Saturday, May 5, 2012

Acharei-Mot/KEDOSHIM: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

by Rabbi Baruch Binyamin Hakohen Melman


In Leviticus 19:18 there is the most awesome and complicated mitzvah in the Torah:"Love your neighbor as yourself, I am Hashem. Ve'ahavta leReyacha kamocha, ani Hashem."

My secret for remembering that this mitzvah is Lev 19:18 is as follows. Now once I explain my secret I guess it won't be much of a secret anymore, but here goes:

Lev, although short for Leviticus, is also the word in Hebrew for heart. And everybody knows that the word for love in English comes from the Hebrew word for heart, which is Lev.

Now the First World War had just ended that year. Everybody had vowed that this would be the last war, it was so terrible. Horrible new weapons were invented that were unthinkable in earlier wars, and millions lost their lives. Poison gas and flame throwers. These were never before seen or used in warfare. It was so bad they couldn't ever imagine that there would one day ever be a second world war. So in those days they didn't call it WW1 or the First World War. They just simply called it The Great War, it was so bad.

So the answer to heal the world then was as true then as it is today- Love your neighbor as yourself. And the letters reish and ayin in hebrew spell both the words for evil and neighbor. The consonants remain the same- just the vowels are different.

This is arguably absolutely the hardest mitzvah. But do not love the evil!!! Love the one, even your neighbor, even yourself if you have sinned and you think of yourself as evil and unable to return to Hashem and to goodness, in spite of the evil, and perhaps turn him or yourself around, and back on the right path. {Sur meRa, turn away from evil. Just turn away. Change direction. Not easy maybe, but turn away anyway. VeAsay Tov - and do good (Psalm 34). DO good and you become good. You are what you eat. But you are also you are what you DO. The converse also is true. DO evil and you become evil (an "evildoer"). But you can change. It is never too late!

Of course if someone is coming to kill you, then love isn't enough. You have to kill him first. But maybe before it gets to that point, we can try to kill him with kindness.

Shabbat Shalom!

© 2000-2012 by Rabbi Baruch Binyamin ben Yisrael Yehoshua HaKohen Melman

These words of Torah are written in the merit of my beloved father, Israel J. Melman, obm, Yisrael Yehoshua ben Harav Ya'aqov Hakohen Melman, z"l and in memory of my beloved mother, Esther Melman, obm, Esther bat Baruch z"l.

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Reb Shlomo with Reb Zusha ben Avraham Zimmerman

Reb Shlomo with Reb Zusha ben Avraham Zimmerman

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ON FIXING AND HEALING...

"If you believe that you can damage, then believe that you can fix..... If you believe that you can harm, then believe that you can heal..........." Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
"No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

- anonymous
"Perhaps the greatest force in the entire universe is compounded interest."

- Albert Einstein
When I was young I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.- Abraham Joshua Heschel
The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And the most important thing is to not be afraid.
-Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
"The greatest thing in the world is to do somebody else a favor." - Aish Kodesh
"As you want G*d to give you a chance, give everyone else a chance to also begin again." - Shlomo Carlebach

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