Loving Your Neighbor As Yourself: A Journey Into The Soul

Kol Nidre, Society Hill Synagogue, 5784

Rabbi Akiva has been called the greatest rabbi of them all, the most esteemed of the ancient rabbis. So when he identifies what he considers to be כְּלַל גָּדוֹל בַּתּוֹרָה, the great principle in all of Torah, you sit up and listen.

The principle, the verse, he selects as the great principle in all of Torah is… exactly what you would guess :וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ, he says. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ani Adonai, the full verse concludes,” I am Adonai, I am the source of being, God, signing off on this Mitzvah, this sacred call to action, like an artist would a painting. Love your neighbor as yourself, ani adonai, זֶה כְּלַל גָּדוֹל בַּתּוֹרָה, Rabbi Akiva concludes. This is the great principle in all of Torah.

Many of us know this verse. It has come to serve as shorthand for what we might call “Jewish values”—for the notion that we’re called upon to treat others as we wish to be treated, to treat them with love—both those with whom we’re in direct contact, our family, our literal neighbors and friends, and the broader world of neighbors in which we find ourselves, the global community, with whom we coexist on this tiny rock hurtling through the cosmos.

And yet, in encountering this verse, this brief three-word phrase, if that’s our understanding of it, we’re missing a key element of its foundation.
V’ahavta L’reacaha, Love your neighbor, kamockah—like you love… yourself.

I was struck a few years ago when, at a teaching on this verse by a scholar-in-residence here at society hill synagogue, a member of SHS, who has since passed away, asked a question I had been thinking about, and maybe others had, too: what if we don’t?

We often skim over the “like you love yourself” part, assuming that part is obviously accounted for, imagining the work is figuring out how to extend love towards the other. Much of the time the reverse is true: our struggles to extend love to another—our impatience with the other, our frustrations with them, our judgment of them, our rolling our eyes at them—often, not always, but often, have to do with our struggles to extend love and compassion towards ourselves, unconscious as this may be.

In Judaism, love of self is a mitzvah. Often translated as a “good deed,” literally translated as a “commandement,” really a mitzvah is both. It is a divine calling; the Divine Voice is calling out to us, Judaism says: V’ahavta l’re’achah kamockha. “I am calling on you,” God says, “to extend love to your neighbor just like I am calling on you to extend love to yourself.” Those calls are out there—both of them—waiting for us to answer. Might that change anything for your experience of yourself, your relationship to yourself, your love for yourself or the absence of it, if God truly is waiting for you to fulfill that mitzvah, to answer that call?

In fact, the Hebrew suggests that when it comes to loving our neighbor, we’re only going to get so far if we don’t cultivate love of self. Yes, you can read V’ahatva le’reia’acha kamocha as “You shall.” “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” But the way Hebrew works suggests it could also be translated, “you will love your neighbor as you love yourself,” or, in other words, “you will only love your neighbor to the extent that you love yourself.”

“Don’t think,” this interpretation suggests, “for all your loving intentions, that you’ll be able to generate a sustainable love for the other if you’re not able to formulate a loving relationship to yourself.” Otherwise, we’re trying to fill a glass from an emptying vessel. Sooner or later it’s not—we’re not—going to have any more to give.

And, before we go further in understanding this mitzvah to let love in for ourselves, I’ll state the obvious: As neighbors, we really need one another right now. The love for the neighbor that flows from the self-love, according to Jewish tradition, is so important right now; so urgent. You know this but let me tick off a few examples, a few of the most pressing manifestations of neighbors of ours aching for the love of their fellow human beings.

The last several years have seen a pronounced increase in the aptly termed disease of despair—when our fellow human beings are wrenched by thoughts of suicidality or by the abuse of alcohol or drugs. More and more people are dying as a result of these afflictions, these cries for help. Our national life expectancy, the life expectancy of the most prosperous nation on earth, if you can believe it, has thus been on the decline.

Gun violence continues largely unabated. More young people in our community are dying at the hands of firearms than ever before, especially young black people, like many neighbors of ours here in Philadelphia.

One out of every three Black boys born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime; the United States has more than 20% of the world’s prison population even while it has less than five % of the world’s total population. Where is the justice in that?

Our planet continues to heat up, sagging under the weight of carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which we have the capacity to reduce so that our children and grandchildren face a less hostile climate, if we would but take the steps to do so.

Democracy, the structure through which we can work to collectively solve these problems, has seen its foundations thoroughly shaken and is truly in danger requiring our engagement like never before.

All of these challenges are crying out for our loving response. For us to have full hearts that can respond with empathy. But our ability to respond sustainably—with compassion, with patience, with understanding—Jewish tradition suggests, and common sense would seem to corroborate, is at least in partly dependent upon how we understand ourselves and whether we have the capacity to show ourselves compassion like we’re called upon to show to our fellow. V’ahavta l’reachah kamockah. Love your neighbor like you love yourself.

So do we love ourselves? An absence of love of self is not always immediately apparent. We can be self-impressed while neglecting the mitzvah, the sacred act, of letting in love for self. Self-serving, while also balancing deep levels of shame and self loathing.

In fact, there’s often an inverse relation between the two: between self-righteousness and self love; between self-love and self-centeredness. The less we’re able to let love in from within—the less self compassion we’re able to show towards ourselves—the more it seems we often try to make up for it with these distorted versions, these empty-calorie versions of the relationship to the self.

Now, all of this talk of self love is not to suggest that Judaism holds no place for self discipline or self judgment. For knowing the difference between right and wrong and understanding when we’ve transgressed it.

In fact when the Torah describes God’s creation of the world it says,
בְּי֗וֹם עֲשׂ֛וֹת יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶ֥רֶץ וְשָׁמָֽיִם׃
Adonai elohim made heaven and earth.

Adonai elohim; it is a rare instance where both of God’s primary names, Adonai — the name which stands for God’s attributes of compassion and mercy; and Elohim, the name which stands for God’s attributes of discipline and judgment are used together. The fact that the creation story uses the rare compound form of both of God’s names, the rabbis teach, shows that when the Holy One created the world, the Holy One said, if I create it with the attribute of mercy alone, its errors will be too many; if with judgment alone, how could the world be expected to endure? So I will create it with both judgment and love. וְהַלְּוַאי יַעֲמֹד Then, it will endure.

So, according to Jewish tradition, God sees a role for both judgment and compassion in the world.
Still, when it comes to our relationships to ourselves, there is only a commandment to love; no commandment to judge. Tradition seems to intuit that most of us take care of that pretty heavily on our own. In most, perhaps not all, but in most of us, if there is an overabundance of one of these two attributes that we apply towards ourselves, it is judgment, and if there is a scarcity, it is love.

V’ahavta L’reachah kamocka.

So, how do we do this? How do we fulfill this mitzvah of extending love towards the self— a love that inevitably bears on our capacity to show love for others? How can we, in a sustainable and ongoing way, allow ourselves to experience the love that God calls out to us to let in?

Sticking with the Hebrew, unlike many of the mitzvot, the verse v’ahavata l’reachah kamokhah is not in the plural; it is not addressed to the collective; it is in the singular. It is directed towards each individual: towards each of you; each of us. Each of us will have different pathways in our relationships to this mitzvah.

I share my own journey recognizing, as the Talmud teaches, that each of us are different while at the same time imprinted with the same divine seal.

For me, the easiest way to answer the call of v’ahavta l’reachah kamockha, to let in love of self, to fulfill this mitzvah, is to notice when it’s not happening. The Torah we cited last year was Leonard Cohen’s famous verse in the song Anthem when he teaches, “there is a crack in everything; that’s where the light gets in.”

So I invite us to find the crack in the facade—what Jewish psychologist and scholar Richard J. Schwartz, whose work I rely on here, calls a “trailhead”— what he defines as the “emotions, thoughts, sensations, or impulses [that call] to you—[that seem] to want your attention.” We’re invited to notice these pain points, these manifestations of the self that feel pronounced, that aren’t sitting right. That is the beginning of a trail into the neshamah, into the soul, to investigate the source of the pain and to fulfill the mitzvah of v’ahavta l’reaiachah kamocha.
For me, as I feel my way around my outer being, feeling for the cracks in the facade, there is one I encounter over and over again.

It catches me by surprise, because on a conscious level, I don’t necessarily think this way, but there it is just the same—recurrent intrusive thoughts of self-dislike; harshness towards the self; cringing at certain choices made, balls dropped, errors of commission and omission; subjecting myself to thoughts of stinging self-rebuke.

Don’t worry; on a general level, I do think I have love for myself, I really do. But self-love, just like love in relationships—love of partner or love of the divine—is not a one-time pronouncement. It is a daily practice, a daily commitment, which takes ongoing investment and expression.

And, despite my intentions of investing in a loving and healthy family, despite my work towards investing in this community, improving my craft as a rabbi and investing in my career, despite all the efforts I make towards self-care, I often find deeply self-critical thoughts piercing through my psyche, echoing in my soul.

This is not to say feelings of regret or a desire to improve are invalid; we all want to live up to our God-given potential. But there can be a certain frequency and intensity of self-castigation which goes beyond self-improvement and which suggests that letting in a more profound level of self love is in order.

So this is my crack, my trailead. And so in fulfilling the mitzvah of loving ourselves, I embark down the trail, into the soul, on the path of teshuvah, the path of return.

As we embark down the trail, Schwartz teaches, we encounter different “parts” of ourselves. Not body parts, though sure those, too; not the Freudian ego, superego, and id, though perhaps a similarly metaphorical idea—but parts, in the way we might say, “a part of me wants to go on this journey; a part of me does not.” Or, “part of me wants to forgive you but part of of me doesn’t know if I’ll be able to.” Schwartz teaches that this notion of “parts” is not just a turn of phrase, but speaks to a real fragmentation within us. These parts are real, he says. This is in many ways an echo of what Jewish mysticism, kabbalah, might call sefirot, aspects of the personality, aspects of the soul. If these parts, if these sefirot, aren’t in proper balance, aren’t tended to with the sacredness with which they deserve, there’s a disruption in who we are and what we bring to the world.

So we embark down the trailhead, and the first thing we encounter is the part of ourselves that has called out to us for attention. In my case, it is this deeply self-critical part of myself that tells me I can never rest, that I’ve got to keep working, that when i mess up a little bit even sometimes tells me I don’t like myself, the part that gets down on me for not staying disciplined, for not keeping the fire burning at all times.

Now, when we encounter this part, if we’re trying to let in more love, our instinct might be to critique this part. To criticize it right back. “Stop doing what you’re doing,” we might be inclined to say to this critical part of ourselves, or whatever it is is acting out or calling out for attention. “Don’t you know we’re called upon to love ourselves? Can’t you get out of the way? Quiet down, voice.”

It’s an understandable instinct… and, it’s not what the spirit of v’ahavta l’reachai camokach suggests. Nor is it likely to be effective, Schwartz teaches. You can’t out critic your critic.
Instead, we might ask the parts of ourselves that are judging this inner critic to stand down, to remove themselves, and then, in the spirit of v’ahavta l’reachai camokach, we encounter even that critical part of ourselves with openness, with curiosity, and yes, with, love.

So what does that look like?

As I encounter my inner critic, I seek to reassure it. I extend a hand, an arm around its shoulder. I’m here to understand you more deeply, I might say. Help me.
And I ask it something. I ask it: what do you want me to know? What would you like to share with me?
It shares with me that it believes that if it weren’t for it, driving me, keeping the pedal to gas, offering stinging rebukes when I make mistakes so I don’t make them again, that I wouldn’t be where I am today. That I wouldn’t have any success.

Here is where it becomes apparent, that this voice, this part, does not see itself as a critic, as a source of self-loathing, so much as it sees itself as what in Hebrew we would call a shomer, a guardian, what Schwartz calls a protector.

But protect what? Protect who from what?

Here is where we remember that we are in the season of teshuvah. And we remember that the word Teshuvah means, yes, repentance, renewal, but more fundamentally, and more literally, it means return.

Judaism instinctively understands that we often have to go back to go forward. That, to cite William Faulkner for that famous line once again, “The past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.” It’s living out inside of us all the time. There is a reason that when choosing a word for the spiritual transformation and renewal for which we are yearning the ancient rabbis chose teshuvah, return, go back.

So when I ask my critic, my shomer, my protector, what it is protecting me from, what it is worried would happen if it didn’t keep the pressure on all the time, it it invokes the power of teshuvah, of return, of going back in time to show me what it is protecting against.

In a scene reminiscent of Dickens’ ghost of Christmas past — ghost of Yom Kippur past — it shows me a scene of — when else? — my teenage years; teenage Nathan.

It shows me a chapter of life where I was, if not miserable, then pretty low. I had little motivation, little desire to apply myself at school or at extracurricular activities. My interests were really wrapped up in getting the cool kids, guys and girls, to like me, even if this was unconscious at the time. This was, despite the occasional nice moment, not a recipe for joy and meaning.

My shomer, my protector says to me, essentially, never again. Never again are you going to be that aimless; that adrift. I’m making sure your sense of self isn’t dependent on the whims of others; that’s too unpredictable. I’ll make sure you perform; you succeed. That there’s nothing to criticize or not like by outside appearances. I’ll make sure it’s all fixed up internally before it manifests externally. You’re welcome, it says.

So, how do I respond to this defensive, dare we say, aggressive posture from my internal shomer, my internal protector.

In all sincerity, I say, “thank you.” In the spirit of V’ahavta L’reachah Kamokhah. Loving the self, I try to genuinely offer this critical part of myself appreciation and love for the burden it has been carrying. I sincerely see how hard it has been working to protect me. I appreciate it, deeply. I might even imagine giving this critical part of me a squeeze, a hug. You’ve been looking out for me,” I say. I so, so appreciate it.

But I have something else to tell it, too. “Protector,” I might say. “I so appreciate what you’ve been doing, but I can take it from here. Your approach might have been necessary at one point in my life. Maybe I needed that kind of tough love to help motivate me. To pull me out of a ditch. But things are different now.” As I said in a previous sermon, that was then and this is now. There is a safety, a momentum to my present circumstances, where the kinds of stinging rebukes it is offering are doing more harm than good, are depleting me rather than buoying me, giving me nourishment.

“I can take it from here,” I might tell the protector. You can unburden yourself. “I, 40-year old me, with a wife and two daughters, my feet a little more squarely under me than they were when I was a teenager, a little more hard-earned wisdom worn into me, more safety, more stability, can take it from here. You can relinquish the tight grip on the steering wheel. I got this.”
My critic believes me. It does. And it relaxes a little. But to truly let go, to truly unburden itself, it needs to see more. It needs to see that there is no danger of me relapsing into that, disappointing, as it sees it, teenage version of myself.

And so, continuing the process of teshuvah, of return, we go deeper: deeper in time, deeper into the soul. Continuing the process of teshuvah, of going back, the teenage part of me is not gone, hasn’t disappeared, or else my shomer, my protector wouldn’t be working so hard to protect me from becoming it. Rather, it has, as Schwartz puts it, been sent into Galut, into exile, an experience we Jews know all too well. It’s a part that the shomer, the protector has been working hard to make sure remains hidden; is not exposed; does not see the light of day.
We are working to fulfill the mitzvah of v’ahavtah le’reachah kamokhah, loving the self so we can extend that love to the rest of the world. And so we continue on our journey to meet our exile.
And then I see him: teenage me. He’s wearing baggy clothes that have long since gone out of, and then come back into, style.

Once again, I try to approach a part of me with a spirit of v’ahavta l’reachah kamokhah, a spirit of love, compassion, curiosity, and openness. I ask it, Schwartz teaches, to share with me what it wants me to know about its experience.

Approached with a spirit of love and curiosity, my exile shares with me why it might present in the way its shomer, its protector, sees it: disinterested in anything other than finding validation from peers. Aimless, adrift, unmoored.

My exile, Highschool me, has just moved with his family across the country, from Philadelphia to Eugene, Oregon, to be nearer to his mother’s extended family. He is at his third school in four years.He has been through the sudden death of his father, a subsequent remarriage and then divorce by his mother, and multiple cross country moves. His head is spinning. His feet are not rooted to the ground. His home life, for all the good intentions present, like many teenagers, is not providing the affirmation he craves. He goes around aimlessly looking for something that will feed his soul, mostly in the form of what most teenagers crave—affirmation from his peers. He comes up empty just about as often as full if not more so.

And so, Just as with my shomer, my protector, I seek to fulfill the mitzvah of v’ahavtah l’reachah, of extending a wounded part of myself love. I listen, intently, and without judgment, to all of it, all the pain, all the uncertainty, all the instability, the fear, the desire to feel loved. I let him unburden, fully seeing and witnessing all that is within him.
And I respond with love in turn. Listening intently and with compassion, I show this teenage version of myself love. Even give him a hug if he’s willing to take it. Unlikely but worth a shot.
And when he’s had a chance to unload I tell him, like I told the protector, that things are not like they were. Things are different now. Life is stable. He is safe. He is loved. It’s not that he wasn’t then, but I know he didn’t feel it then. I know the instability was too much for him to feel it.

I can even show him a glimpse of my present life: Caroline, Lila and Nina, home, this community.

It doesn’t mean life is perfect; that there will be no more disruptions to life; we all know that nothing is promised in this life.

But the conditions of his exile have changed. Life is stable. It is good. And to the extent there are challenges, there is a difference between our capacity to handle that adversity when we are adults and when we are children. Sometimes, in order to strengthen our capacity as adults to handle and grow from what comes our way, we have to show love towards the inner parts of ourselves that, as children, may never have healed. That still feel burdened.

So I invite him to unburden. I invite this inner exile into the fold, no longer banished from my psyche, from my soul, but present within it, embraced. As with the protector, I say, You’re okay. I’ve got this.

And, Schwartz teaches, I invite my protector, my inner critic to see that it no longer has to work so hard to ensure that this formerly exiled part of myself—the languishing, morose teenager—isn’t in control, because this formerly languishing part is different now, on the way to being healed. And the shomer, the protector, too, can unburden.

Once unburdened, Schwartz teaches, these parts— the former exile, the former protector — have gifts that they can share. Perhaps that inner teenager can remind me what is fun, how to connect with the lighter side of life, how to embrace friends. The protector, who no longer has to be so hypervigilant, looking backwards, can look forwards and help me find opportunities on the horizon, for creativity, for giving back, for neighbors who need love…

There’s one lingering question here: We’ve got a sense of the parts — the protector, the exile — that Schwartz teaches about. But, what, or should I say, who, is at the basis of this? Who is leading all of this? Who is the one showing them love? When we tell our parts,I’ve got this, who’s the “I”?

This brings us back to Rabbi Akiva. It is very rare that Rabbi Akiva, the greatest sage of them all, does not get the last word in a rabbinic argument. So when he doesn’t it’s notable.
And would’d you know, the very passage with which we opened this sermon, when Rabbi Akiva says, V’ahavtah l’reachah kamokhah, love your neighbor as yourself, zeh klal gadol batorah, this is the greatest principle in all of torah—this is one of the rare instances where a different teaching gets the last word.

After, Rabbi Akiva offers his assertion of what is klal gadol batorah, the greatest principle of all Torah none other than his student Ben Azzai, who at one point was betrothed to Rabbi Akiva’s daughter, offers an alternative: זֶה סֵפֶר תּוֹלְדוֹת אָדָם “This is the record of Adam’s line” Ben Azzai says, quoting Bereshit/Genesis chapter 5 verse 1. זֶה כְּלָל גָּדוֹל מִזֶּה This is a greater principle even than Love your neighbor as yourself he says.

“This is the record of Adam’s line?” How could such an obscure, mundane verse be cited as more important than “love thy neighbor as thyself,” let alone as the most important principle in all of torah.

So we look a little further in the verse: זֶ֣ה סֵ֔פֶר תּוֹלְדֹ֖ת אָדָ֑ם This is the record of Adam’s line.בְּי֗וֹם בְּרֹ֤א אֱלֹהִים֙ אָדָ֔ם בִּדְמ֥וּת אֱלֹהִ֖ים עָשָׂ֥ה אֹתֽוֹ׃ When God created humankind, we were made in the likeness of God.
Each and every human being—all of us, the Torah says—were created in the image of God. You and you and you and me. All of us. This, Ben Azzai, the greatest principle in all of torah.

What’s at the basis of all these parts within you—protector, exile, and beyond? You, your neshama, your soul, created as it was in the image of God. If you’re having trouble extending yourself love, remember that, according to Torah, your neshama was created in the image of God.

That’s at the core of your being. That neshama. It’s what the other parts sometimes distract from, what the other parts sometimes make too much noise for you to listen to. But when we show those parts love, when we can get them to unburden, Schwartz teaches, they can make space for you—for your beautiful soul that each of us has, created as it was in the image of the divine.

V’ahavta l’reachah kamockha, love your neighbor as yourself—both your neighbor, all of your neighbors, and yourself, Ani Adonai, I am the Source of Being, the verse says, signing off on this mitzvah like an artist on a painting, calling on you to recognize the love, that your soul, and those of everyone around you, deserves.

Gmar Chatimah Torah, may you be inscribed for good in the book of life.