Parashat Ahare Mot-Kedoshim
How to Love Your Fellow as Yourself
Parashat Kedoshim includes one of the most famous verses in the entire Torah: "Ve’ahabta Le’re’acha Kamocha" – "You shall love your fellow as yourself" (19:18). Rabbi Akiva famously commented that this command constitutes a "Kelal Gadol Ba’Torah" – a fundamental principle of the Torah.
If we take a brief look at some stories told about Rabbi Akiva, we might understand more clearly why he, more than anyone, embodied this ideal of "love your fellow as yourself" – and we will also find the key to fulfilling this Misva in our own lives.
We are currently observing the period of Sefirat Ha’omer, when we mourn the tragic deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students. We cannot possibly even imagine how a calamity of this magnitude affected Rabbi Akiva, the pain and distress he must have experienced upon seeing all his students perish in such a short period of time. Remarkably, however, as the Talmud relates, Rabbi Akiva responded to this tragedy by moving to a different city and finding a small handful of gifted students to teach. Rather than wallowing in anguish and giving up on the whole enterprise of Torah, he put this dreadful experience behind him and moved on. Rabbi Akiva refused to let this tragedy crush his spirits. If this yeshiva was ravaged by a plague, then he would just go somewhere else and try it again.
The Talmud also tells of a time when, shortly after the destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Akiva and his comrades walked near the ruins of the Bet Ha’mikdash and saw a jackal scurrying about at the sacred site. Upon seeing this desecration, Rabbi Akiva’s colleagues broke out in tears, but he laughed. He explained that the sight of the Temple’s ruins proved the fulfillment of the prophecies of destruction; not one element of these prophecies went unrealized. The fulfillment of those prophecies, Rabbi Akiva said, reinforced his hopes for the fulfillment of the prophecies foreseeing the Temple’s restoration. Just as all the prophets’ predictions of destruction were fulfilled, similarly, their prophecies of Am Yisrael’s return to glory and the rebuilding of the Bet Ha’mikdash will also be realized in full.
This was Rabbi Akiva – a man who could find the "silver lining" in even the most painful situations. When his students died, he seized the opportunity to begin a new institution of learning. When he looked upon the ruins of the Temple, he saw the hope and promise of Am Yisrael’s glorious future.
It was this outlook and attitude that made Rabbi Akiva the master of "Ve’ahabta Le’re’acha Kamocha." An upbeat, optimistic person naturally looks for the positive aspects of those around him. If Rabbi Akiva could find the good side of the Temple ruins, then he could certainly find the good side of other people. What makes it so hard to love other people as we love ourselves is the natural inclination to focus upon one’s own fine qualities and upon other people’s faults. To overcome this tendency, we need change our overall attitude toward life, and follow Rabbi Akiva’s inspiring example of optimism and positive thinking.
A famous story is told of Rabbi Eliezer Silver, a legendary 20th-century sage who served as a rabbi in Cincinnati and worked as a chaplain in the U.S. army. After World War II, he was sent to a displaced persons camp to serve as rabbi. Once, he was distributing siddurim to the people for prayers, and one man angrily refused.
"I don’t want to ever look at or touch a siddur again!" he shouted.
He proceeded to explain that in his concentration camp, there was one inmate with a siddur, and he turned it into a "business" of sorts, renting it out for use in exchange for food rations. The man was repulsed by that inmate’s cruelty, using his siddur to deprive his fellow, starving Jews of their food, and he claimed he could never look upon a siddur again.
"Why do you look only at that man?" Rabbi Silver replied. "Why don’t you look at those hundreds of hungry Jews who were prepared to sacrifice their food rations for the opportunity to pray?"
This should be our general attitude in life – finding the positive aspects of every situation. This attitude will naturally lead us to look at others, too, in a favorable light, helping us fulfill the timeless dictum of "Ve’ahabta Le’re’acha Kamocha."
