towards your neighbor because he, she, or they, is the same as you.” We are all the children of one God, as the saying goes. As the Talmud (Sanhedrin 74a) says, no-one can say that “my blood is any purer than anyone else’s.”

We are asked much more often in the Torah to love God than other people. Are we supposed to love God in the same way that we are asked to love humans? Is it the same kind of love? Surely not. The meaning of love here is more like identification, perhaps loyalty. It is something emotional as opposed to something cerebral. But caring does not mean condoning or even turning the other cheek. One has to recognise evil and either avoid it or fight it.

There is a well-known debate in the Talmud (Yerushalmi Nedarin 30b) over what is the single most important sentence in the Torah. R. Akiva says it is loving your neighbour. Ben Azai, his contemporary and friend, disagrees. For him, it is,“This is the history of mankind whom God created in His image,” (Bereishit 5:10). Loving mankind, being part of mankind, is the higher level. The difference is that R. Akiva may define neighbour as being a fellow Jew, committed to the same ethical and ritual values. Ben Azai says that it is the commonality of humanity that matters most. We were all created in the image of God. Not literally, of course, but all with a spiritual dimension and a capacity for good.

The Talmud seems to come down on Ben Azai’s side, because the phrase “Love Your Neighbour” is quoted in regard to a criminal (Pesachim 73a, etc). Even if he is condemned to die, “make sure his death is a humane one.” Here is not the place to go into capital punishment. Suffice it to say there are very different attitudes to be found in the Talmud. But the very fact that one has to be considerate and sensitive even to a murderer clearly shows that loving one’s neighbour is indeed supposed to apply even to bad guys! And it certainly applies to good non-Jews, as Ben Azai’s position implies and as R. Akiva himself clearly agrees (Mishna Avot 3:18). All creatures matter.

There is quite a separate command to be helpful to your compatriot, “Ve Chai Achicha Imach,” (Leviticus 25:36):“You must ensure that your brother is able to live alongside you,” in the context of supporting the needy both materially and otherwise.

Loving the “other” is also used elsewhere. “And you should love the stranger as yourself because you were strangers in Egypt,” (Leviticus 19.34), where it clearly is not someone the same as you. It strikes me as obvious that we have an obligation to be considerate towards everyone we encounter, not just our immediate neighbours. All of mankind. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashana states quite explicitly that God cares about and judges all of humanity. “On Rosh HaShanah everyone on earth passes before God (and is judged).”

We all want peace. But if you cannot get on with your immediate neighbour, how can you expect to get on with those further removed from you? Which of course is precisely why religions may be good on theory but woefully lacking on the practice!

But if we cannot even be humane to our own, how can we hope to act humanely to others? It may be true that we have no obligation to be nice to those who hate us, and there are plenty of them. But we must at least compensate by being extra nice to those who do not reject us or our right to live like any other people in the world. As for those who are against us, if they want others to respect their integrity and distinctive ways of life, they ought to extend a similar tolerance toward others.