This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, kuf-dalet-shin, a root that conveys the idea of separation or withdrawal, of apartness, or sacredness. In what way, though, are we to manifest that separateness? What are the Israelites to do to distinguish themselves from others?
In the first place, we are not to practice idolatry by turning to other gods or fabricating idols. Lev 19:4 specifies the prohibition of molten idols, which clearly reminds us of the disastrous golden calf episode. So, we know we are not to do that again! Then the text proceeds to specify particular behaviors that we are either to pursue or refrain from. So, we begin to understand what “being holy” looks like via the examples of behavior that follow the command. But, after a listing of rather specific behaviors, we arrive at Lev 19:18 where we read the famous command ואהבת לרעך כמוך, v’ahavta l’reacha camocha: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And there many readers and many commentators stop. They ask, “how can we be commanded to have an emotion,” which this seems to require. The answer often given is that the meaning here of the command to love is not to be understood in an emotive sense but in a behavioral one. That is, essentially, love is as love does. If we act towards our neighbor as the Torah says we should act, then we are acting in a way that meets the criterion of love, in the sense meant in Lev 19:18.
The word translated as “neighbor” is the Hebrew רע, re’ah. It is sometimes translated as fellow or fellow man. But fellow man conveys a sense of universalism that goes beyond the idea of re’ah. Further in Chapter 19, in verse 34 we encounter another command to love. There we are commanded to love the גר, the ger, most often translated as the stranger. The relationship of the Israelite to the stranger is a key issue for the Torah, cited in dozens of instances in the text. The Israelite is commanded in essentially every respect to treat the stranger in the same way the Israelite, himself, is treated. But the concept of the stranger in the Torah is not a universal one.
The concept of the duties toward a stranger in the Torah is most often restricted to the stranger who dwells among you. And that is how Lev 19:34 describes the person that the Israelite is commanded to love. So the duty of an Israelite toward a stranger is a constricted one. In later rabbinic literature the idea of the גר becomes even more restricted. There the stranger is most often understood as a proselyte, a convert to Judaism. The requirement of Lev 19:34 seems clearly to be an expansion of the command of Lev 19:18. If 19:34 is an expansion to include the non-Israelite גר living among the Israelites, then it is fair to conclude that the less expansive רע refers to the Israelites themselves.
It seems that the commands to love, whether relating to one’s fellow Israelites or to the strangers who are a part of the Israelite community are much less expansive than the fellow-man concept, as it has been interpreted in more recent times, would suggest. That helps clarify the question, “Whom am I commanded to love?” But it still leaves open the question, “How am I to love either my neighbor or the stranger who lives with us?”
Early rabbinic literature does not offer answers that are of much help to us today. It understands the command at Lev 19:18 in a very limited sense having to do with death penalty cases. And the obligation toward the stranger in Lev 19:34 is generally discussed in very specific cases involving the rights and duties towards proselytes. It is not until we reach the era of the great medieval commentators that a different and helpful approach toward either case is found. And it is found through an analysis of Hebrew grammar.
The 12th-century commentator Ibn Ezra points out that Lev 19:18 commands us to love לרעך, le’reacha. That word is made up of three elements: the central noun רע, re’ah, meaning neighbor; the third person possessive suffix meaning your; and, a prefix preposition ל-, which means “to” or “for.” Ibn Ezra suggests that the appropriate understanding of the command is the literal one. That is, we are to love for our neighbor as or what we love for ourselves. If the verse wanted to command us to love our neighbor, the correct Hebrew form would require that we love את רעך, where את is the untranslated direct object marker. The same issue is found in the language of Lev 19:34. The Hebrew referring to the stranger also incorporates the preposition -ל.
That suggests that our typical translations of Lev 19:18 and 19:34 are incorrect, that we are not actually commanded to love our neighbor or the stranger in any emotive sense, but we are to love for them the same things we love for ourselves. That would presumably include such physical, emotional, and spiritual goods as health, happiness, love, security, etc. Later philosophers would call such an attitude towards others one of benevolence, which might be either general or particular. Our actions toward our neighbors and the strangers among us would be informed by and pursued within that idea of supporting the wellbeing of others, but the commands to value the well-being of those others are not commands of specific action.
Ibn Ezra’s interpretation is taken up and expanded upon by the 13th-century commentator Nachmanides and even further elucidated by the 19th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Hirsch says that the love commanded here is not of the person. It is of “everything that pertains to the person.” That is, “… all the conditions of his life, the weal and the woe that makes up his position in the world … we are to rejoice in his good fortune and grieve over his misfortune … This is something that does lie within our possibilities …”
The point made by Hirsch is an important one. We are not free to say that the requirement is impossible, that we cannot be commanded to love, and so to essentially ignore it. Even though love in the typical emotive sense cannot be commanded, we can cultivate an attitude of general benevolence, wishing for everyone what is best for them; wishing for them that they be the best they can be.
It is a natural human desire to wish for myself what is best for me. I can wish the same for others while clearly understanding that the range of possibilities will allow more or less for me in some respects than for any other specific person. I might not be able to love the stranger I pass on the sidewalk today, but I can wish him well, and in that reality I can know that I am not commanded to do the impossible.
CRL 4/26/2023