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D’var Torah: Won’t You Be My Neighbor: The Golden Rule in a Complicated World

By Rabbi Lance Sussman

This week’s Torah portion is Acharei Mot–Kedoshim: Leviticus 16:1 — 20:27

This week’s double Torah portion, Acharei Mot–Kedoshim, includes the Golden Rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The Golden Rule is widely viewed as foundational to all human ethics and is understood to be both a central teaching in Judaism as well as one of the 613 commandments. In its original setting, the word “neighbor” in the Golden Rule clearly refers to other Jews but was reinterpreted by the rabbis to refer to all of humanity. “Won’t you be my neighbor?” television educator Mr. Rogers asked rhetorically for generations. But what seemed like an easy question for kids is actually a very complicated issue.

While the Jewish tradition expanded the Levitical understanding of neighbor, the question remains: Who exactly do we consider our neighbors? Do neighbors include people we really do not like? Can a person who hates us and wishes us harm qualify as a neighbor in the sense of mutual respect and cooperation? Especially in our own time, when political and cultural polarization has pitted many different groups against one another, who do we prioritize as a more significant neighbor than others? Is everybody our neighbor or are there people we cannot accept in a visceral sense as a friend or societal partner?

Part of the question of who is a neighbor in the Jewish tradition is rooted in our understanding of Judaism itself. Does respect for our heritage and the authority of its religious teachings hold precedence over cultural adaptation? Is the redemption of the Jewish people or the salvation of humanity our highest goal? Is there any way to reconcile the well-being of the Jewish people with the value of tikkun olam?

The basic divide in American society today is between liberals and conservatives. Each camp maintains different understanding of who is their most significant neighbor. For liberals, special significance is ascribed to the weaker, more vulnerable segments of the general population who are viewed as the neighbors we need to love the most. For conservatives, the most significant class of neighbors is the members of the social order most akin to their own and the need to protect their rights and property. We have arrived at a dangerous point where it is difficult for liberal neighbors to love their conservative neighbors and vice versa.

Applying the Golden Rule to specific issues only makes the challenge even greater. Who should be held as more significant, the victim of a crime or the rights of an alleged perpetrator who may be proven innocent? Who is the more important neighbor, a gun owner who believes in maintaining basic security or a wounded person whose personal security has already been compromised? The whole basis of how we view law and order as well as justice and compassion hang in the balance with respect to the question of who we view as our primary neighbor.

Another set of issues tied to love of neighbor is health care. Who is our primary neighbor, the unborn or the women carrying them? What is more important, universal health care or national security? Similarly, should we be more concerned with student debt or the institutional sustainability of higher learning and advanced research?

In the Jewish community, we are also faced with agonizing questions about who is a neighbor with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Does the security of the State of Israel take absolute precedence over the well-being of Palestinians or do Palestinian rights need to be valued over the value of a safe Israel? Of course, problems involving the State of Israel are not purely binary. There are many shades of gray here. But at the end of the day, we still must ask, “Who is our neighbor?”

Ultimately the well-being of society depends on the reciprocal love of everyone for one another. Unfortunately, the application of the Golden Rule in our time is multidimensional, challenging, and often based on contradictory assumptions. More than ever, we need a thoughtful application of the Golden Rule in our lives and in our society. The Golden Rule remains the path to a better world, just as it did in ancient times. However, how to apply it remains as difficult as ever.

Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D., is rabbi emeritus of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel and a past chair of the Board of Governors of Gratz College. A historian of the American Jewish experience, Sussman recently completed a biography of Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, founder of the National Farm School, with his writing partner, Lynda Barness.