Love Your Neighbour

If you see someone in trouble - a child who has fallen, someone being hurt, someone lost - you are not allowed to walk past. Standing still and doing nothing counts as walking past. Help, or run and fetch someone who can.

Why does a verse about gossip end with a verse about blood? Because both are ways of standing by - one with your mouth, one with your feet. Rashi takes the second half completely literally: if your fellow is drowning, or a wild animal or bandits are on him, you may not walk on. This is the mitzvah that makes “not my problem” into an actual sin, which is why Rambam files it under the laws of murder rather than the laws of kindness.

Rashi, following Sanhedrin 73a, reads lo ta’amod al dam re’echa as a positive duty of rescue: if you see your fellow drowning, or attacked by a beast or by bandits, you are obliged to save him. Rambam codifies it in Hilchot Rotze’ach, so that passivity in the face of danger is measured on the scale of bloodshed, not merely of charity. The pairing with rachil in the same verse is not accidental - rechilut destroys a person by degrees while everyone stands and watches, and the root ר-כ-ל is the root of רוֹכֵל, a pedlar, one who carries goods from door to door. Both halves of the verse describe a community in which harm travels freely because nobody intervenes. It closes with ani Hashem, the signature the chapter attaches to laws whose enforcement lies beyond any human court.

Being angry with someone quietly, on the inside, is not allowed either. If a friend did something wrong, tell them - gently, when it is just the two of you - instead of keeping it hidden and going cold on them.

If someone has hurt you, is it kinder to say nothing and stay polite? The Torah says no, and it is worth understanding why: silent hatred grows, while a word said honestly can end the whole thing. But the permission to speak is not a permission to attack. Rambam is very exact about it - rebuke gently and privately, and make clear you are saying it for the other person’s good, not for the pleasure of being right. That distinction is the difference between rebuke and cruelty.

Rambam (Hilchot De’ot 6:5) notes that the verse forbids hatred bilvavecha, in the heart, because concealed hatred is the kind the Torah singles out; open resentment at least has a chance of being resolved. Ramban connects the clauses: rebuke is precisely the remedy for the hatred of the previous clause, since speaking to the person is what stops the grievance from settling in. The doubled verb hocheach tochiach, from the root י-כ-ח, gives the closing clause its ambiguity. Rashi reads v’lo tisa alav chet as a limit on the rebuke - do not incur sin by shaming him in public; others read it as the reason for the rebuke - speak, so that you do not carry the sin of his wrongdoing yourself. Rambam in Hilchot De’ot rules that the rebuke be delivered privately and in a soft voice, and adds that if it is given in a way that humiliates, the one rebuking has himself transgressed.

Someone would not lend you their pencil yesterday. Today they ask for yours. The Torah says: lend it, and do not add, “You wouldn’t lend me yours.” Give it the way you would want it given to you.

The famous example makes the two words sharp. Revenge is refusing him because he refused you. A grudge is handing it over while adding, “Take it, I am not like you.” The second one feels generous and is not, which is exactly why the Torah names it separately. Then comes the line Rabbi Akiva called the great principle of the whole Torah, and Hillel’s version of it: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow - that is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary, go and learn it.

The Sifra’s illustration remains the clearest: nakam is refusing to lend your neighbour the axe because he refused you the sickle; netor is lending it and saying, “See, I am not like you.” Revenge acts; a grudge merely remembers out loud. The Torah forbids both. On v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha, Ramban objects that a person’s heart cannot literally love another as it loves itself and calls the phrase an overstatement; he reads the unusual lamed of l’reacha as directing you to want for your fellow every good you want for yourself, rather than demanding an identical feeling. Rabbi Akiva declares it the great principle of the Torah, and Ben Azzai answers that the verse recording that Adam was made in the likeness of God is a greater principle still - a dignity that does not depend on how much a person happens to love himself. Hillel’s formulation in Shabbat 31a puts it in the negative and hands the learner the rest: go and learn it.