Post by Rabbi Neil on May 10, 2024 23:28:45 GMT
In Tractate Shabbat (31a) of Talmud, we find an incident involving a non-Jew who comes before Shammai and says to him, “Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot.” Shammai pushed him away, or struck him, depending on your translation, with a stick or builder’s cubit that he was holding. So, the same non-Jew came before Hillel. He converted him and said to him, “That which is hateful to you do not do to another – that is the entire Torah and the rest is interpretation. Now go and study.”
Is Hillel correct in this? Certainly, the second clause of the central verse of the central chapter of the central book of Torah is v’ahavta l’re’acha kamocha, ani Adonai – you shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Eternal. Torah frames it as a positive commandment - love your neighbor - whereas Hillel frames it as a negative – do not do anything hateful to one another. Are they the same?
The Rabbis connected Leviticus 19:18 with the verses that come before. They say, “Do not deal basely with members of your people. Do not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Eternal. You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Eternal. To them, loving your neighbor was expressed through not profiting by the blood of your neighbor, not hating them in your heart and, especially, by rebuking them! If a person is going astray, the biggest act of love is to bring them back to a positive path. Sometimes that needs to happen gently – “have you tried not breaking the commandments?’ and eventually it may have to be less gentle. If a person moves away from Judaism, there are even some voices in our tradition that say that the rebuke must be forceful, possibly even involving public denunciation. How is this an act of love? The idea is simple – we want the very best for the other person, which in a traditional Jewish perspective means that we want them to be in a right relationship with God, which in turn means that we want them to follow the mitzvot. We rebuke because we love.
But there’s a problem with this, which is abuse. Gentle rebuke, perhaps best translated as guidance or loving redirection, is one thing. It’s another thing when a person becomes so critical that the other person listening can no longer hear anything but negativity or criticism. And then there’s the risk that it goes further – that criticism turns into abuse which then becomes justified under the guise of love. Or, conversely, someone receiving gentle rebuke or loving guidance could turn around to the person rebuking them and say that not trying to change them is not an act of love but an act of abuse. The whole idea of connecting rebuke with love is, then, laden with potential difficulties, which is why concentrating merely on the verse itself is far more helpful nowadays.
So, is “love your neighbor as yourself” the same as “whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”? The key is in the Hebrew grammar – v’ahavta L’re’acha. L’ is a directional pronoun, meaning “to,” so a better translation of this Torah verse is “love to your neighbor” or, best, “show love to your neighbor as you would have it shown to you.” Show love to your neighbor seems profoundly different to don’t do anything hateful to your neighbor. Showing love means acting positively, which is different to not doing anything hateful. Doing nothing is not doing anything hateful, but it’s not showing love. The two aren’t the same.
So, how could Hillel take the central verse of the central chapter of the central book of Torah, the very center or Torah, and misquote it? To me, the answer is because of the nuance of the verse and the person he was speaking to. Where we normally translate l’re’acha as “to your neighbor” it specifically means “to your fellow Jew” because those were the neighbors at the time. The person who asked the question of Hillel wasn’t Jewish but wanted to convert, so he didn’t really know any fellow Jews and, specifically, he didn’t know how to show love to them in terms of ensuring their Jewish well-being. So, I think that Hillel changed the maxim to something that a non-Jew could understand as he entered the Jewish community. Remember what he says. “That which is hateful to you do not do to another – that is the entire Torah and the rest is interpretation. Now go and study.” The “now go and study” part is essential. He wants this person to move from a place of “That which is hateful to you do not do to another” to “Love your fellow Jew as yourself” but that’s going to take time because that person needs to learn what love your fellow Jew as yourself will mean.
Even with that resolved, there’s still one issue with this verse? Only a fellow Jew? What about the non-Jew? There’s quite a lot more of them than there are Jews. Are we really only required to only show love to the fellow Jew? The answer is no, of course not. In fact, there are over 36 occasions where Torah commands us to show love to the non-Jew who lives nearby. Why so many? You could say that it’s because it’s trying to combat an inherent racism, a natural suspicion that the Hebrews could have had of strangers in their camp due to what happened when they lived in Egypt and, indeed, when other nations like the Amalekites or the Moabites tried to destroy them. Or, you could look at it another way – the commandments to love the non-Jew are scattered throughout Torah but the commandment to love the fellow Jew is placed at the very center of Torah specifically because it’s more difficult! That phrase “one room, two Jews, three opinions” is real and while the theory is that we dialogue with love, well, let’s just say that the people we know and love tend to annoy us the most! It’s not that we’re only commanded to love the fellow Jew, quite clearly not, but that showing love to the Jew who may annoy us should be just as important as showing love to the non-Jew whom we already know to welcome. Perhaps this is the central verse of Torah because it’s the most difficult, and perhaps that’s why Hillel changes it for the non-Jew who wants to become a Jew. Support for this view comes from the fact that the first half of the verse talks about not taking revenge or bearing a grudge against your neighbor, and only then does it command love of that same person.
I think taking Hillel’s maxim and the central verse of Torah in order is really helpful for all of us as we reflect on our relationships with other people. First, we do not do to anyone else that which we would consider to be hateful to us. Then, once we have achieved that, we show love to them as we would have them show love to us. Start with those for whom this kind of reciprocation of respect and love is easy, and then eventually work towards those for whom it is more challenging. Maybe that is the way for us to bring about the Messianic Age – by taking on the hardest mitzvah of all and by getting to a point of loving all of our fellow human beings, including the ones who annoy us, as ourselves. May we all find the strength and love to be able to do this, and let us say, Amen.