The Torah commands us to love our fellow man with the same intensity that we love ourselves. A commandment to love another person seems unrealistic. Love is something you either feel or you don’t. So to be commanded to love another just as we love ourselves is bordering on asking the impossible. How can the Torah reasonably expect us to attain this level of universal and all-encompassing love?
The answer is that love is never felt unless a cognitive process has taken place to tell us that the object of our attention is good. Consequently we can engender feelings of love towards anything by contemplating the good inherent in it. This is what we are commanded to do regarding our fellow man.
Rabbi Akiva (Ethics of our Fathers 3:14) has given us a clear directive regarding our fellow: ‘Beloved are the children of Israel because they are considered children to God.’ Since we are all children to the same father, it follows that we are truly all brothers and sisters.
In order to feel that brotherly love, we are commanded to contemplate this truth. Through this contemplation we come to realise that all mankind are truly one big family, and just like we feel a special closeness to our immediate family, we must love each person like a brother or sister.
Because of the time of year and because of the current situation that the Jewish people find themselves in around the world and in Israel, this idea is especially important. We are more then three weeks in to the Omer period. The Omer is traditionally a period of mourning, because of the tragic plague that took the lives of the thousands of students of Rabbi Akiva. Our sages tell us that these deaths were caused by a lack of respect and love that existed among the students.
When we act in a loving and respectful way to each other, we are truly invincible and God saves us from danger. This law of loving our fellow man is, to quote Rabbi Akiva yet again, a great principle in the Torah. It is through living by this principle that the Jews – and through them the Torah – are able to survive.
So next time we feel abhorrence towards a fellow person, let’s try to focus on the good inherent in him or her. And if this fails, try to contemplate on the fact that he is part of our immediate family – rather like a limb of our own body. It may hurt or inconvenience us, but we cannot reject it. Hating our another person is like rejecting a part of ourselves.
May we speedily merit to the day when we will all clearly see that God is our Father and we are all brothers and sisters.