. . . You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
Vayikra 19:18
In a world that is filled with much animosity, the idea of “universal love” is a much-discussed topic. We are taught that only when all people begin loving each other equally will our multitude of problems be solved and universal peace prevail. Any discrimination whereby we love some people more than others will lead to hatred, jealousy, and more problems.
We are reminded that this idea is indeed the biblical view as well. The famous verse “Love your neighbor as [you love] yourself”[1] is often quoted by those who are convinced that we are in need of universal equal love.
It is therefore remarkable that the Talmud records a famous anecdote that seems to challenge the very concept of equal love for all.[2] The story goes that two people are traveling in the desert. One of them has a flask of water, but it contains only enough to enable one of them to reach civilization alive. What should they do?
Based on the principle of universal and equal love, it would be better for them to share the water, even though neither one will survive, rather than for one of them drink all the water and watch the other die. Indeed, this is the opinion of Ben Petura, one of the Sages of the Talmudic era.
Surprisingly, his view is opposed by one of the greatest sages of all time, Rabbi Akiva. The latter disagrees, insisting that the owner of the flask should drink all of the water and live. He should certainly try to save his fellow man’s life but only after he has guaranteed his own survival. According to Rabbi Akiva, this is not just a suggestion, which the pious may ignore in order to prove their limitless love for their fellow men; it is the law and it may not be violated. What is even more surprising is the fact that elsewhere in the Oral Tradition, Rabbi Akiva states that loving one’s neighbor as oneself is “the greatest principle of the Torah”![3]
Rabbi Akiva’s paradox
How did Rabbi Akiva issue this ruling, which seems to run contrary to the very biblical verse that he considers to be the ultimate principle of the Torah? After all, the Torah clearly says to love one’s neighbor as much as one loves oneself. Surely Ben Petura was right and he, Rabbi Akiva, was mistaken!
The answer is that Rabbi Akiva did not believe that one could ever love a person as much as one loves oneself. This, he felt, is humanly impossible. Self-preservation is the first law of nature by which all human beings live, and only through that self-love can one love another. This is indeed what the verse suggests. Love your neighbor [which you can do only if] you love yourself. But even more important is the fact that the Torah does not really say that you should love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, in which case it would have written Ve-ahavta et re’acha kamocha. What the biblical text does say is, “Ve-ahavta le-re’acha kamocha” — the love you show toward your neighbor should be as much as the love you feel for yourself. What this means in practice is not that you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, but rather, that all good things that you wish for yourself you should also wish for your neighbor.[4]
I love you as much as I love that other woman
The notion of loving all people equally is a farce, and in fact destructive. Imagine a man going down on his knees to propose marriage to the woman he loves, and he says: “My darling, I love you. I love you so much. I love you as much as I love . . . just as much as I love that other woman, the one walking down the street over there . . . Oh, and that one, too, riding her bike past the newspaper stand. I love you exactly as much as I love all my previous girlfriends . . . I love you as much as I love everybody else on this planet . . . ”[5]
What would you think of this man?
We live for love. We are prepared to give up anything to experience it. But we should never forget that love means preference. No one craves universal love. You love a person because he is special, because she is different, not because she is just like everybody else. And because love is the greatest and most unusual thing that can ever befall a person, it motivates us in ways that nothing else can. It gets us out of bed in the morning and makes us feel warm and tingly inside. It causes us to do heroic things, make sacrifices, and show unprecedented loyalty. He who aspires to love everyone equally has no idea what love is about and will not be able to truly love anyone.
Love and Equal Portions
Ironically, it was Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung who tried to create a world of universal love. They envisioned a world in which everyone dressed, ate, talked and thought the same — a world without discriminating love, warmth, and joy. It was an invitation to disaster.
This is also the mistaken philosophy of the followers of Hare Krishna, and other imitations of Far Eastern belief systems. Love cannot be distributed in equal portions. One should no doubt respect everybody and try to care for them, but to believe that the world would improve were we to eliminate the notion of special love for special people is a terrible mistake. Universal love is not the answer. Our world will improve only when we realize the truth of Rabbi Akiva’s assertion that “what is hateful to you, refrain from doing to your fellow.”[6]
Questions to Ponder
- Rabbi Akiva’s ruling concerning the flask of water in the desert is surprising to many people. Do you see this ruling as being in conflict with the biblical commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Might there be other ways of resolving the conundrum than the one suggested here?
- Rabbi Cardozo points out the grammatical distinction between the phase “love your neighbor ‘as yourself’” versus “love your neighbor ‘like yourself’.” How does this nuance affect your understanding of the commandment and its practical application in daily life?
- Love is something that causes us to go the extra mile, to give of ourselves (the Hebrew word “ahavah” is derived from the verb “to give”). Clearly, one can’t legislate the emotion of love However, it would seem that much of Halakhah is an attempt to legislate behavior toward fellow Jews that mimics what we would do voluntarily for those we love. For example, We are commanded to return a lost object, to give a certain percentage of our income to charity, to see to the education of the weaker members of our society, and so on; in short, we are commanded to do for other Jews all those things that a family would naturally do for its members.
What other examples of this type of commandment can you think of?
Do you feel that legislating “loving behavior” can build empathy and solidarity with others? - On the flip side, Rabbi Cardozo points to dangers of trying to create societies based on absolute equality, such as those under Stalin and Mao. Do you think any such society could be created from the top-down, as Stalin and Mao attempted to do? Is such a society is even possible, given the limitations of striving for absolute equality in affection and sentiment?
Notes
[1] Vayikra 19:18.
[2] Bava Metzia 62a.
[3] Bereshit Rabba, Vilna ed., 24:7; Sifra, Kedoshim, parashah 2, 4:12.
[4] See Ramban on Vayikra 19:17 and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Vayikra 19:18.
[5] See Ze’ev Maghen, “Imagine: On Love and Lennon,” Azure 7 (1999): 139-140.
[6] Shabbat 31a.
