| There are things we learn from our parents. There are things we learn from first encounters with the sacred. There are things we learn only by going out into the world. There are things we learn by walking a mile in others’ shoes. There are things we learn by overcoming the impulses of retribution and hatred. Truly loving our neighbor as ourselves is the spiritual culmination of them all, the gift that only rough-and-tumble life experience can grant. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Aharei Mot-Kedoshim 5786 (2026)
The Holiness Code that we read on Yom Kippur comes to us first in this week’s Torah portion. Its core words, “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am YHVH” (Lev. 19:18), are the very middle of Torah. They’re Torah’s beating heart that gets revealed when we live that way (and at Simhat Torah as we read Torah’s last letter (ל/L) into Torah’s first letter (ב/V) to spell the word לֵב/heart).
Our ancestors plumbed the depths of these words. What does it mean to love a neighbor as ourselves?
Is this love a feeling or an action? (Jewish love is both.) Is this akin to the Golden Rule? (R. Akiva’s answer is “sort of.”) What if our neighbor doesn’t love us back? (R. Shai Held teaches in Judaism is About Love that our mitzvah is to love, not to be loved.) What if our neighbor wishes us harm? (Jewish love doesn’t mean pacifism or self-destruction.)I ask a different question – not what this love is or what it asks of us, but how we learn it. How do we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves? How do we learn this kind of love at all.Judaism’s classical answer is that we learn to love others by learning to love God “with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our might” (from the V’ahavta of Deut. 6:5). As philosopher Franz Rosenzweig put it, “Love for God must be externalized in love for the neighbor.” Even more, if we really get it – if we really love God, whose divine image we bear – then we naturally will love our neighbors who equally bear that same divine image.
Sure, and some don’t believe in a God that can be loved – much less love us back. Whatever our beliefs or none at all, history and modernity place this teaching duty on parents and parent figures, schools, clergy and spiritual communities. They are to teach morality and ethics, including the spiritual ethics of love. Synagogues, churches and mosques absolutely should put spiritual ethics and love first, especially when it might be difficult. Yes, and when I read this week’s Torah portion again, I came to see in its words the deep truth about the most powerful teacher of all: life experience in both how to be and how not to be.
The mitzvah to love doesn’t come first in the Holiness Code. This mitzvah is the culmination of many mitzvot. Here they are in order: see if you notice an evolution (Leviticus 19:1-18):
- Have awe of mother and father (Lev. 19:3).
- Keep Shabbat (Lev. 19:3).
- Do not turn to idols or make metal ‘gods’ (Lev. 19:4).
- Follow ritual rules (Lev. 19:5-8).
- Leave gleanings of the field for the poor and different (Lev. 19:9-10).
- Do not steal or deal deceitfully or falsely (Lev. 19:11).
- Do not swear falsely to take YHVH’s Name iin vain (Lev. 19:12).
- Do not defraud or rob, or keep another’s wages (Lev. 19:13).
- Do not insult the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind (Lev. 19:14).
- Do not judge unfairly, favor the poor or show deference to the rich (Lev. 19:15).
- Do not deal basely, or profit from another’s suffering (Lev. 19:16).
- Do not hate: reproach wrongdoing but not more sharply than needed (Lev. 19:17).
- Do not take vengeance or bear a grudge (Lev. 19:18)– and then “love your neighbor as yourself.”
I see in this list of mitzvot a progression about life stages.
We learn first from our birth parents (#1). In Torah’s ideal, parents teach first encounters with spirituality, including Shabbat (#2), not revering things (#3), and the role of ritual (#4). As we mature and enter the world of work and self-sufficiency, self-interest needs external rules to teach us to act with care (#5) and honesty (#6, #7). We are required not to defraud, rob, or delay giving others what is rightly theirs (#8). As we see more of the world, even and especially as life might land us with disabilities and misfortunes, hopefully we learn not to take advantage of the disabilities and misfortunes of others (#9). If we accrue social authority to decide the fate of others, we must judge fairly and impartially (#10), and never corruptly or to profit from others’ suffering (#11).
Put another way, these mitzvot track us from young childhood, through adolescence to young adulthood, to self-sufficiency, to elderhood.
It is only as elders – with the benefit of life experience and the long view of things – that we can look back on our lives and become our truly best selves. If we do, then we do not hate: we correct others but not more sharply than needed (#12). We let go of vengeance and grudges (#13). Only then can we love others as ourselves.
Think back on your life. What taught you to love? What didn’t? Can you titrate one from the other? Can we treat our sacred community as an incubator of that spiritual love that is the true heart of Torah?
David Evan Markus 