Literary depictions of love and friendship usually omit the part about cleaning the floor. But one anecdote in the Talmud breaks the pattern:
There was once an incident involving a student of Rabbi Akiva’s who fell ill. The Sages did not visit him; but Rabbi Akiva did. Because Rabbi Akiva swept and sprinkled water and cleaned the room, the student recovered. The student said to Rabbi Akiva, ‘My teacher, you have brought me back to life! (Nedarim 40a)
Rabbi Akiva mopped his student’s room; and that made all of the difference.
When reading this passage, the question that leaps out is: Why didn’t the other rabbis visit? Didn’t they want to fulfill the commandment to “love your neighbor” as well?
The answer lies in a debate about what “love your neighbor as yourself” means. Does this commandment relate primarily to our feelings or our actions?
The Ramban interprets this commandment as regulating one’s emotions. One should not feel jealous of another’s achievements, even if they are greater than your own. You should feel joy in their continued success.
In this view, “love your neighbor” is an obligation of the heart. Judaism demands that even our emotions should follow divine directives; and according to the Ramban, the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” directs us to feel affection for everyone.
There is a second element to this view. The way you learn to feel love for others is by appreciating their importance. This idea is found in a debate Rabbi Akiva had with his student Ben Azzai. The Talmud Yerushalmi says:
‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Rabbi Akiva says: This is a great principle in the Torah. Ben Azzai says: ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created humankind, it was made in the likeness of God’ (Genesis 5:1) — this is an even greater principle than that. (Nedarim 9:4)
Ben Azzai sees the commandment “love your neighbor” as spiritually incomplete. Its very language implies a pragmatic concern, of the need to enter into a social compact of mutual aid with your neighbors and others in your community. (For example, Bechor Shor and Rashbam infer from this verse that those who separate themselves from the community would be excluded, and others would not be required to love them.) Offering love to a neighbor who can reciprocate may be practical; but it seems far less spiritual than recognizing the inherent value of each human being.
To see the divine spark in others is an idea that can transform one’s heart and mind. You love what you appreciate; and who can fail to appreciate a beautiful human being created in the image of God?
Ben Azzai is the standard bearer of a view that sees the Torah as obligating true appreciation and affection for others.
The other view offers a far less lofty vision of what “love” means. Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann writes:
This commandment refers to a love expressed through actions—that is, acts of kindness…. A person cannot love every human being, including one who is not pleasing to him. Yet, performing acts of kindness is an obligation and is possible toward every person…
In other words, you can’t expect people to love everyone; but you can ask them to act kindly to each other.
This is a practical, worldly view of “love your neighbor as yourself”; it’s not about love, it’s about kindness. When the Talmud looks at what this love means in practice, it mentions very prosaic concerns, such as offering a quick and painless execution to those on death row, and requiring a man to meet his future wife in person, to ensure that they will truly be attracted to each other and not divorce. The lesson is that you can practice kindness even in unpleasant situations when the muse falls silent, when the heart is too preoccupied to feel authentic love.
At first glance, this pragmatic approach seems less spiritual. But the importance of action is why Rabbi Akiva came to visit, and not the Rabbis. The other Rabbis had embraced the poetics of love, but lost sight of the practicalities. You might be a holy rabbi, and your heart may be filled with the warmest thoughts towards all of humanity; but if you fail to take action, then sick people like the one in this story will languish. In the real world, people need more than love; they need help.
Kindness becomes the foundation of the Jewish community. Maimonides explains that the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” requires everyone to visit the sick, to comfort mourners, to bury the dead, and marry off a bride and groom. This is Rabbi Akiva’s vision of “love your neighbor as yourself,” a command that is more about changing the world than changing your heart.
The true language of love is action.
David Wolpe wrote the following story about an act of kindness that transformed his father’s life. He wrote:
My father’s father died when my father was 11. His mother was a widow at 34, and he — an only child — bore much of his grief alone. In accordance with traditional practice, he began to walk very early to synagogue each morning to say prayers in his father’s memory for the next year.
At the end of his first week, he noticed that the ritual director of the synagogue, Mr. Einstein, walked past his home just as he left to walk to synagogue. Mr. Einstein, already advanced in years explained, “Your home is on the way to the synagogue. I thought it might be fun to have some company. That way, I don’t have to walk alone.”
For a year my father and Mr. Einstein walked through the New England seasons, the humidity of summer and the snow of winter. They talked about life and loss and, for a while, my father was not so alone.
After my parents married and my oldest brother was born, my father called Mr. Einstein, now well into his 90s and asked if he could meet his new wife and child. Mr. Einstein agreed, but said that in view of his age my father would have to come to him. My father writes:“The journey was long and complicated. His home, by car, was fully twenty minutes away. I drove in tears as I realized what he had done. He had walked for an hour to my home so that I would not have to be alone each morning. … By the simplest of gestures, the act of caring, he took a frightened child and he led him with confidence and with faith back into life.”
Mr. Einstein’s devotion to a young boy who needed him tells us more about love than endless volumes of poetry. When it comes to love, it is the actions that matter.
Because real love stories are often written with a mop.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.
