LEV671 Love Your Neighbor. "Love your neighbor as yourself" (this verse) - "This is the major principle of the Torah" (Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 9:4).

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LEV705 What to Do before You Pray: Before beginning to pray in the synagogue… take upon yourself the precept "and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" [this verse]. Concentrate on loving every member of the house of Israel as you love yourself. If you do this, your prayers will ascend, bound up with the prayers of Israel… [Isaac Luria].

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LEV646 "One should consider well, in communing with the soul, whether he has made the best use of any wealth that he may possess. Has he always done good with it? One should meditate constantly on the many ways in which one man can help another, only doing unto others that which he loves others to do for him. Man should rejoice in the happiness of others and grieve in their sorrow. At all times he should be full of compassion for them, warding off from them to the utmost of his power anything that may injure them. Has it not been said: 'and thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself'?" [this verse. Quotation is from Duties of the Heart (Hovot Ha'levavot, Bahyah Ibn Pakuda]

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LEV652 A man should be as soft as a reed when it comes to reconciliation, not hard as a cedar (Taan. 20b). "To forgive him who caused me distress", was the prayer to God of many of our noblest characters. The Abot d'R. Nathan (xli, in the edition of Schechter). has excellent advice on the subject: "If you have done your fellow a little wrong, let it be in your eyes great; if you have done him much good, let it be in your eyes a little. If he has done you a little good, let it be in your eyes great; if he has done you a great wrong, let it be in your eyes little." The man who declines to forgive, transgresses an express command of the Torah [this verse]. He will receive the rod of chastisement (Yoma 23a), because he has incurred Divine displeasure by preserving enmity and being glad when misfortune befalls another. If to forgive is God's metier, as Heine said on his death-bed (Dieu me pardonnera; c'est son metier". God will forgive me; this is His business".) how much more should it be the predominating characteristic of frail and impulsive man?

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LEV665 In this vein spoke also Ben Azzai: "The Torah, by beginning with 'This is the book of the generations of Adam' (Gen v. I), makes it clear that the command' 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself [this verse], refers to all people who must be included as 'thy neighbor'. (Gen R. xxiv (end)). "All righteous people, not only Jews," says another sage, "shall enter the eternal Kingdom." The Psalmist (cxviii. 20) did not specify the Jew, when he said: "This is the Gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter into it." All citizens, irrespective of belief, are entitled to a share in the amenities of a township on which the maintenance of concord depends. All the poor of the town must be supported; all their dead given a decent burial; all their mourners comforted; and all their sick visited (Gittin 64a). No Jew can be called righteous who is not good unto all (Kiddushin 40a). So important is the respect we must pay to all our fellow-pilgrims on earth that most of the Biblical prohibitions may be transgressed on its account (Kidd. 40a; Ber. 19b; Abot iv. 3; Bezah 32b).

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LEV681 See [[EXOD765]] Exodus 23:1 rumors LEHRMAN 39

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LEV648 (Continued from [[DEUT829]] Deut. 16:11 rejoice LEHRMAN 28-29). ... Judaism seeks to store the mind with a knowledge of the great in fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations. It seeks to create a being who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire; whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience (cf. Abot iv. I.) The perfect Jew is one who has learnt to love all beauty and to hate all vileness; who respects the feelings and the possessions of others as if they were his own; who loves his neighbor not only like himself but because he is part of himself [this verse; Cf. Jer. Tal. Nedarim ix, where is this command is illustrated by the fact that the whole body quivers with pain even when only the finger is cut]-- the real meaning of Leviticus xix.18. This never-ceasing emphasis on moral perfection is the core of Judaism. The practical sense of our faith looks askance at metaphysical discussions of God and the Universe. Its counsel of perfection is "to know Him in all thy ways" (Prov. iii 6), to obey His commandments and become God-like in the process. Life is given to man by God, and it is his task to shape it after the divine pattern revealed on Sinai. To choose life and to shape it -- this is the demand of Judaism.

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LEV659 Honoring others… does not mean giving up the power and practice of exercising judgment, but puts the focus on moving away from unwise, useless, habitual, and even destructive acts of judgment. We start to move in that direction when we recognize the root of the problem lies in our own fears about our own inadequacies, of which we are only too aware, that make us fear that others will not give us the honor we feel we want and need. Our test is to recognize, internalize, and act upon the teaching of the sages: "The person who judges his neighbor in the scale of merit is himself judged favorably." (Shabbat 127b). The same Rabbi Akiva whose twenty-four students died in just over the period of a month because they did not give each other mutual respect was a great proponent of the teaching, "Love your neighbor as yourself," [this verse] calling it "the first principle of the Torah" (Sifra, Kedoshim 45. The Sifra is a collection of midrashic thought on the book of Leviticus/Vayikra. In this case, the commentary is to Parshat Kedoshim (19:1-20:27)).

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LEV698 The Tanakh's [Hebrew Bible] term for ethics, yir'at Elohim, "fear of God/gods," points to the blurred boundaries in ancient Israel between ethics and religion. A paramount element in the proper worship of Israel's God is action in the social realm to relieve the oppression of the poor and powerless and to prevent corruption of the judicial process. Further, many of God's commands are intended to deter the Israelite from acting toward his fellow with vengeance and malice. Indeed, the centrality of ethics is indicated by the placement of the command to "love one's neighbor as oneself" at the midpoint of the Torah [this verse]. (By Elaine Adler Goodfriend, “Ethical Theory and Practice in the Hebrew Bible)

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LEV649 (Continued from [[LEV1119]] Leviticus 26:16 wreak OXFORD 313-4). Rabbi Moses ben Nahman ("Nahmanides," 13th century) understands the obligation to care for others through medicine as one of many applications of the Torah's principle, "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself" [this verse] [B. Bava Kamma 85a, 81b; B. Sanhedrin 73a, 84b (with Rashi's commentary there. Lengthy further footnote omitted)]. God is still our ultimate Healer, and hence Jewish liturgy has Jews pray to God for healing of body and soul three times each day; but the physician, in Jewish theology, is God's agent in establishing that task, and so use of the medical arts is not only permissible, but required. Jews, in fact, may not live in a city lacking a physician (B. Sanhedrin 17b with regard to "students of the Sages"; J. Kiddushin 66d, with regard to all Jews), for that would mean that people could not take reasonable care of their bodies, which belong to God. This appreciation of medicine has led to a virtual love affair between Jews and medicine for the last 2,000 years, and it means that Jews trust medicine--and use it extensively--when they encounter medical problems, including those involving sex or procreation. (By Elliot N. Dorff)

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