By Marco Del Monte
At the heart of Parashat Kedoshim we find one of the most complex verses in the Torah: “Love your neighbour as yourself”; Two giants like Rabbi Akiva and Hillel make it the foundation of the entire Torah and of Jewish ethics, everything else is commentary.
Chassidut provides us with a way of reading this phrase that complicates the simplest meaning: “Reachà — your neighbour” can also be read as “Raachà — your evil” (Zot HaTorah Parashat Kedoshim); therefore, should we also love evil? How can I appreciate an incorrect “neighbour”? And above all, how is it possible to love others as oneself if we do not love ourselves? Obviously, the subject is very long and goes beyond the intention of being exhaustive in this short writing, but we can activate some food for thought. Life gives us moments of sweetness and moments of difficulty. Instinctively we love what is beautiful and pleasant, while we shy away from pain and evil. Yet the Torah challenges us to a more courageous love: to love even what “negative” happens, to welcome it with faith, as part of G-d’s plan. Therefore, the Torah does not command us only to love our neighbour when he is good, but also when he is wicked (we must even help him); not only to love what we like in life, but also the “evil” that happens to us; not only to love our qualities, but also our shadows, our flaws. Is there perhaps a masochistic streak hidden in this? Obviously not. Every event, even the most difficult, is a letter, a message, from Hashem. In the events of life nothing is accidental. Even what makes us suffer contains a spark of good, precious, but deeply hidden from the eyes. As for people, even the most distant has a spark of Divinity inside him. We can hate the sin, but never the sinner. We must believe in the Teshuvah potential of every soul. Loving someone not for what they are, but for what they can become. As for ourselves, loving “our evil” means accepting responsibility for our fragilities and working with love to transform them. The Chassidic masters teach that falls are necessary to elevate us; descent and ascent are the same thing, it depends on which side you decide to look at it, they are mirror images just as in physics so spiritually. We cannot love others if we do not first learn to love ourselves. To complete, or complicate everything, the chachamim remind us that “Ra’acha” — that is, the evil that comes from you — indicates that very often what hurts us or tests us is a mirror of our own shadows. The Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Nachman used to say that what we see as negative in others is often a reflection of what we need to correct in ourselves; who knows if Freud studied precisely this in his Jewish studies. Finally, some commentators read “Re’acha” as Hashem, your “Friend” (Shir HaShirim 5:16). Too often we love ourselves more than God. But if we loved Him at least as much as we love ourselves, we would put His will before our ego.
Ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha teaches us to love everything: our neighbour, the evil we experience, our falls, and even God — with the same impetus with which we love ourselves.
Because from every fragment of shadow, with a lot of Emunah, an even greater light can be reborn.
Shabbat Shalom Umevorach
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.