Parashat Kedoshim features one of the most famous pesukim in the entire Torah: ואהבת לרעך כמוך – “You shall love your fellow as yourself.” We are all familiar with Rabbi Akiva’s teaching about this pasuk: זה כלל גדול בתורה – “This is the great principle in the Torah.” Meaning, this is one of the central foundations, if not the central foundation, of the entire Torah.
What is not as well-known is that this pasuk concludes, אני ה' – “I am G-d.” After Hashem commands us to love our fellow as ourselves, He adds, אני ה'. Why?
The answer lies in a pasuk which is very similar to this one, a pasuk which we recite each and every day: ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך – “You shall love Hashem your G-d.” Just as we are to love our fellow man, we are to love Hashem. These two pesukim, essentially, form the foundation of the entire Torah: we are to meet our obligations to other people, and we are to meet our obligations to Hashem.
Loving Hashem means that we continue being loyal even when things don’t go the way we want to. We need to have faith and accept Hashem’s decisions even when it is difficult, when He makes things happen which we don’t understand, things that we find hard and challenging.
This is why the command of ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך ends with אני ה' – to teach us that we are to love our fellow man the same way we love Hashem.
We need to accept that every person in this world is different. Hashem created every single person as a unique individual, unlike everyone else. This is the meaning of the Gemara’s famous teaching that an infant inside the mother’s womb is taught the entire Torah, and then made to forget it before he is born. It means that each of us is given our unique share in Torah, our unique perspective, and a unique understanding. This is why we pray each day, ותן חלקנו בתורתך – “grant us our share in Your Torah.” We ask Hashem to help us acquire our unique portion in Torah, and follow our distinct path.
Understanding this is crucial for fulfilling the mitzvah of ואהבת לרעך כמוך.
Hashem wants each of us to have our own path. Hashem wants our brother, our sister, and each of our children to have his or her own path. No two people are going to do everything exactly the same. It’s impossible. Every person learned the Torah independently with his personal angel – because no two people are exactly alike. We’re all going to do things differently – and that’s ok. That’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be.
Very often, tension arises in families when siblings grow older and drift onto different directions. Some are more stringent in their religious observance, and some less so. Some are financially successful, and some less so. Some go into business, and some take on different kinds of jobs. Some have one parenting style, and some have a different parenting style. These differences sometimes lead to criticism and resentment, causing friction.
All this can be avoided by understanding that we are all different, and Hashem wants us all to be different. Even if we think that our brother or our sister is doing it wrong, we should keep quiet about it. We do our thing, and they do theirs. This is what ואהבת לרעך כמוך requires. Just as we must love Hashem even when He makes things happen which we don’t like, so must we love our fellowman – and certainly our siblings – when they follow a different direction than we do, which they invariably will, because every person is unique.
We observe certain mourning practices during this period to commemorate the death of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students who were killed שלא נהגו כבוד זה בזה – because they did not treat each other respectfully. We can easily imagine that in a yeshiva with so many students, there were many, many different types. It seems that the students, as great as they were, did not have enough respect for other types, for those who were different, who had different styles in the way they learned and in the way they conducted themselves.
Let us always remember – אני ה', that we must love people the way we are to love Hashem. We can – and must – respect and love our siblings, our neighbors, our fellow community members, and all our fellow Jews, no matter how different they are from us, once we realize that they are supposed to be different from us – because no two people created by Hashem are meant to be exactly alike.