Elul Thoughts, Elul 24 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself (Lev. 19:8)

Given the spoken words of our current day it seems difficult to do, but Jewish tradition is always interacting with the words of Torah and asks us rise above normal levels of existence for a better way. In Parasha Ki Teitzei we find what appears odd in Deuteronomy 22:6-7.  It says that if you are on a path and come upon a nest that has either young birds or eggs in it as well as the mother, you can only take them if you sent the mother away first.  In Targum Yonatan the reward of doing so is not only good in this world but has merit for the world to come, which is why for Rashi it is about the mitzvot.  But then Ramban (Nachmonides) takes that one step further and says that the act of removing the mothers eggs from beneath her is an act of cruelty.  By therefore sending the mother bird away first it was an act of kindness so the bird did not have to watch her eggs being taken from before her eyes.  We learn from this what it means to love another, maybe not in the same way as with the mother bird and her eggs, but about going out of the way to make sure any type of harm does not come to another. Surely we want that for ourselves but we must make that a foundation of how we conduct our own actions.  This is a “me” world particularly right now, yet how we love others needs to be a bigger part of the norm.

Love of others is only possible through love of self.