LEV644 … it is not only the poor whom God commands us to help. In what is one of the most famous verses of the Torah, the one that Rabbi Akiva calls the fundamental principle of the Torah [Sifra, Kedoshim 4:12], God commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself; I am Adonai” (Leviticus 19:18). The Rabbis of the Midrash and Talmud, interpreting this verse, determined that it requires us not really to love everyone, which they knew was impossible, but to have concern for others and, more important, to act out of that sense of commitment and loyalty to others. So, for example, they used this verse to explain a man's duty to marry a woman who is fitting for him [T. Sotah 5:6; B. Kiddushin 41a], to forbid a man from having sexual intercourse with his wife during the day lest he sees something loathsome in her [B. Niddah 17a], to permit a child to draw blood from his or her parents in an effort to heal him or her [B. Sanhedrin 84b] despite the Torah’s prohibition of injuring one’s parents (Exodus 21:15), and to require that a person who is to be executed be killed in the least offensive way possible [T. Sanhedrin 9:3; B. Pesachim 75a; J. Sotah 1:5 (6a); J. Sanhedrin 6:4 (28a). Maimonides (1135-1204) uses this verse as the basis for yet other laws: that one must tell the praises of others, avoid self-aggrandizement through defaming others, and concern oneself with other people's money as one would take care of one's own [M.T. Laws of Ethics (Hilkhot De’ot) 6:3]. Furthermore, Maimonides maintains that loving one's neighbor as oneself is one of the grounds for the demand that we rescue captives [M.T. Laws of Gifts to the Poor 8:10]. He asserts that although the commands to visit the sick, bury the dead, comfort mourners, and help a bride and groom celebrate their wedding are of rabbinic rather than biblical status, they are rooted in this biblical command [M.T. Laws of Mourning 14:1].