What is the greatest teaching in the Torah? As we approach the festival of Shavu’ot, when
Jewish tradition holds the Torah was
given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, (begins Tuesday night, May 14), it’s
worth examining a famous disagreement between Rabbi Akiva and Shim’on ben
Azzai, recorded in the Midrash and in the Talmud.
Akiva points to the verse, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev.
19:18), and says, “this is a great principle of the Torah.” But Ben Azzai, both teacher and pupil to
Akiva, suggests a different verse is an even greater principle. “This is the book of the descendants of
humankind [for on the day that God created humanity, God created humans in God’s
own image]” (Genesis 5:1). [See Talmud
Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9:4]:
What is the dispute between them? Akiva’s verse requires that we treat our
neighbor as ourselves, that we try to imagine how we would feel in any
particular situation, and act towards others accordingly.
But Ben Azzai is thinking beyond this. He suggests that the concept that all people
are created in the image of God is an even greater idea. There are two points here: First, Ben Azzai’s teaching requires
sensitivity to every human being, not just one’s neighbor. (Classically, one’s “neighbor” in Judaism was
only one’s fellow Jew.) Because
everyone, not just those in your tribe or clan or ethnic group, is created in
God’s image, this is a greater idea than Lev. 19. Second, if a person were to humiliate or otherwise
injure another person, doing so is an offense against God, not just “yourself”
as in Leviticus. In the Midrash’s
version of this passage [see Bereshit Rabbah 24:7], a more elaborate explanation
is provided by Rabbi Tanchuma: “If you act thus, know whom it is that you are humiliating:
none other than the image of God that each person reflects.”
- Rabbi Andy Vogel
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