Parsha Topic
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Vayikra 19:18)
Loving Others is Part of Tefilah
The Arizal is quoted as follows:
Before a person recites his order of prayer in shul, from Parshas Ha’akeidah and on, he needs to accept upon himself to fulfill the mitzvah of “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He should have in mind to love each member of the Jewish people as he loves himself, because by means of this, his prayer will ascend, included in all the prayers of the Jewish people, and will thus be able to rise to Heaven and bear fruit.
Here we see that fulfilling the mitzvah of loving others, before davening, is not just a good idea. It is an essential part of tefilah itself. “Because by means of this, his prayer will ascend, included in all the prayers of the Jewish people.”
How did love for other Jews get to be an essential part of tefilah? What’s the connection? The simple explanation is based on the following. The Rambam writes:
Teshuvah is such great virtue! Yesterday this person was separated from Hashem, G-d of Yisrael, as it says, “Your sins separated between you and your G-d.” He cried out to Hashem and was not answered, as it says, “Even if you pray a lot....” He did mitzvos and they were ripped up in front of him, as it says, “Who asked this of you, to trample My courtyards?” And today he is attached to the Shechinah.
This tells us something important about tefilah. A person could pray but not be answered. On the contrary, his mitzvah could be ripped up in front of him. In truth, every prayer will ascend, but it doesn’t necessarily happen right away. One’s prayer could be detained somewhere until its time comes to rise to Heaven.
We should not take it for granted that our prayers will ascend to the Divine Throne of Glory, and if they get detained on their way up, that’s not a good thing. However, the Arizal offered us an awesome and amazing eitzah for our prayers to ascend to Heaven. This means of uplifting our prayers can be understood in several different ways.
One way is as follows: it is similar to the power of davening with the tzibbur. The Gemara says that prayer recited in public bears the promise of הן א־ל כביר ולא ימאס, “The mighty G-d will not reject it.”
When we daven with the tzibbur, the prayer of the whole congregation together is one complete entity, and Hashem will never reject such a prayer. As Rashi explains, “In public, their prayer is heard, even though not everyone’s heart is fully in it.”
The Arizal’s innovation was to apply this principle even if one’s prayer was not actually recited with the congregation. If one is connected to the tzibbur by loving all fellow Jews, and especially if he is involved with them by teaching them Torah, he thereby acquires connection to Hashem. This wields a tremendous power to cause his prayer to be accepted.
Another way to understand it is along the lines of midah k’neged midah. If you love (others), you are loved (by Hashem). If there is a single person in the world that you have something against, this is very damaging to your soul. It affects your very relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
If you have something against a certain Jew, then you have something against Hashem’s only child, so to speak, because every Jew is like Hashem’s only child. This is not good, because if you have a problem with someone’s beloved only child, you have a problem with the father, too. It is very hard for a parent to maintain a good relationship with someone who hates his beloved only child.
It All Boils Down to Faith
Now we will take it to a deeper level.
The mitzvos of tefilah and of loving one’s neighbor have a common root, and that is emunah. The power of our prayers derives from our emunah, from the fact that we pray because we believe in Hashem and rely on Him to take care of us. And the litmus test of how firmly we believe that Hashem is all-powerful and runs the world is the degree to which we love our neighbor. Proper fulfillment of this mitzvah is the greatest proof that we rely on Hashem to take care of everything in our lives, and real faith in Hashem empowers our prayers to be accepted by Him.
Why is it so hard for us to love our neighbor? We don’t need to take everything we have and give it to him. We only need to love him as we love ourselves. That he should have what we have. What’s so hard about that?
It all boils down to a lack of faith. For instance, let’s say you are walking along and you see in front of you a Jew who doesn’t make the impression of being a very nice guy at all. The wretched person in front of you looks like he has no connection to Torah or even to basic good manners. You look at him and ask yourself, “I know it is written that everyone should say, ‘The world was created for me,’ but did Hakadosh Baruch Hu really create the whole world just for this guy?!”
However, the truth is that this Jew is Hashem’s only child, so to speak. It is as if Hashem is saying: Right now, Avraham Avinu does not interest Me, nor does Yitzchak or Yaakov or the Gedolim of past generations. Only this sweet, lovable Jew interests Me. Hashem takes him, so to speak, and gives him a big hug.
It’s true that human beings are not capable of behaving in this way, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu has infinite chesed. With infinity, there is no such thing as going too far, so it is quite clear that this is how Hashem relates to every Jew – like a father’s unending love for his beloved only child.
Tefilah depends on loving one’s neighbor because someone who doesn’t love every Jew is showing a lack of faith in Hashem’s trait of chesed. When a person turns to Hashem in prayer and asks Him to take care of all his needs, this comes from a recognition of how much Hashem loves every Jew and wants the best for him. Just like Hashem loves me and wants to give me everything I need, He loves my neighbor the same. Since Hashem bestows infinite chesed and loves every Jew, my neighbor must be part of all this, too. Every single Jew is therefore a zisser yid, a sweet Jew. Sweet as honey!
Seeing the Positive
This idea explains a story from the Gemara about an incident that happened to R. Elazar son of R. Shimon as he was traveling home from the beis midrash of his rabbi:
R. Elazar came upon a man who was exceedingly ugly. The man said to him, “Shalom to you, rabbi,” and R. Elazar did not greet him in return. He rather said to him, “You worthless man, you are so ugly! Is everyone in your town as ugly as you?” The man replied, “I don’t know, but go and say to the Craftsman Who made me, ‘The piece You made is so ugly!’”
When R. Elazar realized that he had sinned, he got off the donkey and prostrated himself before him and said to him, “I submit to you; forgive me!” The man responded, “I won’t forgive you until you go to the Craftsman Who made me and say to Him, ‘The piece You made is so ugly’”.... R. Elazar and the people of his town begged the man very much to forgive him, and in the end, he forgave him.
It’s obvious that this story is not to be taken at face value. R. Elazar son of R. Shimon was an exceedingly holy and pious Tanna, and it doesn’t make any sense that he would refuse to return a greeting, and instead make a really rude and insulting remark to a total stranger, just because he was ugly. What could possibly bring him to do such a thing?
The following story will help us understand the point Chazal were making. (I heard the following story from someone who heard it firsthand.) R. Issar Zalman Meltzer was once sitting in his sukkah on Chol Hamo’ed Sukkos, and asked R. Dovid Finkel to bring him a pen and paper. R. Dovid asked him, “But it’s chol hamo’ed, isn’t it forbidden to write?” R. Issar Zalman answered, “It’s pikuach nefesh!”
After R. Dovid Finkel brought pen and paper, R. Issar Zalman wrote down a pasuk. He wrote, “Your eyes should look right ahead; your eyes should focus their gaze straight in front of you.”
R. Dovid Finkel asked, “Why is this a matter of life and death?”
R. Issar Zalman answered, “I am sitting here in the sukkah and people come to visit me. Since I can recognize a person’s whole character just by looking at him, I immediately notice the shortcomings of each of my visitors. I was sitting and thinking such thoughts about other people, and suddenly I caught myself and realized that it is not right to focus on criticizing others. Rather, ‘Your eyes should focus their gaze straight in front of you.’ [In other words, I should be minding my own business.]”
That’s the story about R. Issar Zalman Meltzer. Now let’s get back to R. Elazar son of R. Shimon.
R. Shimon saw the ugly man with a view that was not just superficial and external. He saw deep into the man’s character and into his very soul. That is why he called him “worthless.” R. Elazar perceived that he was ugly through and through, layer after layer, all the way down to the source of his neshamah. The man was not even deserving of the greeting “Shalom.” R. Elazar discerned in him not a single beautiful point.
R. Elazar was so shocked by the corrupted state of this man that he asked him, “Is everyone in your town as ugly as you?” In other words, he thought that maybe the man’s location has a negative influence on those who live there.
R. Elazar had good intentions. Out of love for this wretched man, he sought to arouse him to better his ways and save his soul, for his own good in this world and the next. R. Elazar wanted the man to know that even if he does good deeds sometimes, his inner self is ugly, and this needs to be corrected.
The ugly man responded, “I don’t know.” This, too, needs to be explained. He should have known if his fellow townsmen are ugly, too.
The ugly man meant that he doesn’t know how to look deeply into a person’s neshamah to determine its ugliness or lack thereof, but if R. Elazar knows how to do that, if R. Elazar is such a lofty person, then he should know that that the neshamah is the point of connection and belonging to the Creator. “If my ugliness goes so deep,” the man claimed, “then you should go to the Craftsman Who made me and ask Him to clean me up. I won’t forgive you until you do so!”
R. Elazar realized that the ugly man was making a profound point. Since the neshamah is the point of connection and relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, this ugly man, who was a Jew, was surely connected to Hashem in the root of his soul no less than R. Elazar himself was. If so, he can’t really be so ugly after all.
R. Elazar apparently suffered from a subtle spiritual imperfection that caused him to see only the man’s ugliness and not his good side. That is why he said, “I submit to you; forgive me!” Rashi explains that R. Elazar was admitting that he had said more than he should have.
This is a lesson for us: the mitzvah of loving our neighbor requires us to look specifically at the positive points that surely exist in every single Jew, since every Jew is connected to Hashem and belongs to Him.
