Loving Your Neighbor: The Rabbi's Gift to a Monastery (Kedoshim 5774)

This week's Torah portion includes one of the most stirring and yet difficult to enact mitzvah in all of Torah:  "You shall love your friend/neighbor as yourself."  (Leviticus 19:18)  I doubt that the Torah focus here is on mere feelings of affection.  Still it is difficult to imagine how one might enact this mitzvah in daily life?  How much more difficult it is if we do not already love and value ourselves.   

The 19th century Haktav v'Hakabbalah (Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi ben Gamliel) offers a list of daily life ways to enact this mitzvah.  He goes beyond treasured friends to include all others with whom we interact.  His list includes: 

• Affection for others should be real not feigned
• Always treat others with respect
• Always seek the best for others
• Give others the benefit of the doubt
• Do not consider yourself better than others

(cited in Artscroll "The Chumash" (Nosson Scherman, ed) p 662.)

He seems to be teaching that the essence of this mitzvah is framing our consideration of others in terms of respect, care, and generosity, then acting on that framework.  That lesson resonates with the popular story called "The Rabbi's Gift."  The setting and tone of this story belie the fact that its earliest source was (only) 1979. There are a number of versions; here is my adaptation based on Francis Dorff's original.  

Connecting Four Dots for Pesach (Acharei Mot 5774)

Preparing for Pesach, which begins next week, the pattern of fours is on many minds -- the Four Questions, the Four Children, the Four Cups of Wine.  The festival even has four different names.  Here's a different list of four -- think a moment about what links them:  

1. Walt Disney
2. A 9 year old from northern California
3. The week's Torah portion
4. Pesach

LisaKristine.com photo that inspired Vivienne

A few words about each of these four dots before we connect them:  

• Walt Disney said, “If you dream it, you can do it.”

• The 9-year old is Vivienne Harr who raised more than $100,000 for a worthy cause selling lemonade.

• The Torah portion identifies a long list of prohibited relationships -- intimate associations we should avoid.  Some are on the list because they are icky or wrong. One prohibition -- against associating with idol worshipers (Leviticus 18:21) -- seems to make the list because Torah fears we might become just like those with whom we hang out.  

• Pesach is a celebration of the struggle for freedom at once ancient and immediate.

Vivienne Harr actually starts to connect the dots for us.  She is the girl who raised more than $100,000 toward ending child slavery.