My friend Yossi, a very bright guy mentioned something which is worth learning from – we were discussing a group and I said “to understand a group, you must understand their ideology” – “True” he said “but there are layers to ideology” – in other words, an outsider can ask an insider for their ideology and you still don’t know the group, for what do they deem more or less important – so it got me thinking, we all know God’s ideology (hopefully) but what is more or less important to God? for this of course, we must use the wisdom of the Baal Shem Tov, followed by all the great masters, including the masters who preceded them – succinctly speaking, if one looks at Judaism as a whole, one cannot deduce what is more or less important, the Judaism of Mosses quite simply is “there are the commandments of God” without differentiating; to God, which commandment is more or less valuable?! but based on all our Rebbes, the Baal Shem Tov, Hillel and Rabi Akivah (from which all of Torah teaching stem from) succinctly put, there is but a single verse which is the sum total of God’s request to us “Love your friend (fellow) as much as yourself” and as Rabbi Hillel added “the rest is only commentary!”
By zevi770 · April 23, 2014