My drasha on Parshat Kedoshim, delivered May 11, 2024 at Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
הֲרֵינִי מְקַבֵּל עָלַי את מִצְוַת הַבּוֹרֵא וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ
Here I am to take on the Creator’s commandment: love your neighbor as yourself
The sixteenth century Rabbi, Isaac Luria, one of the early mystics of the Kabbalistic tradition, had a practice of reciting these words before he entered into prayer. I picture him making the blessing over his tallit, tucking himself underneath to say the שמע and then reminding himself that the unity of God extends to the people around him. Imagine this mitzvah—God’s own mitzvah—to love each and every person as yourself! The sweet friend who’s always there for you when you need someone to talk to, and the annoying shopkeeper who gives you the fish eye when you pay for a three-dollar purchase by credit card, the shy but kindly woman who just smiles and never talks, and the judgey colleague who never stops talking: each of these we are commanded to love. This is a beautiful and profound message, a familiar but necessary reminder of what some people call the Golden Rule.
Those famous words וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ (love your neighbor as yourself) are part of our Torah portion this week and based on what I’ve just said, it’s easy to imagine that we know exactly what they mean. It’s even tempting to flatten them into a feel-good slogan just right for a dorm room poster or an embroidered sampler pillow, but when we look at the words directly and in the context of the verses that surround them, a much more textured picture arises.
In Leviticus chapter 19 verses 17 and 18, God instructs the Israelites:
לֹא־תִשְׂנָא אֶת־אָחִיךָ בִּלְבָבֶךָ הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא׃
לֹא־תִקֹּם וְלֹא־תִטֹּר אֶת־בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ אֲנִי יי׃
Do not hate your kin in your heart; rather rebuke them and don’t sin on their account. Do not avenge and do not hold a grudge against one of your people; love your neighbor as yourself. I am God.
These verses suggest a framework in which the antidote to hate is rebuke, and the opposite of love is vengeance. And all of it under the banner of a familiar refrain from the parsha: Ani Adonai; I am God. That last part raises the stakes pretty high for untangling the interplay of love and hate, revenge and reproach. The times when emotions are at their most intense… seem to be the ones at which we are commanded not only to modulate our emotions but to communicate them effectively.
Honestly it’s a tall order. Sometimes it seems easier to carry that hate in our hearts rather than to speak up with what our tradition calls tochecha, the righteous reproach that the verse requires. And yet: the words לֹא־תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא (do not sin on their account) teach that there is the risk of sin—sin!—if this isn’t handled correctly.
Our commentators wrestle with the idea. What is the nature of the sin the verse warns about? Is it to do with how we issue our rebuke, or with whether we do so at all? Rashi writes לֹא תַלְבִּין אֶת פָּנָיו בָּרַבִּים—literally, do not whiten his face in public, explaining that the sin arises from a rebuke that causes shame or embarrassment. Hearing a chastisement is hard enough; preserving dignity through making it a private conversation softens it. So for Rashi, speaking up is assumed, but the question of sin is in how to do it effectively, and how not to cause further harm in the process.
Other parts of our tradition teach similarly about the work of tochecha: Proverbs, for example, chapter 9 verse 8 says,
אַל־תּוֹכַח לֵץ פֶּן־יִשְׂנָאֶךָּ הוֹכַח לְחָכָם וְיֶאֱהָבֶךָּ׃
Do not admonish a scoffer, they will only hate you. Admonish a wise person, and they will love you.
But as I implied, it’s not just a question of who and how, but also a question of whether you do it at all. Rashbam’s reading of our verse says essentially: If someone does something to you and you act like nothing’s wrong, all the while stewing in your own resentment, it’s no good. Rather, reproach them about what they did and thereby restore a sense of peace.
Our Talmud teaches on Shabbat 54b: Whoever can stop the members of their household from committing a sin, and does not, is held responsible for their sins. If one can stop the people of their city from sinning, but does not, they are held responsible for the sins of the people of the city. If they can stop the whole world from sinning, and do not act, they are held responsible for the sins of the whole world.
These lines suggest that the meaning of our pasuk לֹא־תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא includes the idea that the sin actually lies in our silence. If we know we can have a positive influence on a person who is acting unjustly, we are not merely encouraged but required to speak up. And a line from a midrash in Breishit Rabbah brings it to the doorstep of the very passage we’re discussing:
אָמַר רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ תּוֹכָחָה מְבִיאָה לִידֵי שָׁלוֹם
Resh Lakish said: Tochecha brings about peace.
When we offer thoughtful, righteous admonishment—to the wise—it brings us into the realm of peace and love. And when we ourselves are capable of hearing a tochecha that someone else brings us, we too enter that realm.
This has been on my mind a lot lately. As calamity unfolds in the Holy Land, and as that conflict echoes on college campuses across this nation, it feels as though that delicate practice of tochecha that enables us to continue to love is in jeopardy of being engulfed in harsh, ugly words and dehumanizing stereotypes. I wonder often how this fragile world can hold, when opinions are so sharply divided and there is so little communication and search for common cause. Looking at how people are, at best, talking past each other and at worst, shrieking into the echo chamber, has been discouraging for me as a citizen, as a Jew, as an aspiring leader in the Jewish community, and as a mother.
But something from this week is giving me hope. As pro-Palestinian tent cities have cropped up on college campuses, I have to admit my heart has been in my throat. I have a child in college—Akiva, my elder son—and some of what he reports to me is profoundly worrying. But last week, my wonderful boy made it a point to have a conversation with one of his friends who is participating in the encampment. Clearly, the two of them have very different approaches to the issues surrounding the war in the Holy Land, but they wanted to talk—not to try to change each other’s minds, but to approach one another with curiosity and respect, in the hopes of avoiding the incipient dehumanization that is making some campuses feel truly dangerous. I’m immensely proud of Akiva, that he was willing to enter into a civil conversation with someone whose viewpoint is radically different from his own.
Prior to their meeting, Akiva told me that he and his fellow student were going to search for common ground first, and having established that, they would talk about the issues solely for the sake of learning. Rather than hating in their hearts, rather than cherishing their conflicting values and stoking the animosity that pervades this topic, they took the parsha seriously (perhaps without realizing it) and entered the world of tochecha, or at least respectful disagreement. Although neither one of them changed his mind over the course of their conversation, both stopped to think and consider the other’s viewpoint.
I can’t help thinking that this is what our parsha is asking: not that everybody agree all the time, but that everybody take the effort to hear one another, to acknowledge the humanity and kind intentions that most people are operating from. It isn’t that all opinions are equal or right, but rather that all opinions are sincerely held. If we can decrease the hate that’s in our hearts by earnestly listening for the good will in others, perhaps we can approach fulfillment of the mitzvah of our creator: to love our neighbor—in all their complicated humanity—as ourselves. And in so doing we approach the holiness that the parsha lays out for us.
הֲרֵינִי מְקַבֵּל עָלַי את מִצְוַת הַבּוֹרֵא וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ
Shabbat shalom!