Love as Political Theory

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parashat is Achrei Mot Kedoshim. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is prime in it, and it’s often viewed through the lens of Christianity, which popularized it, and not through Leviticus, where it originated. We fix that flaw today with the help of books recently published by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and Shai Held. They challenge us to see biblical love in a new way.

We take the challenge with surprising and unforeseen results through the thought of John Rawls, described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. So join us for the politics of love. It is kind of interesting. Love is in the air. Rabbi Riskin published a book that just came out, “Judaism: A Love Story,” and Shai Held, as we’ve discussed before, came out with a major book last year called “Judaism is About Love” Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.”

So given that, there is no way we could read that iconic “Love your neighbor as yourself” and not read it all over again, and that’s what we’re kind of going to do today. I mean, both of the books, in their own way, celebrate God’s love for his people or humanity, but they also talk about the obligations of loving him back. So that kind of challenges us to look at love through a completely new lens, through the sources. And that’s what we love to do at Madlik, look at the sources. Right.

Adam Mintz [2:24 – 2:30]: And this is the week, right? Like you said, this is the real source of that verse.

Geoffrey Stern [2:30 – 4:25]: Absolutely. It’s amazing how many people you meet who think that “Love your neighbor as yourself” comes from the New Testament. It almost overshadowed where the source is, but the source is very clear. We’re in Leviticus 19:9, and we’re going to read it in context. All of a sudden, we’re in the book of Leviticus. We leave behind sacrifices, laws of purity, and we start talking about moral, ethical, even economic practices that one had to keep.

So in verse nine, it says, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. So all of a sudden, we’re starting to focus on those individuals in need. I am your God.

You shall not steal. You shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another. Here it uses with people of your nation. You shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God. I am God. Notice it’s not just simply swearing falsely, like saying, “Oh, God, I did that.” It’s in the context of other people. You shall not defraud your fellow. You shall not commit robbery. The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.

You shall not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear your God. I am God. So it has these little things about God is important, but it’s in the context of not acting in a dishonorable manner to your fellow man. Right.

Adam Mintz [4:25 – 4:31]: Now, that’s important that each one of these verses ends, “I am God.” Right. That’s also fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [4:31 – 5:35]: Yes. You shall not render an unfair decision. The word used is mishpat. Do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich. Judge your kin fairly. Do not deal basely with members of your people. Do not profit by the blood of your fellow Israelite. I am God.

You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Here it’s using re’echa. Reprove your kin, but incur no guilt on their account. You got to warn somebody about doing something wrong before they do it, but don’t do it in such a way that either makes him a blatant sinner or in any way compromises him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. And then it says, “Love your fellow as yourself. I am God.” You clearly cannot take this iconic verse by itself. It is in a heavy context. How would you characterize the context, Rabbi?

Adam Mintz [5:35 – 5:52]: Well, it’s as you know, the Parashat Kedoshim. Leviticus, chapter 19 is the ethical and moral code. It’s about how to deal with one another, and it kind of culminates in “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But this is the ethical code of the Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [5:54 – 7:42]: Yeah, absolutely. And it combines very practical, I think, things of being honest and doing the right thing and paying your worker. Very mercantile things. Swearing in a court of law with these highfalutin things like love and hate. But I do think that even just bringing in the hate part of it, it gives you a little bit of a sense of what we’re talking about. We are clearly not talking about romantic love, Rabbi. So the question is, what kind of love are we talking about?

So let’s give a little more flavor to some of these verses. Rashi talks about “Do not put a stumbling block before the blind.” This implies, do not give a person who is “blind” in a matter, advice which is improper for him. Do not say, “Sell your land, buy from the proceeds of the sale an ass.” So the point is, when somebody comes to you for objective advice, you shouldn’t pretend to be giving them objective advice, but ultimately deceiving them with ulterior motives.

The motive becomes very important. Here it says, you shall be afraid of thy God. Because in this case, it is not given to human beings to know whether the intention of this man, the offender, was for the advantage or the disadvantage of the person whom he advised. So there’s a little bit of mind game. You have to act and you have to think in terms of equanimity. If somebody asks you for advice, you have to give them fair advice. You can’t take advantage of them. I found that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [7:42 – 7:54]: Equanimity. There’s also this idea of the difference between God and humans. God knows the secrets. We as humans can’t know the secrets. So we need that equanimity. Right.

Geoffrey Stern [7:54 – 7:55]: That’s also.

Adam Mintz [7:55 – 8:04]: That’s what. It’s God’s ethical code. We can only do as long as we can do as human beings.

Geoffrey Stern [8:05 – 9:39]: Yeah. And I think the idea is this fear of God is an amazing tool because it says, don’t think that there’s not some greater being who knows where your thoughts are and knows what you’re doing.

So then there’s a little bit of a surprise here. It says, thou shall not respect the person of the indigent. You know, you expect it. It says, don’t favor the rich. You weren’t expecting it to say, don’t favor the poor. That to me is absolutely fascinating and very, I would say, modern in terms of thought. You shall not say, says Rashi, “This is a poor man, and the rich man has in any case the duty of supporting him. I will find in favor of him, the poor man, and he will consequently obtain the sum support of a respectable fashion.” Don’t start doing all of these calculations and that you can basically bend the law in order to be a do-gooder.

You cannot go ahead and make those meta-arguments. You’ve got to do right by everybody. And of course, it says, when it comes to honoring the person of the mighty, you shall not say, “This is a rich man or this man is of great noble descent. He has Yichus. How can I possibly put him to shame?” The idea is you have to treat everybody equal. And by everybody, it really does mean everybody.

Speaker A: It’s both the powerful and the poor. And you could find reasons to kind of put the finger on the scale for either one. You can’t do that. I found that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [9:39 – 9:41]: That is absolutely fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [9:41 – 10:32]: So the interesting thing is that we know that loving your neighbor as yourself is a biggie. And we might have thought it was like I said in the introduction because it’s in the New Testament. But the truth is, even in our own texts, Rabbi Akiva says this is a fundamental, fundamental principle of the Torah. Zeh klal gadol b’Torah doesn’t say that about every commandment. There’s almost a sense that this one little phrase has overarching importance. And Rabbi, you know, you could say that, oh, we’re just cherry-picking here. But I clearly do believe that from this statement of Rabbi Akiva, you have a leg to stand on to say, this is truly a momentous statement.

Adam Mintz [10:32 – 10:55]: Yeah. Now, zeh klal gadol b’Torah doesn’t mean that this is the most important law in the Torah. You know, the Torah doesn’t distinguish between important and not. This is a fundamental principle of the Torah. It means all of the ethical code kind of revolves around this idea that you have to treat other people the way we treat ourselves.

Geoffrey Stern [10:56 – 13:24]: I love that. I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll go even a little bit further. A klal gadol is almost not only a fundamental principle, but if you’re thinking in terms of creating a constitution or if you’re thinking in terms of structuring a society, this is a klal gadol. This is an overriding principle.

So it’s not just simply of importance. As you said a second ago from the social aspect, it is a fundamental rule that has to be followed throughout. I think you’re absolutely right there. So the next question becomes the words. In Hebrew, it says, we know what ahavah means. It means love. Re’acha is your fellow. Kamocha means like you, but it adds a preposition there. It says, you shall honor your fellow as yourself.

And so we’re going to look at a few of the commentaries to see how they struggle with that. The Ibn Ezra says that there are many people who just ignore it. They go, you know, they threw in a lamed. Not a big deal. But he says, I believe that l’reacha is to be taken literally. That is, the lamed of l’reacha, thy neighbor, is not superfluous.

Its meaning is that one should love that which is good for one’s neighbor as he does for himself. So again, by putting the “to” the neighbor, it takes away the personal relationship with your neighbor. It’s not saying you’re doing something to the neighbor. It says you have to do something that is good for your neighbor. Another of the commentaries says, it means your neighbor’s welfare.

So it’s the good of your neighbor, it’s the welfare of your neighbor. Now we’re talking about not so much loving the neighbor as a person, but loving the principle or what the neighbor needs or wants or has coming to him. And I think that’s kind of fascinating. Again, from what we were saying a second ago. If you’re building a constitution and you’re building a society, it’s much more important to say no. Everybody, we want you to all love each other as opposed to no, no, no. I’m talking about particular things here. The le makes it talking about things, whether it’s their welfare or their good.

Adam Mintz [13:25 – 13:42]: I mean, that is a great Ibn Ezra. You have to love reiaka. You have to love the principle, not only love your neighbor but love the principle. That’s also a moral and ethical code, that you have to love the action, not just the person. Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [13:43 – 15:38]: So Nachmanides, he starts by saying something really cool. He says, love thy neighbor as thyself. This is an expression by way of overstatement. For a human heart is not able to accept a command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. He starts by saying, if you take this literally, it’s literally impossible. There’s no way that it could actually mean that you have to value another’s life over your own.

And he brings, again, Rabbi Akiva showing up a lot in today’s discussion. But he brings a famous Talmud of Rabbi Akiva where two people are walking in the desert. There’s a bottle of water. Only one can survive. His ruling, Rabbi Akiva’s ruling is if the water is yours, you have to drink, you survive. Because chayecha kodem, your life comes before the other one’s life.

So he is going to follow this whole trend of thought and say, so what does it mean if it can’t mean this exaggeration? He says, so a “to” or “for” your neighbor is teaching that which is good for your neighbor you should love as if it were good for yourself. Again, they’re playing on the le. It’s not as if you have to literally love your neighbor, but you have to treat that which is good for you as good for your neighbor.

It’s in a way, Rabbi, and we’re going to get into this when we get into John Rawls, is how do you know what to do? I’m giving you a tool. You can evaluate what’s good for you and project it onto your neighbor. …. It’s the best way for you to decide how do I deal with this situation? How do I deal with this person?

Adam Mintz [15:38 – 15:59]: Fantastic. You know, you think about it. What could it have said? It could have said, come over. Love the neighbor as yourself. But l’reacha, to the neighbor. It’s really a great point that you see, that’s why we learned the medieval commentators, because they pick up that extra letter that turns the whole verse around.

Geoffrey Stern [15:59 – 18:40]: Yeah, yeah. And, and, and he even starts talking about, you know, how sometimes we want to help our neighbor. You know, I want Adam to be smart, but not smarter than me. I want him to be rich, but not richer than me. So here, what you’re trying to do, and this is affecting how you think.

So we are talking about emotions here. But you have to get over this kind of sense and many of the commentaries, Rabbi, bring all of this discussion back to the Ten Commandments, the commandment not to be jealous, lo tachmod. And the whole idea is you need this as a tool to bring yourself to literally wish for your fellow what you wish for yourself. And I think that’s fascinating.

Now, one thing I started by saying is that I think if I would characterize Shai Held when he says that the love that we all associate with Christianity not only comes from Judaism but plays a big role in Judaism. I think he’s really talking about the emotion of love.

And what I want to say a little bit today is slightly different. And that is that the way I would characterize love that we read in the context of paying your worker on time, in terms of not swearing an oath in a court case, about leaving the corners of your field, is really a love that has to do more with doing the right thing, with tzedek.

And I think if you look at our Psalms and you look at your prayers, you can see that there is a strong connection between love and doing the right thing. In Tehillim, in Psalms 33, it says, Ohev tzedakah u’mishpat. He loves what is right and just, again, talking about God. And I think there’s an association with God, as we said before, that God loves tzedek. This is the love we’re talking about here. We on the Upper West Side have a congregation that’s called Ohev Tzedek. Love tzedek.

Well, that comes from a prayer, a part of the Shmona Esrei. In the Shmona Esrei, we say, restore our judges as before, we talk about bringing back the judges, and it ends with the blessing, Baruch Ata Hashem, Melech, Ohev tzedakah u’mishpat. There is this passionate love for doing the right thing. And I think if you miss that in v’ahavta l’re’acha kamocha, you’re really missing out on it. And I think, you know, the shul.

Adam Mintz [18:40 – 18:43]: That I grew up in is called Ohev Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [18:44 – 18:44]: So here you go.

Adam Mintz [18:44 – 18:49]: It’s Ohev tzedakah u’mishpat.

And it’s also, oh, ohev shalom, the lover of peace.

Geoffrey Stern [18:49 – 21:49]: And I think that kind of bears into what this re’ah means. It’s the other. It might be your neighbor next door, but I think from the commentaries we’ve just looked at, it also means the principle of your neighbor. Just as ohev shalom and ohev tzedek is loving justice and loving peace, we’re loving our other. I think that puts it in a very nice category and characterizes what we’re trying to get at here.

So I thought for a second, I want to look quickly at the New Testament only because I think it was written at the time of the rabbinics, and many of the traditions that they were quoting were either a step away from our tradition or actually was another way of preserving our traditions. So in Matthew, chapter seven, it says, do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. We have a word for that. It’s called mida k’neged mida. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there is a plank in your eye, you hypocrite?

So the next thing that he brings in is, don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t be someone who is false to the other. And then it goes on and says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek it and you will find. I think we’ve heard about that before. It’s called yaga’ata u’matzata tamin. These are rabbinic sayings that come right from our tradition. Knock and the door will be opened for everyone who asks receives. And the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? So now we’re talking about, in a society, people are able to receive and to give. And if somebody asks for something, the point is you give him what he’s asking for.

And then it goes on to say, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him? So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. This sums up the law and the prophets. So Matthew does two things. He quotes Rabbi Akiva saying, this is a klal gadol in the Torah. He says, this sums up the laws and the prophets. He quotes, do unto others as they would do unto you. But again, Rabbi, there’s a part of this that has to do with adjudicating between people, doing the right thing, and not being a hypocrite. And then there’s the gifting element. And that is going to become fascinating.

Adam Mintz [21:49 – 22:23]: Let me just tell you one thing about Matthew. Do unto others what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets. Rabbi Akiva said zeh klal gadol batorah. And this is an important principle; it doesn’t sum up everything. This is important. But in Christianity, they rejected all the ritual law. This is it. This sums up the law and the prophets. This is all that there is. So there’s a little bit of a difference between Matthew and Rabbi Akiva, which is the difference between Judaism and Christianity. And that’s what Shai Held talks about in his book.

Geoffrey Stern [22:23 – 23:51]: It could be. We can’t put too much on the English translation of the Greek, which was probably, who knows? But there are differences. But what’s amazing is there are so many similarities that you can see. They’re all kind of playing with the same tradition and talking to people who knew these traditions. So in Luke, it says, if someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do unto others what you would have them do to you, Rabbi. There’s a lot about giving and taking and gifting here, and that to me is fascinating.

I am going to move ahead a little bit to Rabbi Riskin’s book. He talks about the word ahava, and he says that the root is hav, H-A-V. It’s hey vav. Hav is the imperative form of the Hebrew root yud, hey vav, a less common synonym for the root nun, tav, nun, to give. Natan and hav are related. So Rabbi Riskin makes sense that ahava is talking about giving. He talks about Rachel in Genesis asking God to give her a son, a child. He quotes Jastrow, who at length talks about how it is used in Aramaic as well.

Adam Mintz [23:51 – 24:04]: I think that’s an interesting word. I remember Rabbi Riskin talking about this 40 years ago, 50 years ago, maybe. On the topic, it’s an interesting word, yah, because it’s in Aramaic, but it has its root in Hebrew.

Geoffrey Stern [24:04 – 25:43]: But what’s amazing is it says to give. And Rabbi Riskin does not reference the New Testament, but the words that we just said from Matthew and especially Luke are all about giving and taking and deserving and seeking and finding. It’s kind of fascinating. It helps us understand these traditions. But the takeaway is the idea provides a new meaning to what Rabbi Akiva declares, says Rabbi Riskin, that the greatest biblical commandment is, you shall love your fellow human being like yourself. I am the Lord of love.

If the essence of God indeed is love, and the essence of love is giving to others, then it follows that every human being created in the image of God must try in some way to help other human beings. This will automatically create a more perfect world in which every human being loves and gives to others. I thought that this, Rabbi Riskin, was fascinating because again, it takes us down this pathway that we’ve been going. Yes, it’s doing the right thing. Yes, it’s judging. But as we saw in the New Testament, also, it’s also about giving, giving to the other person what they need.

And this concept that God will provide, that we live in a world that ultimately we need to make sure that the lowest and highest amongst us all have the basic needs in order to live, and that is the love of God. I found this fascinating in the context.

Adam Mintz [25:43 – 25:48]: Of after meetings is always great in terms of his formulations. This is a great formulation.

Geoffrey Stern [25:49 – 26:32]: So Shai Held has a whole chapter on love your neighbor as yourself. And if those of you who are listening to this podcast, the Shai Held book is a gigantic book. The Rabbi Riskin book is a love. It goes through all of the holidays in the Jewish calendar. It talks about how they all manifest God’s love for the people of Israel and humanity and obligate us to love each other back in that regard. But the Shai Held book, Rabbi, I almost think it’s not a book. It’s a sefer. You can open up and read four pages and put it away and think about that for a few days and then come back.

Adam Mintz [26:32 – 26:36]: It’s like a resource book for a course, for a year-long course.

Geoffrey Stern [26:36 – 27:06]: Absolutely. So this is just a little taste. But he asks, so what kind of love is the Torah talking about? Can we really love the other as much as we love ourselves? Even if it were possible, would it be desirable for us to do so? He talks about concepts like emotional agency. In other words, the question is, can I command love, Rabbi? Can I command hate? He brings examples of, you know, if somebody gets angry a lot, we look

Geoffrey Stern [27:06 – 27:37]: at them and we say there’s something wrong with them. So we do demand that people are in control of their emotions. So he says the flip side of that is we should be able to agree that someone who is loving and acts in a loving manner is something that you can be praised for. So, yes, there is emotional agency. He talks about what this can possibly mean. And what I would like to do in

Geoffrey Stern [27:37 – 28:08]: the few minutes that we have is go in a totally different direction than he goes. And even then, Rabbi Riskin goes. Although there’s part of Riskin in this. There was a great 20th-century philosopher named John Rawls.

And John Rawls really wrote an ethics and a philosophy that came up against what was everybody believed in utilitarianism. Utilitarianism’s ethical theory proposes that actions are morally right if they promote the greatest happiness or utility for the greatest number of people.

Geoffrey Stern [28:08 – 28:38]: So if 90% of the people are happy, we have a wonderful society. And what Rawls says is, there’s something wrong with that because it doesn’t care and it doesn’t focus on those who are left out. What he did was he created, just like I said a second ago, loving your neighbor as yourself is a wonderful tool that we can use to try to figure out, am I doing the right thing? He created an amazing tool.

Geoffrey Stern [28:38 – 29:09]: And what the tool was is it’s called the original position. You have to go behind the veil of ignorance. Rabbi, when you start a society, a community, everybody has to go behind that veil of ignorance. They have no knowledge about who they are. They don’t know if they’re rich. They don’t know if they’re poor. They don’t know if they’re smart, they don’t know if they’re stupid. They don’t know if they come from a good family or a bad family. They don’t know their ethnicity.

Geoffrey Stern [29:09 – 29:40]: They don’t even know what their philosophy is. They don’t know if they’re a Hasid or a Presbyterian. And they have to be able to decide on a world that they would want to live in not knowing if they’re going to come out rich or come out poor. That changes everything. Rabbi, because on the one hand, you might say, I want a society where if you’re willing to be an entrepreneur and take chances, you can succeed. But it might also mean that if you’re born without any chance or tools to become successful, there is what they call that net that can save you because, oh, for the love of God, it might be you.

Geoffrey Stern [29:40 – 30:10]: It’s a fascinating tool to be able to determine what the just society is. And, what’s fascinating about it is that he believes that every society should do this. It’s not a universal law. He came out of the American tradition of a constitution and the Constitutional Congress. So your people, if you’re starting a group, you have to come up with this.

Geoffrey Stern [30:10 – 30:41]: And every so often you have to re-go over it and say, are we there? And what that theory made me think about when I said you love your neighbor as yourself is, first of all, this whole way point, is it another Jew or is it anybody? The answer to this is it’s someone who’s part of your community. It might be only other Jews. It might be Jews and Druze. It might be the people who are living in your country who have decided we’re living together. And you don’t know whether you’re going to be born as a Jew or a Druze. You’ve got to make the right society.

Geoffrey Stern [30:41 – 31:12]: It says Kamocha. The whole idea, the Ibn Ezra said that we have to create this concept of another. It’s a thought game. And I think that you can look at v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha as a klal gadol, as John Rawls did in creating a just society. And I think, again, one of the things that he said is, and it’s not a new idea. We’ve heard of the Golden Rule. You find walking in somebody else’s shoes in every society. You find dan l’kav zchut that you have to judge somebody as if you would have them judge you in every society.

Geoffrey Stern [31:12 – 31:43]: But I think what he did and I think what our Torah did, is they made it into a klal gadol. They took a very short sentence and said, this is the measuring stick that you need to use when you create your society. And for me, this really changed the way I looked at this. What could be pithy and trite, little ethical thought away. That’s great.

Adam Mintz [31:59 – 32:11]: So we have Rabbi Riskin and we have Shai Heldand we have John Rawls. We really have a whole spectrum of understanding. Back. Rabbi Akiva, what it means. This is fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [32:11 – 32:17]: Shabbat shalom. Next week I will be in Israel, and I will hopefully be able to talk to you from there.

Adam Mintz [32:18 – 32:21]: Looking forward. Fantastic. Shabbat shalom, everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [32:21 – 32:22]: Shabbat shalom.

Adam Mintz [32:24 – 32:24]: Ra.