Parshat Achare Mot-Kedoshim

10 Iyar 5764

May 1, 2004
Daf Yomi: Chulin 99

Guest Author:
Rabbi Eli Baruch Shulman
Young Israel of Midwood, NY

 

One and Different

The Omer period has, historically, been a difficult period for the Jewish people. Of course, we know of the Gemara in Yevamos that tells of R' Akiva's 24,000 students who died in this period. But throughout history this has been a period of trial: it was in this period that the Crusade massacres took place in 1096; that pogroms followed in the wake of the black plague in 1348; that the order for the Spanish Inquisition was given in 1492; that the Chmielnicki massacres occurred in 1648; and that the crushing of  the Warsaw Ghetto was completed in 1943.

We don't know the cause of these latter tragedies. But in regard to the death of R' Akiva's students, the Gemara connects their deaths with their failing to have treated each other with due respect.

Many people have been troubled by this. After all, it was R' Akiva who taught: �v�ahavta l�raiacha kamocha zeh klall gadol baTorah�, love your neighbor as yourself; this is a cardinal rule of the Torah. How could his own students have neglected a rule that their own teacher held to be so paramount?

There is another question that needs to be addressed. What was the novelty in R' Akiva's teaching? After all, Hillel, generations before, had already taught: �what is hateful to you, do not do to your friend, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and study it (Shabbos 31a).� What did R' Akiva add to Hilllel's teaching?

Furthermore, why the difference in R' Akiva's and Hillel's formulation; why does R' Akiva use the language of the Torah itself, in our Parsha: �v�ahavta l�raiacha kamocha�, while Hillel employs different language altogether?

Both of these teachings tell us of the paramount importance of Ahavas Yisroel, of loving our fellow-Jew. Yet, if we examine them closely, they each approach this imperative in a different way.

There is a well-known story about the Beilis trial, in which Mendel Beilis was accused by the Czarist government of ritual murder. One of the witnesses for the defense was Rabbi Maza, the rabbi of Moscow. Rabbi Maza was challenged regarding the Gemara in Yevamos which -expounding the verse in Yechezkel:  �v�atem tzanei, tzanei m�drasi adom atem� - says: �atem karayim adom, v�aiyn ovdei g�lillim karim adom� - you are called �adom� - man, but the non-Jews are not called �adom� - man. You see, said the prosecutor, you Jews consider gentiles to be sub-human! No, answered Rabbi Maza, you have misunderstood the Gemara. Consider what is happening here today. A single Jew is on trial for his life. Imagine if it were a single Russian. No doubt his family would be concerned for his fate, and his friends, and, perhaps, his townspeople. But hardly more than that. But because one Jew is on trial here for his life Jews around the world are in anguish, as if it were their own brother on trial. And that is because the Jews are a unique people in that the entire Jewish people are a single family; they are likened even to a single individual, so that if one limb - one Jew - suffers, the entire collective Jewry suffers with him. That is what the Gemara means: �atem karayim adom� - you are considered one adom, united as a single man.

Many seforim elaborate on the idea that the entire Jewish people are one soul; and the deeper our recognition of this, the more we empathize and feel at one with every single Jew. This is the deeper meaning of �to love your neighbor like yourself�, because you recognize that - in a deep sense - he is yourself. And this recognition is the spring from which flows our feeling of Ahavas Yisrael.

There is, however, another way to understand the concept of Ahavas Yisrael. The Gemara in Shabbos (133b) teaches that we are enjoined to emulate the attributes of HaShem. And since one of His attributes is that of chesed - indeed, Creation itself was the ultimate expression of love and chesed- Olam Chesed YiBaneh, so we are required to imitate Him by engaging in acts of chesed and inculcating in ourselves the attribute of loving-kindness.

This kind of chesed - this impulse for Ahavas Yisrael - is, in a certain respect, the opposite of the kind of Ahavas Yisrael that we mentioned earlier. The gulf between HaShem and His creation - the gulf between the infinite and the finite - is limitless. HaShem's love and chesed is given - not to that which is like Him, but - to that which is totally other than Him. And the chesed and ahava that is impelled by imitation of His chesed flows, therefore - not from seeing my fellow-Jew as part of myself, but rather - from seeing them as other than myself, and inculcating in myself the capacity to love that which is different - than myself.

I would suggest that it was of this, second kind of Ahavas Yisrael that Hillel spoke when he said: �what is hateful to you, do not do to your friend�.  Treat others, Hillel taught,  with the same consideration that you demand for yourself. Recognize that just as your life has value, and dignity, the lives of other people have their own value and their own dignity. Learn to recognize the dignity of the other.

It follows that  Hillel and R' Akiva are describing two different conceptions of Ahavas Yisroel, and two different energy sources for that emotion. Each has a certain advantage over the other. That of R' Akiva - of �vahavta lera-acha kamocha� - of recognizing the essential oneness of the Jewish collective soul - has the immediacy and power of self-love; it is the feeling that all Jews are one family. But that of Hillel requires a greater spiritual capacity, because it requires us to love that which is different than ourselves, which is much harder than loving that which is like us. Indeed, it seems likely that Hillel and R' Akiva rare not disagreeing with each other; the two types of Ahavas Yisrael are not exclusive of each other, but, rather, are complementary.

Hillel's teaching has another strength. R' Akiva emphasizes that all Jews are one family. But families squabble; because they are so close, even small differences become annoying. If we only love our Jews because we recognize ourselves in them, the urge becomes overpowering to make them over to be more like ourselves. It is also necessary to have the capacity to offer love and respect to people in whom we don't recognize ourselves.

Perhaps, one might suggest, R' Akiva's students did not treat each other as respectfully as they should have precisely because they emphasized R' Akiva's teaching at the expense of that of that of Hillel. They emphasized the brotherhood that united them, to the neglect of respecting the differences of opinion and perspective that made them each unique; they stressed overmuch the familiarity that held them together, unwittingly breeding contempt for the dignity of the individuality that held them apart.

One of the challenges that faces us as part of a divided Jewry, and, in particular, as members of a segmented Orthodoxy, is learning how to balance these two imperatives: To recognize that each and every Jew is our brother or sister, that we are all one family, intimately connected and bound together; and to recognize that we are all different, and that even as we argue for our own perspective, and even as we demand the dignity that is due to our own point-of-view, we have to be able to listen respectfully to the points-of-view of others, and to accord them that same respect. This, too, is a lesson that this Sefirah-period has to offer us.

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