Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
„A person must labor much until it is properly pictured for him that there exists a world beyond his own private existence.”From First Notebook of Jaffa, 86
The Rav explains the sentence "Love your neighbor as yourself," which contains the root of the Torah, in the ability to step out of yourself — to understand that the world is not only ourselves, but a reality composed of countless people and situations. To love the other and to love ourselves, and through this to discover a great and new truth. *"And when he knows this properly, only then can he attain his Creator."* After we love ourselves, after we understand that there is a world beyond us, we will be able to accept the fact that there is a Creator to the world, and a power greater than us that drives all of reality.
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From the community archive of Mishpetei HaRav Kook — studying Rav Kook's teachings since 2011.