This time of year (known as the Counting of the Omer), we put special emphasis on the Torah directive: “Love your fellow as you love yourself.”
At first blush, this seems like a poetic flourish, impossible in actual practice. Family and close friends aside, how can one really love everyone (our fellows) like we love ourselves? To know the needs, feelings and expectations of every “fellow” human being, let alone meet those needs? It doesn’t seem remotely realistic.
Maybe that’s why Hillel, a 1st century Sage, explained it from a different perspective:
"What you dislike done to you, don't do to others."
This guidance gives us some profound, practical messages:
1. The road to harmonious relations begins with your own self-awareness. Become conscious of what hurts you. Then stop doing it to others.
2. Hillel didn't say: "Go out there and save the world." He basically said "Do no harm." In other words: Even if you don’t know the likes and dislikes – or even the name – of the person sitting next to you on the bus, don’t do anything hurtful. How do you know what that person dislikes? Use yourself as the template.
Go ahead and be a hero to the world if you can, but first - and more importantly - make sure you’re not hurting anyone.
3. Hillel’s quote was in Aramaic, and I translated it in a way that I feel is true to the intent and understandable to a reader in 2021. But my translation misses one nuance. In the original Aramaic, Hillel used the word for ‘hate,’ not ‘dislike.’ Hillel isn’t saying, “if you don't like coffee, you shouldn’t offer it to your guest.” Hillel is telling us to consider the things that cause us hurt; think of how it feels to be judged, maligned, disrespected etc. Taste your revulsion; then remember that the other person has feelings too.
Step back and soak that in, because Hillel's perspective provides practical, achievable advice for real life.
Cause no unnecessary hurt to anyone. How do you measure hurt? By your own feelings.
Hillel encapsulated many Mitzvos in this brilliant principle.
It's easy to remember.
It's more difficult than it sounds.
It's more rewarding than we can imagine.