vi-ahavta lireacha kamocha - the ramban makes the following fascinating comment:וטעם ואהבת לרעך כמוך - הפלגה, כי לא יקבל לב האדם שיאהוב את חבירו כאהבתו את נפשו, ועוד שכבר בא רבי עקיבא ולמד חייך קודמין לחיי חבירך (ב"מ סב א: in english, the torah is "exaggerating" when it says love your friend like yourself. you cant love someone else as much as you love yourself. furthermore, dont we hold "chayecha kodmin" - you are supposed to care about your own life more than that of others.
so what does it mean, if it cannot be taken literally? the ramban explains that we are commanded to care about other people's welfare not to the same extent as we do ours, but rather in the same way that we care about ourselves. just like we are happy for ourselves when we do well and succeed, we should want others to do well and be happy at their successes - we shouldn't want that others dont succeed, or even that they should succeed but just less than we do.
this ramban is a big chiddush. if we compare this to the rambam, it does not seem that the rambam accepts this position of the ramban. in sefer hamitzvos, the rambam writes: והמצוה הר"ו היא שצונו לאהוב קצתנו את קצתנו כמו שנאהב עצמנו ושתהיה חמלתי ואהבתי לאחי כחמלתי ואהבתי לעצמי בממונו ובגופו וכל מה שיהיה ברשותו או ירצה אותו וכל מה שארצה לעצמי ארצה לו כמוהו וכל מה שאשנא לעצמי או למי שידבק בי אשנא לו כמוהו. והוא אמרו יתעלה (שם) ואהבת לרעך כמוך:
the rambam takes the mitzvah literally. and what bothers me is the following: how do we make sense of this machlokes - what are the rambam and the ramban disagreeing about exactly? one thinks it is possible to love others like oneself, and one thinks it impossible, and thats it? if the rambam and ramban were to find themselves in the same room, discussing this mitzvah, would they be able to have an intelligent conversation about this machlokes, or is there nothing to talk about - they would just talk past each other. i think this is a very difficult question.
so to begin, which shitah do we understand at first? you might think the ramban. after all, he is the one coming from what seems to be personal experience - lo yikabel lev ha-adam to love others like himself. but i think the opposite is true. consider (this example was pointed out to me by my chavrusa) a mother's love for her children. does she not love them even more than she loves herself? in many family relationships, i think we can say that there are people who love others as much as themselves. so the rambam would tell us that klal yisrael is family as much as your brother or sister is. no one said that thats an easy thing to accomplish, but then again, there are lots of difficult mitzvos. for the ramban to reinterpret this mitzvah, we need a higher bar than difficulty - we need impossibility, or at least incompatibility with other parts of hashkafas hatorah.
what about the ramban's second proof, chayecha kodmin? i looked up the gemara, which is the famous machlokes between ben petura and r akiva about the following scenario: if a person is travelling with his friend, and he has enough water for only one person to live, ben petura says he should share even though both people will / may (big machlokes about pshat in gemara) die, while r akiva says chayecha kodmin - one's own life takes precedence. i looked to see where the rambam paskins this gemara. and shockingly, he doesnt seem to mention it. i looked around, and while this is definitely not simple at all, at least some acharonim believe that the rambam paskens like ben petura - in other words, we may not paskin that chayecha kodmin! i didnt see anyone say this, but i would suggest that this is lishitaso by viahavta lireacha kamocha, that it is a literal obligation. (see rambam yesodei hatorah 5:5 for support for the assertion that he paskins like ben peturah - there is possible room to distinguish between the cases however - im not really holding at all in the sugya of pikuach nefesh and yehareg vial yaavor so i hope im not messing up big time here.)
so so far, the ramban seems to be in trouble. but then i realized something interesting - the same r akiva that the ramban quoted who said chayecha kodmin also said the words to a famous uncle moishy/ yeshiva boys choir song / medrash. viahavta lireacha kamocha - amar r akiva - zeh klal gadol batorah. but didnt r akiva undermine the centrality of viahavta lireacha with his chayecha kodmin?
r shimon shkop talks about this tension between love of oneself / love of others in his hakdamah to his sefer, shaarei yosher. interestingly, his discussion is primarily in the context of kedoshim tihyu, not viahavta lireacha. i summarize (with a few points thrown in) below - i think this helps us understand the tension the ramban is dealing with, even if we are left at the end not fully understanding the ramban.
there are three classical explanations (that i know of) to the words kedoshim tihyu . 1. rashi - to separate oneself from arayos. 2. ramban - to not be a naval birshus hatorah. 3. rambam (sefer hamitzvos, shoresh 4) - be kadosh by keeping the entire torah (lichora this is the simplest pshat in the pasuk).
but says, r shimon, none of these explanations would account for the following medrash: קדושים תהיו: יכול כמוני ת"ל כי קדוש אני קדושתי למעלה מקדושתכם - you might think that you should be kadosh just like hashem is kadosh (= on the same level as hashem), talmud lomar, ki kadosh ani hashem - my (hashem's) kedusha is far above your kedusha. according to all the above explanations, what was the hava amina that our kedusha could be on the same level as hashem's - none of the above explanation of kedusha is really applicable to hakadosh baruch hu (although maybe keeping the torah is applicable to hashem based on previous discussions-- hmm)
rather, says r shimon, kedusha is really about selflessness. we are kadosh in that we emulate hashem, the ultimate meitiv la-achaerim, by doing good to others and devoting everything we do to the good of others. thats the hava amina of the medrash - you would think that you should be totally selfless (= take viahavta lireacha literally and love your friend as much as yourself), like hashem. talmud lomar ki kadosh ani - man shouldn't be totally selfless - there is a place for man to love/ care about himself.
in fact, says r shimon, when we look at human nature, we realize that man's self love is so strong it cannot be negated. rather, what a person can do is change how he identifies his "self". a small person thinks his self is just him. but if you think a little bigger, you realize that yourself includes your family as well. as we progress, it might even include classmates, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, until if we truly succeed, we identify with klal yisrael such that we are part of one big "self". thus, when we care for others we arent negating our self love - we are applying it by including others within our definition of "self".
it wasnt a stirah for r akiva to say both viahavta and chayecha kodmin - the way we reach a strong love for our fellow jew is by applying the naturally, g-d given strong love we have for ourselves and using it to help others.
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