Taamei Hamitzvos - Love Your Fellow Jew
Mitzvah 243
Do not take revenge, do not bear a grudge, and love your fellow like yourself; I am Hashem (Vayikra 19:18).
Sefer HaChinuch observes that the benefits of this Mitzvah are far-reaching, for whenever someone shows love for others and practices lovingkindness, the recipients respond in kind, and peace abounds among the Jewish people.
The Torah introduces this Mitzvah by instructing us not to take revenge or bear a grudge, meaning that the Mitzvah to love Jews applies even—and especially—to those who have harmed us. How can a person be expected - not only to abstain from taking revenge - but also to feel genuine love?
The Sages explain in Talmud Yerushalmi (Nedarim 9:4) that a Jew harming another is comparable to a butcher holding a cleaver in his right hand and accidentally striking his left hand. Just as it would not enter the butcher’s mind to take the cleaver in his left hand and strike his right hand in revenge, it should not enter the mind of a Jew to take revenge against another Jew, because we are all like one body. Radvaz (§13) explains further that our souls were carved out of the same source in Heaven, which means that we are essentially one and the same.
The Gemara there (ibid.) cites the famous teaching of Rabbi Akiva that “Love your fellow as yourself” is a great rule in the Torah. Rashi (Shabbos 31a) explains that this is because “your fellow” alludes to Hashem, and this Mitzvah thus includes every single Mitzvah. Alternatively, Rashi explains that this Mitzvah includes all Mitzvos between man and his fellow, which is most of the Torah.
The Gemara also cites Ben-Azzai’s view, which is less known, that the “great rule of the Torah” is the verse “...On the day that Hashem created man, in the image of God He created him (Bereishis 5:1)”. This is a similar idea: The reason one must love his fellow as himself is that all are created in the image of God, and whatever one does to his fellow Jew is therefore considered as if it had been done to Hashem.
In the story of Yosef and his brothers, we find a paragon of forgetting, forgiving, and repaying hatred with love. Not only did Yosef show great love for his brothers, but he also tried his best to convince them that they had not really wronged him and that they had no reason to fear retribution (Bereishis 45:5). Yet, despite all this, the effects of their sin against him were etched for the ages. About two thousand years later, ten saintly Jews were executed to atone for the ten brothers who sold Yosef. Even this did not achieve full atonement, and ten men die to atone for this sin in every generation (Midrash Mishlei 1:13). Moreover, R’ Elchanan Wasserman suggests that the repeated phenomenon of blood libels throughout the generations that resulted in the spilling of much innocent Jewish blood, despite total lack of rational basis, may well be a punishment for selling Yosef and dipping his garment in blood (Kovetz Haaros, Yevamos,Beiurei Aggados 6:8). Such are the devastating effects of sinning against one’s fellow Jew, because man was created “in the image of Hashem”.
