Richard Nixon and the Mitzvah of Love

In Parshat Kedoshim, we are commanded to Love thy Neighbor as Thyself, or in the original, ואהבת לרעך כמוך.  The question is: Is that even possible?  Can I ever love a person as much as I love myself?

Even Rabbi Akiva, who of course promoted this commandment above all others, understood there were limitations in applying it.  For example, when two people are lost in the desert and there is only enough water for one of them to survive, Rabbi Akiva writes that if you are the one in possession of the water you do not need to share it with your friend.  If you do, you both will die, so it is better to have at least one of you live, and since you already have the water, it should be you.

If the shoe were on the other foot, is that what you would really want?  Is that truly loving one’s neigbhor as one’s self?

Or take for example the case of Hillel.  He, too, was a champion of the this commandment, equating it as the basis of the entire Torah.  But he, too, had some problems with applying it practically, and therefore when asked by the convert what is the Torah’s essence, he didn’t quote this commandment accurately from the Torah.  Rather, he reformulated it into the negative; that which is hateful to you, don’t do to others.  A little less lofty than the love required in the Torah, but perhaps more manageable as well.

And the list of limitations go on and on; Rabbi after Rabbi extol the commandment but then tell us it only applies in certain situations.

Which leaves us with another question: If this commandment cannot be fulfilled, why is there at all.  Why not begin with the limitations?

Perhaps there is another way of reading this commandment, one that allows us to take it at face value but also fulfill it at the same time.

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Before exploring that possibility, let us look at another commandment from Kedoshim, the mitzvah of honoring one’s elders.  I first began to think about this mitzvah due to an e-mail sent out by Yeshiva University to its former Rabbinical students.  In this e-mail, a link was provided to a humorous, though disturbing, story that took place in Japan.  Apparently an elderly woman got onto a bus and asked a young 18 year old man to vacate his seat so she could sit down instead.  He refused, despite the seat he was occupying was specifically designated for the elderly.  What was her response?  She took her cane and beat him senselessly, breaking his nose and bruising him all over.  Needless to say, she got her seat.

Contrast this scene with something I witnessed here in Jerusalem a few years back.  An elderly woman entered the bus, at which time a young man instantly got up from his seat to give it to her.  Before he could do so, though, another individual entered the bus behind the lady; this second individual was blind.  Now there was a traffic jam at the front of the bus.  The young man couldn’t get out unless the elderly lady either walked past her seat or went in reverse and pushed back the blind man.

So what happenned?  The elderly lady instantly sprung into action, performing some type of yoga move where her arms reached across the aisle while her legs straddled some seats.  The blind man kept walking down the aisle – below the cat like elderly lady – without even knowing she was there.

This somewhat hilarious scene got me thinking.  The mitzvah of honoring one’s elderly includes the halacha of standing up for people over the age of 70 when they walk in front of you.  This is a real halacha, not just a nice idea.  If an elderly person walks within four amout of you, you stand.  What is the halacha, I thought, if this elderly woman was also blind … and for good measure, let’s throw in deaf as well.

In other words, what is the halacha vis-a-vis standing for an elderly person if that elderly person will never know whether or not you stood for them, and maybe won’t even know that you were there in the first place.  If they can’t see or hear you, they will have no way of knowing about your behavior, and thus also, they cannot be offended in anyway if you don’t stand for them.

So do I have to stand in such a case?

The answer is yes; and the reason why is quite simple.  When we stand for the elderly, we are doing so not just for them to feel honored, but we are also doing so for us, and for society as a whole.  We are reminding ourselves about the importance of elderly, about the wisdom they represent, and how we should desire to pursue that wisdom.  And thus, even if they will never know if we showed that honor or not, it is important for us to do so to insure we remember that what they represent is important to us.

The Meshech Chochmah takes this idea and applies it to other cases of showing honor, such as the commandment to show honor to one’s parents.   To make his point, he first reminds of the famous Rashi that teaches us that one may not violate Shabbat even if ordered to do so by one’s parents.  Rashi tells us that we learn this law thanks to the juxtaposition of the commandments to honor the Shabbat and honor one’s parents found within the Ten Commandments.  The Meshech Chochmah asks: Why do we need this special learning, why a specific source?  Why would we ever think that we could violate Shabbat (a mitzvah ben adam l’makom) in order to fulfill honoring one’s parents (a mitzvah ben adam l’makom)?  He answers by quoting the Gemara which states that honoring one’s parents is really ‘only’ a hechsher mitzvah – the preparation for a mitzvah – and therefore might not be protected in the same way a regular mitzvah is.  In this way, he continues, honoring one’s parents is like building the Beit HaMikdash.

Rather than clarifying matters, this initial insight creates more fog.  First, why call honoring one’s parents and building the Beit HaMikdash hechsher mitzvoth?  Aren’t they actual mitzvoth?  Second, and if they are ‘only’ hecksher – preparation – for the mitzvah, then we would think they are even less important, and surely we don’t need a specific learning to teach us that you must not violate a bein adam l’makom in order to fulfill them.

The key to explaining the Meshech Chochmah is to focus on his use of the hecksher mitzvah of building the Beit HaMikdash.  That mitzvah, of course, is also (like Shabbat) a bein adam l’makom; by comparing it with honoring one’s parents perhaps suggests that honoring one’s parents also has such a component.  And if so, then we might need a specific learning to teach us that Shabbat takes precedence; after all they’re both on the same level without such a teaching.

And one more thing.  The use of the term hecksher mitzvah to explain the building of the Beit HaMikdash is very different than the use of the same term to describe other acts.  For example, hecksher mitzvah can be used to describe the act of chopping wood that will eventually be used for a Sukkah.  The mitzvah, of course, is the Sukkah; the chopping of the wood is one of the acts that precedes this mitzvah, but is not a mitzvah in it of itself.  Not so with the building of the Beit HaMikdash.  So why call it a hecksher mitzvah if in fact it’s really a mitzvah itself?  Because in addition to being a mitzvah by itself, it enables the fulfillment of so many other mitzvoth.  Without the Beit HaMikdash we are not just lacking that one mitzvah but an entire world of mitzvoth made possible by its existence.

So, too, says the Meshech Chochmah with regards to honoring one’s parents.  Yes, it is a mitzvah by itself.  But it also accomplishes – and enables – so much more.  By honoring one’s parents one is not simply providing a service to them; he is also gaining something personal for himself.  Like with the case of honoring the elderly, it’s not just about doing something for others, but also about becoming who I am supposed to become.

In this case, the benefit is as follows: In honoring one’s parents, one is connected to the tradition, the wisdom of the Torah and ultimately the strength of our past generations.  In honoring one’s parents, one gains access to the wealth of collective teachings, and begins the journey all the way back to standing at Har Sinai.  Honoring one’s parents, then, is also a hecksher mitzvah – it opens up the door to allow me to fulfill all the mitzvoth in the world.  That is why I need a specific learning that tells me in the instance of a conflict with Shabbat I should not violate Shabbat.  Without that learning, well then, obviously, I would follow the ‘honoring one’s parent’s’ mitzvah because it is usually what allows me to appreciate mitzvoth to begin with.

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I would now like to take this idea and apply it to our initial question, of how we are to understand the mitzvah of “love your neigbhor as thyself.”  What I’d like to suggest is that there is a component of this mitzvah very much akin to the hecksher mitzvah component of honoring one’s parents.  To explain …

There once was a study completed that demonstrated people favor other people that somehow remind them of themselves.  In this experiment, researchers hired two different types of people to pretend to get sick at a mass rally taking place again Richard Nixon on the National Mall in Washington DC.  One type of person looked like the protestors – hippy dress, bearded, placards nearby protesting against Nixon.  The other type of person looked like a ‘young Republican’ – suit and tie, well groomed, etc.  Each ‘actor’ would pretend to get sick and see how people reacted.  If when they bent over in pain, someone asked how they were doing, they would go a step further and ask them to help them stand up.  If they agreed, they’d go a step further and ask them for a glass of water.  If they agreed, then another task – perhaps to walk them out of the crowd.  If they were still with them, they they’d ask for bus fare to get home.  If still there, then they’d have the gaul to ask them to accompany them home, about 7 miles away.

What was shocking was the different reactions elicited by the different actors.  The ‘like’ individual, the one who looked like the protesters, was helped tremendously.  Many people stopped; many helped; many even gave him money and a few accompanied him home.  Not so with the ‘other-looking’ actor.  Most ignored him.  The few who didn’t ignore him didn’t go too far out of their way to help.

From this we learn that the first step in a long process of aiding another depends very much on how you look at that person.  If you look at them as someone like you, then many of the subsequent steps are easy.  If you view them as different than you, then many of those subsequent steps become impossible.

Nechama Leibowitz has an interpretation on a verse in our parsha — other than the “love your neighbor’ one – that could be applied to our verse in such a way as to suggests the same teaching offered by this experiment.

First, let’s look at her verse, which happens to appear in our parsha just a few verses after our verse appears.  There it describes the importance of respecting the stranger, explicitly stating that one should “Love him like yourself” — pretty similar to our verse of “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  But this second verse has something our verse doesn’t — an explanation why.  “ואהבת לו כמוך כי גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים” – We are to love the stranger because we can identify with his situation, since like him, we too were strangers in a foreign land and understand what that means and how that feels.  In other words, Nechama Leibowitz reads the ‘like yourself’ not as an adjective describing your love but rather as a motivation enabling it.  The ‘like yourself’ does not relate back to “love him” but rather the second half of the verse “because you were strangers.”

Let’s take this idea and apply it to our ואהבת לרעך כמוך.  It should not be read as love your neighbor as you love yourself, but rather: Love your neighbor – period.  And how do you accomplish this?  By כמוך – by viewing your neigbhor as yourself, as someone similar to you.  For once you see him as someone like you, then the loving him is much easier.  Once you see him like yourself – just as the protesters saw the actor as one of them – then all the subsequent acts of love are much easier.  In this case, that means that not only is loving him much easier, but so too is fulfilling ALL the mitzvoth ben adam l’chavero that might come up between two people.

This, then, is another ‘hecksher mitzvah’ as the Meshech Chochmah understands the term.   By looking at a person a certain way, you make so many other mitzvoth with that person – and others – possible.

… all of which leaves but one more question: How are we to achieve that ability of seeing people who look different than us as ‘us’ – as people who are כמוך.

The answer to this question follows our verse, as well as the verse Nechama Leibowitz quotes.  “Because I am the Lord your God.”  By realizing that there is One God that means God is not only my God but the other’s God as well, and then by definition, we are both God’s children.  We are a like after all.