A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 2 Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

by Telushkin, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9781400048366
• ISBN10: 1400048362
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780307451743
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-10
• Publisher: Harmony
• More Book Details
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Summary

"Jewish thinkers don't talk all that much about love. All too often we leave that to Christian theologians. But in this excellent volume, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin puts the commandment to love at the center of Jewish theology and experience. This is a book that will change the way you think aboutand practiceJudaism." Professor Ari L. Goldman, Columbia University, and author ofThe Search for God at Harvard "Love your neighbor as yourself" is the best-known commandment in the Bible. Yet we rarely hear anyone talk about how to apply these words in daily life. In this landmark work, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, one of the premier scholars and thinkers of our time, gives both Jews and non-Jews an extraordinary summation of what Jewish tradition teaches about putting these words into practice. Writing with great clarity and simplicity as well as with deep wisdom, Telushkin covers topics such as love and kindness, hospitality, visiting the sick, comforting mourners, charity, relations between Jews and non-Jews, compassion for animals, tolerance, self-defense, and end-of-life issues. This second volume of the first major code of Jewish ethics written in the English language is breathtaking in its scope and will undoubtedly influence readers for generations to come. It offers hundreds of practical examples from the Torah, the Talmud, the Midrash, and both ancient and modern rabbinic commentariesas well as contemporary anecdotesall teaching us how to care for one another each and every day. A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourselfis a consummate work of scholarship. Like its acclaimed predecessor, which received the National Jewish Book Award, it is rich with ideas to contemplate and discuss, while being primarily a book to live by. Nothing could be more important in these strife-torn times than learning how to love our neighbors as ourselves. The message of this book is as vital and timely now as it has been since time immemorial. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is a spiritual leader and scholar, and the author of 15 books, including Jewish Literacy and The Book of Jewish Values. He is also a senior associate of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership; a board member of the Jewish Book Council; and the rabbi of the Los Angeles–based Synagogue for the Performing Arts. He lives in New York City and lectures regularly throughout the United States.

Excerpts

1

THE MAJOR PRINCIPLE OF THE TORAH

The central commandment

1. Even though the Torah ascribes no special significance to the verse “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jewish sources have long understood this commandment as having special—and in some ways preeminent—significance. Rabbi Akiva (second century) declared that the injunction to love your neighbor “is the major principle of the Torah” (Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 9:4).

2. More than a century before Akiva, Hillel presented a negative formulation of this law, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” He also declared this to be Judaism’s central teaching: “This is the whole Torah! All the rest is commentary” (Shabbat 31a).* Occasionally, I have heard people describe Hillel’s formulation of the Golden Rule as representing a lower, more pragmatic ethic than the positive but vaguely phrased “Love your neighbor.” But, in fact, Hillel was concerned with offering people practical guidance on how to make this law part of their daily behavior, and he understood that it is first necessary to teach people what not to do.

In defining Judaism initially by what one shouldn’t do, Hillel may have been emulating God’s articulation of the Ten Commandments. Thus, my friend Dr. Isaac Herschkopf notes that “God did not command us to be honest, truthful, and faithful. Rather, He commanded us, ‘Don’t steal,’ ‘Don’t bear false witness,’ ‘Don’t commit adultery.’ It might be less positive, but it is undeniably more effective.”

*For more on the significance of moral behavior within Judaism, see A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 1: You Shall Be Holy, pages 10–25.

A 1980s experiment conducted with American sixth-graders addressed young people’s differing responses to positive and negative formulations of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”). Educator Ron Rembert asked the students to compose two lists, one consisting of actions they would want others to do for them, the others of actions they would not want done. Their list of “Do’s” was short, focusing primarily on “love,” “respect,” and “help.” Their list of “Don’ts” was longer, and included “Don’t hit . . . steal . . . laugh at . . . snub . . . cheat.” Rembert pointed out that “the list of ‘Don’ts’ . . . included specific behaviors which are relatively easy to identify [while] the list of ‘Do’s’ . . . focused upon general attitudes and behaviors which are more difficult to define.” Professor Jeffrey Wattles cited this study in his book The Golden Rule, and noted that “The students concluded that the negative version of the Golden Rule would be easier to follow than the positive version.”1

3. The centrality of love in Jewish teachings also characterizes many post-talmudic texts. To cite but one example: The medieval Tanna D’Bei Eliyahu attributes to God one crucial request from the Jewish people: “This is what the Holy One said to Israel: ‘My children, what do I want from you? I want no more than that you love one another and treat one another with dignity.’”

4. In the Torah, the commandment to love is immediately preceded by prohibitions against taking revenge and bearing a grudge. At some point, we all hurt other people—intentionally or not—and then hope fervently that our victims not take revenge or bear us a grudge. To love our neighbor as ourself means, therefore, to act toward others as we would like them to act toward us. If we want those we have provoked to let go of vengeful feelings, then we must act the same way when others hurt us.

Holding on to grudges

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Excerpted from A Code of Jewish Ethics: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself by Joseph Telushkin
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