(Delivered May 9, 2025)

Shabbat shalom!

Yesterday I attended my last class of my last semester of rabbinical school. Hold your applause; I still have to write two papers before my course work is complete. But in the past week or so, I feel like I’ve moved into a different time zone: let’s call it the reflection time zone. It’s not quite nostalgia but something nostalgia-adjacent, as I look back on the moments and relationships that have filled my last six years with so much meaning. 

My time at Hebrew College has offered lesson after lesson in careful listening and in bridge-building across profound difference. As a pluralistic Jewish institution, the College community is made up of people who are all passionate about Judaism but who express it in many different ways. Under one roof we have Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Jews. We have farm Jews and poetry Jews and queer theory Jews and anthropology Jews. We have lovers of Israel, we have Israel-skeptics, and we have full-on anti-Zionists. 

This diversity has been a strength but it’s not always been easy. After the attacks on October 7, and throughout the war in Gaza, it’s been tense and at times painful to realize the gulf that exists between and among many in my community. Our perspectives about the world are shockingly different! And yet, it’s also been inspiring to be part of a community so fiercely committed to remaining in relationship despite these sharp differences. 

People are often incredulous when I mention the coexistence of political disagreements and deep love that characterizes my school community. The responses range from, “How do you manage to learn together when you see the world so differently?” to, “How can you possibly talk to those people?” 

This week’s parsha points the way. Parshat Kedoshim, the second half of our double portion this week, contains one of the most famous verses in all of scripture—actually the famous part of the verse is just three words. But these three magic words carry great power: as we discussed in Torah study this morning, many rabbis—both ancient and modern—consider them to be the essential message of the Torah. These three words, from Leviticus 19:18 read:

וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ

And you shall love your neighbor as yourself 

Sounds great, right? More good advice that’s deceptively hard to follow. In fact, the three little words by themselves are not much more than a dorm room platitude. It’s the words surrounding them that give them texture and meaning. The full passage reads:

לֹא־תִשְׂנָא אֶת־אָחִיךָ בִּלְבָבֶךָ
הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא׃
לֹא־תִקֹּם וְלֹא־תִטֹּר אֶת־בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ אֲנִי יי׃

Do not hate your neighbor in your heart; rather admonish them and do not bear sin on their account. Do not be vengeful or grudging toward your tribe. Love your neighbor as yourself. I am God.

Seen in its full context, this pasuk shows that to love our neighbor involves not just a tender feeling that magically arises. Rather, this holy love is earned, through self-awareness and principled disagreement. We’re taught not to allow hateful feelings to fester in our hearts, but to speak them out loud. 

Commentators have a wide range of explanations of what it might mean to bear sin because of our kinsmen. Is the sin we avoid, as Rashi said, not to embarrass the person in public? Is it, as Ibn Ezra said, not to falsely accuse someone, such that you end up being the one who is punished? I rather think—using an admittedly twenty-first century lens—that the sin we bear is in the hate itself. If we are carrying animosity toward another person and keep it inside, it starts to poison our interactions, which in turn can lead to לשון הרע—disparaging speech—and much worse.

The Torah teaches us instead to have the courage to admonish the offending person, which, when we do it effectively and they are able to truly take us in, allows us to move forward in relationship without the cloud of resentment hanging over our heads. It is only then that we can love our neighbor as ourselves. Having the self-respect to speak up when something isn’t right is a prerequisite to the kind of interaction that the Torah is advocating. And part of giving that תוכחה— admonishment or rebuke—is in being able to hear what the other person might need to say. An effective תוכחה conversation is predicated on having the humility to know that you might ALSO have to change. 

The great Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai wrote: 
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

It’s easy to shake our fists at all that we think is wrong in this world. Holding our own certainty with a light grip, though, allows us to see the humanity of others and move toward it like a magnet. 

This is what the Torah demands of us, and as the last two words of this passage, אֲנִי יי—I am God—imply, the whole process is a pathway to connection with the divine, a recipe for holiness. The presence of God is the umbrella under which we undertake the mitzvot, and God’s teaching for righteous living is the reason we do.

And this ultimately has been the approach that made the complicated environment at Hebrew College beneficial for all. Through respectful, open-hearted listening, predicated on integrity and trust, we built, each day anew, a community that could not just withstand difference but find holiness in it.

Shabbat shalom!