VeAhavta le’Re’akha Kamokha -- one should love one’s fellow as oneself. This phrase is famously said by Rabbi Akiva to be klal gadol baTorah, a great, perhaps the greatest, principle of the entire Torah. Here we are in the middle of the middle book of the Torah, and what we find at its center is love.
What is this love? The only narrative example in which we hear of such a love for another “as oneself” is the love of Jonathan for David (I Samuel 17 and following). Yonatan is the son of King Saul. Theoretically, it is Yonatan who should be the next king, but young David has been secretly anointed by the prophet at the command of God. David comes on the scene, strong and popular, vanquishing the giant Goliat as well as many other enemies of Israel, to the great adoration of the people. Yonatan, watching all this, strangely enough does not feel threatened as his father does, but welcomes David, helping him and loving him, and symbolically even giving him his own clothes and sword.
What is this love? It is a love that occurs precisely in the space where jealousy could have, and by all rights, should have, sprouted. David was essentially stealing what Yonatan had every right to expect to be his. He should not have rejoiced at David’s success, but been driven mad by it, as was his father Saul. Indeed, every time David had any success, Saul is said to be overcome by a ruah ra’ah, “a bad spirit.” This is the spirit of jealousy that eats us alive from the inside. Yonatan, by contrast, seems to evade such evil temper by dint of his simple, strong affection for David. More than anything, the problem with jealousy, and on the other side, the benefit of love, is how they affects us, the one making us feel evil-tempered, and the other making us feel happy and generous. Choosing love is in this way a matter of self-interest. It feels better to be loving.
But of course, one cannot really control emotions. Or so we argue. But perhaps, as Rav Naftali Hertz Vizel of the Biur suggests (as cited in Nehama Leibowitz’s commentary), the Torah in this command to love one’s neighbor as oneself is hinting at a way of thinking that may help one do just that. The key is the word kamokha, “like you.” Learn to think of others, even would-be enemies, as being “like you,” made in the image of God, and therefore, like you, worthy of respect and affection. I would add to this sense of “like you” another dimension: Know that others are like you in their suffering, their insecurities, their fears and their anxieties. Don’t just look at the exterior and think – that person is perfect, has no problems, and therefore is not in need of either my compassion or my love. This removes them from the “like you” human category and therefore makes it easy to be jealous and hard to love them. Remember that we are all human, we all have our troubles, we all suffer in some way, remember these things and the kindness, the open-heartedness of a Jonathan-like love will naturally emerge.
Such love is a mind-set, a spiritual/emotional habit, a practice we can indeed practice and become better at. It is indeed the core of the Torah because it is the root of our ability to move out of ourselves, both in relation to God and to others, the root of our ability to transcend the natural tight frame of the ego, and feel the breadth of our connection to others.
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What a great chiddush. The rabbis have struggled with the question of how out I'd feasible to love your neighbors like you love yourself. Some even alter the basic formulation, like hillel (don't do unto others) and Nachmanides (love the successes of your friends). Your approach tells us how to get there.
ReplyDeleteHow beautiful. If we can see that suffering is universal, that, as you say "everyone has troubles", we can truly be loving and compassionate.
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