CHAPTER 32

“By integrating the past chapters – seeing the body as lower than a worm due its sins and evil – and the joy of oneself is the joy of one’s soul uniting with God, merging with an infinite union with God through Torah study and doing Mitzvos now one can achieve the Mitzvah (the most important Mitzvah of the Torah) to love your fellow Jew, old or young, great or not so great.

For if one despises one’s body and each and every Jew also has a soul, and the soul is of infinitely great proportions – being literally a part of God above.”

“Additionally not only should one have reverence for every Jew individually, as his greatness is due to such a lofty soul, but considering that all Jewish souls at their source are in God, hence we are literally like brothers coming from the same father.”

“If one considers their body – instincts – to be their fundamental desire and their soul’s desire as unimportant, such people can have no true love between one another (which as mentioned stems from the soul, for the bodies of people are what differentiates them) and if we see love between such people, it is merely bodily needs attracting to what the individual wants, not selfless love stemming from a shared identity.”

“Now we can comprehend how Hillel can say that the entire Torah is the Mitzvah of Ahavas Ysroel (love a fellow Jew, while there seems to be many other types of Mitzvos relating between a Jew and God exclusively.)

The answer is simple, the idea behind the entire Torah is that the Jew should make his soul, not his body, the dominant part of his love (which as mentioned, is the only methodology to achieve unity, and hence merges Divinity within all Jews, for it is not enough for a solitary Jew to do this, rather one must merge one’s soul within all fellow Jew’s souls, for a king does not dwell in a broken palace – meaning that God resides in the  individual Jew only within the collective soul which combines all Jews, which is why before praying we say “I herby take upon myself the commandment to love a fellow Jew as myself” for only through unity with all Jews can God reside on your individual soul.”)

“Additionally one may never judge another person and though it does state in the Talmud regarding a fellow student who one works very hard on rectifying and refuses to change, nonetheless, most people do not fall into this category and thus as Hillel states, “be of the disciples of Aaron Hakohen, who loved people, and drew them close to Torah.”

In other words, if one sees a fellow Jew not behaving appropriately, there is only one course of action, to extend absolute unconditional love (for one is not allowed to judge them as mentioned in chapter 30 and it is only by a fellow student where both are on the same level that some minor form of chastisement may take place, hence the only appropriate course) is unconditionally love and through this love, perhaps  one may also be able to ensure the individual to return to God, though even if not, one has still fulfilled the  commandment to love a fellow Jew as oneself.”