Love Beyond Grudges: Living the Mitzvah of Love Your Neighbor
The JTS Emerging Leaders Fellowship offers 11th graders from across North America the opportunity to study Jewish text, tradition, and history together and develop personalized projects that integrate their learning into their daily lives. Jonah Guthartz is a junior at West End Secondary School in New York, NY.
Consider this scenario: you are walking through the halls at school, or at work, and someone bumps into you. There is so much room in the hall, but he bumped into you. “What a rude person!” you might think, “I’m going to bump into him next time I see him!” It’s natural for an individual to want revenge, or to want to hold a grudge for even the most trivial of actions.
Parashat Kedoshim begins by laying out dozens of mitzvot, including the prohibition against idolatry and the mitzvot of charity, Shabbat, honesty in business, honoring one’s parents, and the sanctity of life. Perhaps the best- known mitzvah is לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְ-הֹוָֽה׃ (Lev. 19:19) “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow [Israelite] as yourself: I am the Lord.” Rabbi Akiva famously names this as a fundamental value of the Torah (Sifra, Kedoshim 4:12).
What does it mean to love another as oneself? Rabbi Shai Held writes in his 2024 book, Judaism Is About Love, that the Hebrew “does not say ve-ahavta et rei’akha kamokha,” love your neighbor as yourself, but instead says “‘ve-ahavta le-rei’akha kamokha,’ which translated hyperliterally [sic], would seem to mean ‘love for your neighbor as yourself’” (Held, 106).The contrast is important because God is not commanding us to love someone directly, in an interpersonal relationship, but commanding us to love others whether or not they love us, by treating people with respect, kindness, and consideration. Whom are we supposed to be loving? The verse says “your fellow,” but who is your fellow? Some scholars say that the verse means to command us to love “at a minimum, all Jews” (Held, 106). Ben Azzai, a distinguished Tanna from the 2nd Century, says that “your fellow” applies to all human beings as we were all made בִִּּדְמ֥וּת אֱ־לֹהִ֖ים (Gen. 5:1) in the likeness of God. Most religious scholars come to the consensus that the message of “your fellow” is a universal one.
Why is the commandment on love linked to not taking revenge or bearing a grudge, two principles that are the foundation for communal ethics, guiding justice and fairness in a society? It teaches that we should not act out of vengeance or hold grudges but instead respond with compassion and understanding towards others. In terms of justice, it calls for fairness, where conflicts are resolved by reconciling with others rather than perpetuating cycles of harm. Fairness is reinforced through a commitment to treating everyone with respect regardless of their actions, promoting the idea that all individuals, regardless of their status deserve to be treated with dignity.
It’s hard to treat all people with genuine kindness, thus applying this tenet to our life can be difficult. How do you love someone when you hold a grudge? In the context of the pasuk, love for one’s neighbor may involve forgiveness. People are easily offended; for example, someone forgets a birthday, or a friend is inexplicably distant. The pasuk comes to teach that you should not retaliate. Instead of reciprocating negative actions, you should remember their birthday or reach out to your friend. Applying לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ (Lev. 19:19) means choosing kindness and respect even when you are wronged.
Perhaps love for your neighbor also requires an element of self-love. The Baal Shem Tov (Israel ben Eliezer), a mystic and healer who is regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism, taught that loving others begins with seeing their inherent holiness, something only possible when one acknowledges one’s own worth. In the words of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the father of the Mussar movement—a Jewish spiritual practice focusing on character development and self-improvement—true love, or truthful and honest love, for others stems from self-awareness and growth. If a person lacks self-respect or is consumed by self-criticism, they may struggle to extend genuine kindness to others. Both perspectives—despite coming from different Jewish traditions—interpret self-love and growth as enabling factors for us in truly being able to have love for others.
Returning to that hypothetical I posed at the start, where one person holds a grudge against another person because they bumped into them in the hall, where we have become divided over trivial issues and start conflicts with one another all the time, we ought to be taking וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ (Lev. 19:19) to heart. Major and minor conflicts can tear up communities, making people hate those holding the opposing view so much that they can’t see another way to converse with them. It can make this commandment difficult to truly apply, as it is a natural instinct for people to reciprocate what others do to them. We should start to apply this today by not treating someone the way they treat us but rather treating everyone with genuine kindness and respect. We also need to begin to look inward and to love ourselves. By committing to these forms of love, one can immediately make a positive impact on others—making someone’s day better or treating them with genuine kindness—which can hopefully encourage them to do the same for others.
It is a challenge for all of us to think this way, and I want to specifically challenge you to think about one way that you can actively embody this mitzvah in your life. When you go out in the world, embody this mitzvah and encourage others to do so as well. Finally, I would like to end with a blessing for a world infused with more love, understanding, and holiness.
Shabbat Shalom.
