Why "Don't Do"? Why not "Do?"

By Rabbi Yosef Levin | Love your fellow as yourself – perhaps the most famous words in the Torah.  We read them in the Torah this Shabbat.  A great ideal that I think every group and religion espouses, at least officially.  But what does it mean really?  How is it possible to truly love a stranger as we love ourselves?  For some of us the question is:  how can we love our acquaintances or some family members as we love ourselves?  They are after all not me!  The Torah is not a book of suggestions or lofty poetic concepts.  The Torah – literally translated as teaching - is our guide to life on earth as is expected of us by our Creator, the “user manual for the world,” so to speak.  So this means that the commandment to love our fellow is real and expected of each of us.

We can gain some insight into the answer by understanding the story the Talmud tells about the great sage Hillel.  A person came to him and asked him to teach him the entire Torah while he was standing on one foot, Hillel patiently said: “What you hate, do not do to your fellow – this is the entire Torah and the rest is commentary, go and study it.”  This was Hillel’s interpretation of the Mitzvah to love your fellow as yourself.  It is striking that Hillel uses the negative, not the adulterated version: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Why indeed does Hillel put it that way, and what is the message in his words? 

In fact, Hillel is giving us a very practical guide on how to truly love a stranger – or a person who is close to us – in a real, meaningful way.  We all make mistakes.  That is the human condition.  But when we mess up, a healthy person does not start hating him- or herself.  We find excuses or justifications for our actions or we minimize the seriousness of what we did.  If we are truly honest with ourselves, we recognize that we did something wrong and work on ourselves to improve.  When we do this, we feel that we are improving ourselves and moving forward to become a better person.  All the while, we don’t stop loving ourselves.  Even if someone “hates themselves” for doing wrong, I think that we really deep down still love ourselves, and that is why we feel bad about messing up.  I would take this a step further and say that when others judge us for our negative actions, we get upset with them.  Why don’t they empathize with me and understand my challenges?  Why don’t they realize that I am really a good person and just trying to deal with my challenges?  Why do they judge me negatively?

How do we react when we see other people making mistakes or messing up?  We typically judge them and look at them negatively.  How could they do that?  I don’t need to elaborate on this, I’m sure you know what I am talking about.

Hillel tells us – don’t do to others what you hate, don’t judge them negatively.  You have no idea what they are dealing with.  You must continue to love them and justify them, recognizing that they must have some inner struggle that drove them to do whatever it is they did, and certainly they are working on themselves.  Just as we try to overcome our own challenges, if we see another person struggling, we should with love and compassion encourage them and see what we can do to help build up their self-confidence and offer support.

Hillel is teaching us that it is indeed possible to love another person as we love ourselves, in a very practical, down to earth way.  Oh and of course, this is the way to end the exile, which was caused by baseless hatred.  Baseless love for one another is what we need, every day, in order to bring Moshiach.