It always feels both somehow superfluous and clichéd to quote,
“ אָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ אֲנִי יוָֹה You shall love your neighbour as
yourself. I am the Lord.” (Vayikra 19.18) as a Jewish source text for moral
behaviour.
Over the next few paragraphs I hope to show that, once we
have thought more about this principle’s scope and traditional interpretations,
it’s limitations become so apparent and that a more universal text should and can
be found to complement it.
From this verse, a number of questions immediately jump out at us. I apologise that not all can I devote time to explain right now. Here are a few questions to start you off. What is meant by ‘love’? Who is ‘your neighbour’? If love is just towards your neighbour, is that not narrowing the scope of this ethical love directive? Since love is an emotion, how can you ‘just’ command someone to love someone else?
When faced with a curious Torah phrase, I would normally immediately look to Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki, 10th century France) for guidance. I would however like to skip Rashi for now and listen instead to the words of Ramban (Nachmanides, 11th century, Spain).
Ramban expresses shock at this verse. He asks, how can we understand
that the Torah commands us to love others? How can you command me to love you,
just like that, as if it’s no big thing? Surely emotions don’t just show up
because we are asked to express or feel them.
Ramban points out that the Torah here is therefore not strictly asking us to love others. You cannot command emotions. Furthermore the Torah elsewhere puts boundaries around our duty to look after the welfare of others. You should not negate your own needs in the face of others’ needs - the preservation of your life comes before preserving the life of others. Your priority is always you over me and so you benefiting me is not to be at the expense of your own welfare. Rather, explains Ramban, the text is here instructing us to act in ways that show love to others. Treat others in ways, which would, for you, lead you to feel that you had received love, if treated in that way.
I always enjoy the commonsense humanity and rationalism of Ramban. Ramban here affirms that each of us has legitimate individual needs, which are not overridden by my obligations to show love to you. Love here is understood as a verb. Meaning that love is the doing of acts of kindness or whatever feels like love. But this giving of love is not at the expense of my own needs.
Ramban points out that the Torah here is therefore not strictly asking us to love others. You cannot command emotions. Furthermore the Torah elsewhere puts boundaries around our duty to look after the welfare of others. You should not negate your own needs in the face of others’ needs - the preservation of your life comes before preserving the life of others. Your priority is always you over me and so you benefiting me is not to be at the expense of your own welfare. Rather, explains Ramban, the text is here instructing us to act in ways that show love to others. Treat others in ways, which would, for you, lead you to feel that you had received love, if treated in that way.
I always enjoy the commonsense humanity and rationalism of Ramban. Ramban here affirms that each of us has legitimate individual needs, which are not overridden by my obligations to show love to you. Love here is understood as a verb. Meaning that love is the doing of acts of kindness or whatever feels like love. But this giving of love is not at the expense of my own needs.
Okay, so I initially skipped Rashi, since, to be honest, when
I first read his comments, I really didn’t understand what he was trying to say
about this phrase. But, now I think I have it. (go me!)
Rashi, the master of explaining troubling aspects of the Torah
text, simply states in response to this ethical directive, “Said Rabbi Akiva, This
is a great principle of the Torah”. “Okay, so what - What’s new about that?
Didn’t I know that already Rashi?”, was my first thought. However, Rashi does not
comment on every word or phrase of the text and so I always must ask why Rashi
felt the need to add these words at all. If his comment doesn’t add something,
or explain something, he would have kept shtum. So I took a second look.
I would like to suggest what, I think, may have been on Rashi’s mind. I think
that Rashi felt the need to tell us that this verse was a “great principle of
the Torah”, since he must have felt that another conclusion was legitimately possible.
I would like
to suggest that Rashi is giving us here his vote on a fascinating debate between Rabbi
Akiva and Shimon Ben Azzai, a debate found in a Midrash:“’You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. Rabbi Akiva says: This is a great principle of the Torah. Ben Azzai says; 'This is the book of the generations of Adam' (Genesis 5:1) is a greater principle. (Sifra, Kedoshim 4:12)
Rashi tells us that he sides with Rabbi Akiva rather than Ben Azzi in this debate. In another midrash (Bereshit Rabba 24:7) Ben Azzai explains why he cannot agree with Rabbi Akiva. Ben Azzai objects to “love your neighbour” since it makes ethics a subjective game. What is ‘good’ is subject to what you, the giver or doer, likes and dislikes. There is little or no reference to the preferences of, me, the receiver. Says Ben Azzai, if showing love is doing what I consider to be loving acts, what if, for example, I enjoy a masochistic delight in being mocked - Should I then mock you too? That makes no sense, says Ben Azzai.
For me personally, I also find difficult the rabbinic interpretation of this verse. The rabbis saw this verse as restricting our acts of love to just those who are considered to be our “neighbours”. That only to those who are religiously observant should you show love. I find this particularism or discrimination troubling.
I have always loved Hillel the Elder’s well known response to a slightly cheeky request, by a would be convert, to perform a conversion whilst “standing on one leg”. Hillel could have gotten stroppy, but rather than replying in an angry or annoyed fashion, Hillel, with respect and clear thought replies, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah, the rest is the explanation, so go now and learn." (Talmud Shabbat, 31a).
Interestingly, Hillel did not quote, “Love your neighbour” to the would be convert. Interesting also is that the Torah phrased our verse as it did and did not opt for Hillel’s phraseology. We surely must ask why Hillel did not quote, “Love your neighbour” and why the Torah preferred the positive love phraseology to Hillel’s anti hate instruction. I will leave it to you to consider some explanations.
Let’s return to Ben Azzai. Ben Azzai was concerned that if ethics are about love and your subjective experience, then we could all end up in trouble. Perhaps like Hillel the Elder or like the twentieth century French philosopher, Immanuel Levinas, Ben Azzai felt that ethics, our call to show love and concern for others, should be more about recognition of the other, and not be me centred. For Levinas, as soon as we meet another person, a moral responsibility to that other is created.
Ben Azzai disagreed with Rabbi Akiva. Ben Azzai held that “love your neighbour”, though a great principle, is not the greatest principle out there. There is a greater principle, a principle which doesn’t negate “love your neighbour”, but integrates and then eclipses it. Perhaps, it’s not a push to suggest that Ben Azzai is also suggesting that ethics can mature and evolve. We can move beyond Rabbi Akiva’s principle to a higher and more universal ethic - Just a thought.
What does Ben Azzai say? Ben Azzai says that we all ultimately come from Adam, the first human being. We are all included in “the generations of Adam”, all equal and all equally deserving of being treated ethically. The mystics saw a literal understanding of this idea which perhaps a biologist or geneticist would understand also. The mystics explained that we are each actually physically descended from Adam. My body is from Adam’s body, as is yours. As such, each of us share the same humanity, the same make up. We are the same and so our unique individuality, to some degree is in reality an illusion. If it were possible, every human could trace his or her DNA back to the Garden of Eden. Each of us is “one of the generations of Adam”.
Love is a feeling, it’s subjective. Yet I’m not sure that ben Azzai is now saying that ethics are suddenly objective. I think he is, at the very least, making a comment on the legitimacy of each of us to be recipients of love. We are all equally deserving.
This argument between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai is perhaps about the source or grounding principle upon which ethical behaviour may originate. The Hasidic master, the Sefat Emet (19th century), gives us a mystical reading, which I would like to suggest also proscribes a meditative practice or psychological intention to have as you do acts of love for others.
Ramban, mentioned earlier, found it a difficulty that the Torah would ask us to express emotions, to, on demand, generate love for others. So Ramban, following Rabbi Akiva, saw you and me, the doers of loving acts, as the models or measures for what love acts are to be. Whatever is love for you, is what you do for others, the Ramban explained.
The Sefat Emet sees love differently. Love, says the Sefat Emet is really an act of self nullification in the presence of the beloved. To love is to be overwhelmed. To act in love, a person must act with the intention of being at one with another. To perform acts in love, you must open your heart and have the intention to let go of yourself a bit (or a lot) and let other(s) in. Love is not just a verb, it’s not just doing this or that act, it’s all about your intention.
I think we all get this idea. Have you ever given a gift of love? Maybe it was a bunch of flowers or a piece of jewellery? Love is an act and giving can be love. For it to qualify as 'love', the Ramban would be happy with ‘simple’ gift giving. Flowers delivered? Then all is good, job done - time to get on with other things.
However the Sefat Emet tells us that love is not just the giving or doing of things for others alone. Love is not love without the accompanying intention or feeling, only then, is it really a gift of love in a true sense. To love is to open up, to be vulnerable and make emotional space for another being. That space can be so expansive that you might feel a little lost. You feel, in the words of the Sefat Emet, nullified, overwhelmed. Anyone who has been in love will tell you about that feeling of losing control and feeling absorbed or even lost in that feeling, lost in that other person.
Says the Sefat Emet, we should open our hearts and give up part of ourselves to the other when we do acts of love, acts of giving. The Sefat Emet also takes on Ben Azzai’s more universal stance, seeing Ben Azzai to be integrating and expanding what Rabbi Akiva says, not simply flatly rejecting his explanation out of hand.
The Sefat Emet tells us that religiously motivated behaviour should be accompanied by this intention to open up your heart to the whole of humanity. I might be giving charity to the poor, but my heart's intention should be to connect to a universal feeling for all of humanity. To give fully, is to feel our shared humanity. Each human being is also the whole of humanity. Each person is amongst the “generations of Adam”.
I find this universal love and legitimacy of others to be an inspiring idea. I think the Sefat Emet is perhaps also saying something very important to us about our need to be honest around our intentions. He is telling us that true love, true giving, can never be particularistic or discriminatory. If I only love a select group, for example my “neighbours” or just my friends or just the members of my tribe, how can I truly say that I really love even them? Love is an emotion which cannot be boundaried by intellectual or sociological categories. Feelings don’t understand those types of boundaries. If I don’t love you because of your basic existence or humanity, which we both share, I must surely love you because of something else. If I say that I act with love to religious Jews only and not to irreligious Jews, then perhaps what I feel for those religious Jews isn’t itself really love at all anyway.
If I cannot find in my heart love for all humanity simply because they are each, like me, the descendants of Adam, do I really feel love for myself, love for my own basic humanity? By seeing and appreciating my own humanity, I see also the humanity of others. If I don't fully recognise that I'm legitimate and deserving, how will I truly see that uniqueness in you also?
When you personally really see clearly what is hateful or beloved to you, you as a simple human being, after having been stripped of all the illusionary stuff we make out or tell ourselves is important, then ‘getting’ how we should treat others will be a no brainer - Hillel makes sense.
Yes, Rabbi Akiva’s love is a great principle but Ben Azzai tells us that he knows of a greater one.
